20110091 박성권 ENG251 Writing Opinion Essay We Should Invest in Exploring Space.

  Opinion Essay 20110091 Sungkwon Park

We Should Invest in Exploring Space

Can you guess where our current affluent life has come from? Space research has had a lot of influences on our society and contributed to the development of human race about technology, philosophy, and so on. Some people worry and criticize investment in exploring space since it needs much money, but we should consistently explore space. We need to see further. More important things than we are thinking of depend on the achievement of the task.

Firstly, if we look around, we can easily find out the great science to be originated from space research. Thanks to tons of state of the art technologies, we have lived in an affluent life. GPS technology using satellite, new materials based on spaceship and spacesuit, and laser technique can be good examples that prove those achievements. The challenges require enormous expense in terms of the repeated failures. However, the profits far outweigh the loss. We should not be disappointed at the short-term loss and hesitate due to those several failures. We need to keep this phrase in our mind: He who laughs last, laughs best.

There is another reason why we should put a lot of effort into researching for this field. It is to support our next generation. If we can stay on earth forever like a common phrase in an ending of fairies: ‘happily ever after’, we could put this problem aside. Unfortunately, the reality we are supposed to face is considerably different from our wish. Before long, natural resources on Earth will be depleted unless we seek for alternatives of fuel gas and oil. What’s worse, the world population will dramatically increase, which will reach about 10 billion by 2060 according to the United Nations. In short, we must be faced with the problem of resources shortage, and must overcome the ordeal in order to maintain the human race.

Some people have pointed out a problem that we had to spend an astronomical amount of money for the research. They claim we need lessen the costs, or pause for the explorations, and instead of it, huge sum of that money should to be used for people or poor countries. Although this point is quite persuasive to supporters who oppose space research, we can assist them enough with another way. We can come up with various solutions, for example, reducing defense costs in each country and preventing political corruption, especially in the world powers, reducing and pausing for the supports is not appropriate solution to get rid of poverty.

Lastly, what we pay no attention to this field means what we give up the opportunities we should take advantage of by ourselves. Human civilization has developed by studying space. The ancient agriculture society came along with astronomy. In the industrial society, we wanted to go out of Earth, and we struggled to land on the Moon and ended up getting there. Since the great success, the collected knowledge by conducting the task has permeated into our daily life. Development of human race has always depended on the progress of science and that will never change.

It’s not a coincidence that most developed countries compete with each other engaged in exploring space. Thanks to the efforts, we could learn many things about philosophy, science, technologies. In the future, the fate of human civilization hinges on the whether we can find resources on other planet or not. We have to regard the huge amount of investment as proper costs for our future. Given these reasons, we should stick space exploration out.