The word necessary has a lot of wiggle room here. What are necessities? Going by the bare minimum:

• food
• water
• protection from the elements
• protection from illness/infection
• continuation of the species

That's about everything we truly 'need' to die of old age and not go extinct. Nearly everything people currently do is a subset of those needs. Space exploration can be marked under both protection from the elements and continuation of the species.

Ironically, luddites against space exploration in this era call for the dismantling of a titanic field of science that is both directly and indirectly responsible for the very device from which they shart out their oh-so-learned opinions to the rest of the world.

Let me rewrite your question, and correct me if I'm misrepresenting it:

"Why should we spend resources on X instead of Y?"

Well, for this kind of question, I would prefer to choose a "high value" X and an "important" Y.

Space exploration, and science as a whole, is extremely cheap and good for humanity.

Let's talk about other expensive "X" first:

• Unnecessary war efforts.
• ICE (if we are taking about US)
• Saving banks when they screw up on their bets.
• Incentives to coal and gas when solar is already more viable ...

Maybe you started to think about it because that's an amazing subject, and it is. That alone should be reason enough for us to want to do it. But it is not the only reason. Space exploration already gave us a lot of tech we rely on today. And still, is a very difficult field that will require more tech advancements, that will benefit us in the future.

For science, yes. But I also do not think we as a species deserve to get past our own moon. All we do is rape and pollute. We couldn't even take care of the planet we were given, we shouldn't be allowed to wreck more.

yes. space exploration advanced technological progress in breakneck speed and gave us more tools to make our home a better place.

humans want to break new boundaries, crossing the oceans used to be an unprecedented endeavour and after mastering it the whole world the gained ability to interact.

the amount of resources needed to collectively reach for the stars is there and if done properly we can explore space without worsening people's lives. to put it into perspective: a falcon 9 launch costs about 70 million us $, that's already cheaper than one f35 or 20 tomahawk missiles.

the space race led to the apollo-soyuz program which invited rivals to work together, there`s a beauty in the fact that the need to explore the unknown and work together can transcend even rivalries. The ISS is a monument to that.

imo we (as in humanity) should continue space exploration, but we should ideally not exploit it for capital gain. we should use the useful technology that comes out of it to make life better on our planet. (e.g. GPS, geostationary satellites and and and....)

sure, this field is currently dominated by a circle of pedophiles and nazis (that nazi part has always been part of space flight history for americans >.> ) but the world is currently changing and i see some hope in chinas rapid advancement in this field. they built the tianggong space station and they invited everyone to collectively conduct research in the future. The Artemis Program has been good so far, only now it's held back due to private contractors not delivering on the moon landing craft.

One day, we're going to outgrow ourselves. One day, we're going to set aside our stupid petty squabbles, and we're going to hope for something more.

I want to see us reach the stars, because I think one day we'll be able to handle what the galaxy throws at us.

If it will eventually be possible to travel to a new planet or mine other planets and asteroids for materials instead of destroying our own planet, than absolutely it's worth it.

If that's all a pipe dream than space exploration is really just a waste of money.

Another commentee has already said that Artemis is a political stunt. I believe it's worked magnificently. Space travel is being used to whitewash USA's reputation and at the same time display the US' continued military and technological dominance. It's another message to all other countries in the world that they are going to stay slaves to US imperialism and dictatorship.

As shown by the comments here, the USians have no problem with their government if they get to see shiny new nerd pictures.

Yes

Firstly, people have such a massive misconception about the cost of space exploration. It is such a miniscule part of our overall expenditure it is a drop in the ocean. (It's important now to distinguish between overall Space budgets and the exploration budgets since we spend a lot of money in space that's not for scientific development nowadays).

The Artemis program for example was 93 billion over 13 years, ~7 billion per year (2012-2025).

The Iraq war cost ~5 trillion over 8 years. Or 625 billion per year.

The entire Artemis program could have been funded by winding down the Iraq war a couple of months earlier.

The annual cost of the NHS is 275 billion per year.

The extra knowledge, research and development in everything from materials, human biology, life support systems, to just engineering management improvements yield absolutely massive benefits to life on earth, greatly outweighing the alternative.

Not to mention inspiring people to enter STEM, especially girls who are still hugely underrepresented. Which has incredible benefits. Hell, even just making people excited about science and technology instead of so distrustful of it is so so important and intangible.

Even if you extend the budgets to the entire space industry, it's still a drop in the ocean, and most of the space industry budgets go directly to economic or defence benefits. Supply chain resilience, climate change policing, communications services, wildfire detection, industrial efficiency gains (e.g. data driven farming). As well as existential threats from space like solar storms and asteroids (although that's an admittedly tiny portion of funding).

This is coming from a space engineer and senior manager who has mostly fallen out of love with the industry because it is leaning towards profit focus instead of benefit focus. But it's still one of the best bang for buck industries that exists.

Cutting founding for space wouldn't mean that the founding goes to a good thing on earth.

Why is this argument always brought up?

Theoretically we have enough resources to give everyone a home food, education, healthcare and go to space.

Yes. Even if you don't think the goals of space exploration are important, we've made huge developments in medicine, engineering, solar panels, telecommunications, and road safety based on NASA technology. You're probably reading this on a phone that wouldn't exist with space exploration research. Scientific research is never a linear set of goals or inventions, and the ancillary benefits of our pursuit of space have already changed the world.

It's great propaganda.

That's about it.

Don't get me wrong, propaganda isn't inherently bad or anything, you just need to consider how the propaganda is being used.

I thought this was about factorio. :(

Why not. Not like that money would be put to better use elsewhere.

Yes. Space exploration pushes science and technology forward, which benefits humanity as a whole.

