LETTER: Sorry Rich, the Space Program is necessary

Dear Editor,

I would like to answer the question Rich Timothy asked on Friday in his column. Yes, we do need a space program. There are more reasons than I could include in a single letter, but I will touch on a few of them here. The first is economic. There have been a number of studies that have shown that the space program pays for itself many times over. While I’ve seen documented returns between 2:1 and 7:1, the bottom line is money put into space exploration is not being “thrown away” as the column and a recent editorial cartoon have hinted.

The column also talks about the money going to the Russians for the International Space Station as an additional burden on the Russian economy. That money wasn’t loaned to the Russians, it was paid to the Russian Space Agency and to Energia. So, the money is actually helping the Russian economy and is keeping Russian engineers and scientists employed for peaceful purposes, instead of building ICBMs for Saddam Hussein, North Korea or China.

Besides the economic benefits and the spinoffs of the space program like miniaturized electronics and fault-tolerant software methods, there is a real benefit to our planet. Between Earth-monitoring programs and exploration of other planets, we are learning more about the history, climate and life on Earth. This makes it possible for us to better understand phenomena like global weather patterns, global warming, the ozone hole, shrinking ice caps, etc. If we understand these phenomena better, we can determine how best to deal with them, which means we can minimize the effects of droughts and catastrophic weather and improve the efficiency of agriculture.

This will make it easier to feed the hungry people Rich is concerned about. But the most important reason, at least to my mind, is that humans need to explore. If we aren’t striving for a goal (like putting people on Mars, for example), we tend to stagnate as a people. The space program gives us hope that humankind will someday leave the cradle of Earth and perhaps even find life elsewhere.

Dan Stormont