Why do we explore space?

When man was nothing more than animalistic nomads, roaming the earth in herds and scrounging for food, he did not know what Newtonian mechanics was. He did not think about the various philosophical ideas that dictate our morals nor did he ponder upon the theory of relativity. Man, however, had one problem. He did not understand what he saw. He might have tried hard to find out  the reason but he could not even come close to providing the answer.  This made him realise that there must be something more powerful than himself which was controlling them.He must have thought that rain was water from the sky. Someone has poured water from up there! He might think that lightning was some kind of weapon! Someone must be  really angry up there! Then he looked up at the night sky and saw the stars. Millions of them twinkling away. Some were big, some small. Some red, some blue, some white, etc. These became his gods! He carefully observed the heavens and realised that they are not static but they too move. He observed them carefully to predict the future, to make proper time for his rituals and sacrifices in order to please his gods. In doing this, he discovered the first science, Astronomy.  Since then we have all looked up to the night sky and wondered,... "What is up there?"

However, soon we need to ask ourselves, "How do we live up there?" Resources on earth are limited and anyways we are destroying the planet faster than anything else. the least we can do is to leave it alone! But what options do we have anyways? Eventually, the sun will run out of fuel and become a red giant. It will bloat up is size,its surface reaching as far as the orbit of earth and consume it, or at least make life impossible on earth. if we don't move out by then we would definitely be toast but you must be still asking yourself, "Why do we spend billions of dollars to take pictures of space dust when that money can be  put to better use on earth?" Let me tell you what would happen if we didn't.

Imagine a scenario where in an international level meeting, someone has a bright idea of  cancelling all the space programmes around the world and using all that amount in social welfare to try to solve the problems here on earth first. Everybody agrees and suddenly all the space programmes are halted and all the money is put into the accounts of the various NGOs' and  government aids, which increase their budget by a mere 2%. The space industries uses about $289.77 billion yearly most of which is used to pay the salary of the many skilled worker roughly about 380,000 directly plus many more people indirectly. This will have a very negative effect on the world economy. Even then, we continue with our policy of no space programmes. Slowly, global warming and abuse of resources start to take lasting effect on our environment. Our water becomes toxic, our land becomes toxic and even our air becomes toxic. The rising sea claims most of our irrigable land.

The predicted map of the world with the ice caps melted

The world leaders fight over the left over resources due to which wars and bloodshed ruins the human race. The remaining freshwater resources, oilfields and irrigable land are guarded by the countries with arms. As the war for the basic resources continues, the use of nuclear weapons becomes inevitable. The land becomes full of nuclear fallout contaminating all the leftover resources. This eventually leads to the long impending destruction of the human race. Wouldn't it have been better that we should just leave our planet alone and explore what else the mighty universe has to offer?

 I hope, by know you have understood what we can actually get out of space exploration besides just knowledge? We must understand that we have already damaged our planet beyond repair and may not be able to undone what should have been done years ago. The only thing we can do is to leave earth and become the pioneers of today. Pioneers of the Universe.

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