Yes, but capitalists should not do it. And actually space exploration on today's scale cost literal pennies compared to military or shareholders loot.

I think it's human nature to push boundaries and it's how we progress as a society and as species. The resources used also really pale in comparison to what is spent on stuff that is clearly more useless, like mega yachts for the super rich and bombs that get dropped on children.

Few things are more important than Exploration. In all avenues exploration leads to discovery which leads to growth. What else should we be working on? Cos atm the western world (which I inhabit) focuses most human effort on making 'line go up' and it feels entirely wasted and pointless.

We should explore space with semiautonomous robots. We can do space exploration at maybe a quarter of the cost of sending humans to do it.

Flood Mars with exploratory rovers for years. Then mining robots. Then manufacturing robots. Have them build facilities that build more robots to expand the process exponentially .

Then, if we decide it’s even worth it at that point, have them build a city and send people.

Yes, realizing that Earth is the only home we have really makes you think twice.There is no other planet for us to conquer. Mess this one up, and we’re a doomed species.

Yes. For those who consider it wasteful spending, consider that a lot of problems are not fixable by just throwing more money at them. There’s a saying that “9 women can’t make a baby in one month” even though 1 woman can in 9. Many ills of society are as much about political/social motivation, entrenched opponents/regulatory capture, NIMBYism, etc and not problems that you can fix just by spending more. There’s also the concept of a “marginal dollar” - spending one more dollar in an important area that already has a lot of money (and has problems that aren’t really addressed by just having more money) may not be as impactful as a less important area where that dollar would go a lot further.

The point is the advancement of science, not simply the travel itself. Space science is integral to many advances we take for granted these days.

Yes, we need to do things like space exploration because these are the endeavours that advance humanity. Even in practical terms, plenty of discoveries that are useful here come from technologies developed for space exploration. If you're really worried about unproductive use of resouces, maybe worry about how we deal with the pedo elites that rule over us and hoard resources on unimaginable scale.

In grand scale of things is it really that much money?

I think so.

How high the priority should be is a debate worth having, but space has many ways to wipe out a planet. Having two planets, having a permanent space station, could go a long way to increasing survivability.

Not only that, building in a vacuum, building in zero G, even building things under great pressure, all can allow us to build new materials with brand new properties.

Also, being able to sustain a small group of people somewhere completely contained an inhospitable can be utilized on earth to feed people at home, or recycle water at home.

One important feature is the psychological unification. Space becomes a "common enemy" to humanity. And humans work well under a common enemy.

All attempts to discover how the universe works benefits us. Even a lot of really esoteric stuff has proven useful in fields like medicine and civil engineering.

Honestly if we can pivot our high tech innovation efforts from being mainly driven by military needs to being driven by basic research (basic in this case meaning researching the natural world directly without any particular goal other than learning), we'd be a lot better off.

Necessary? No. Not much except eating, drinking and breathing is. Even reproduction is optional from the view of a single individual.

A good idea? Absolutely:

1. Exploring space tells us a lot about earth. We currently assume that the moon formed when something big collided with earth and threw lots of material into a stable orbit. This means moon is probably made of the same materials as earth and because there is no erosion nor tectonic activity on the moon, it lets us study what earth may have looked like billions of years ago.
2. Lots and lots of things that were originally developed for space are very useful on earth: teflon coating, memory foam matresses, efficient solar panels and many more. Sure, they could have been developed without space exploration but the pressure to get something exactly right helped a lot. And of course we directly use satellites for a lot of earth stuff, too. Think tv, weather prediction, monitoring of climate change, communication, GPS, accurate maps and many more.
3. It gives humanity something to unite behind. Even during the cold war, the USA and the Soviet Union ignored their feud for a bit to make Apollo-Soyuz happen. These days, the ISS is one of the biggest multinational projects and I dread the day it gets decommissioned because Russia will have one less reason to talk to the rest of the world.

Hear why William Shatner is ‘overwhelmed by sadness’ after space flight

The impact to society from space exploration is immense if not immeasurable.

• Weather forecasting
• GPS navigation
• Earth sciences
• Robotics
• Medical imaging

NASA has a website dedicated to the topic, as do other agencies around the world.

• https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/benefits-to-humanity/
• https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/about/everyday-benefits-of-space-exploration/
• https://www.space.gov.au/why-space-matters
• https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Benefits_of_space_science

There's also a Wikipedia page on the topic:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefits_of_space_exploration

Well… short term no it’s not necessary (although as other folks have said on the thread it does give some technology advancements, and gives humanity a warm fuzzy sense of achievement)

Long term, it depends on the eval criteria

1. If we want the human race to live as long as possible, then I would say yes - to diversify, distribute and minimise the risk of planetary (Earth) failure
2. If we don’t give a toss about the human race then no, the Universe will be just fine without us

Space exploration is weight lifting for science.

yes. there's two branching discussions here:

• Space as a scientific topic, it needs to be understood. Our observation of reality is very local, and although we can prove that some of our assumptions about physics, life and civilization work on our neighborhood, it doesn't mean that they're the same everywhere. That alone is sufficient reason for me, to explore.
• Space as the new frontier. Many if not all exploration done on planet Earth has been, in some shape or form, resource-motivated. Lands, food, medicine, minerals, routes, are all found through exploration and normally through people spending money looking for a return over investment. Space is no different.

I think the interesting part is where this two branches touch: If we ever plan on capturing an asteroid for mining, the technology needs to be there to do it, and hopefully the technology is about the benefit of all humankind. This kind of development is showing us the way to move forward and solve problems. Imagine a world when we don't need to destroy ecosystems in order to get iron because all iron comes from off-world.

not strictly necessary, no. but so is a lot of what we do today.

it'd be cool.

Strictly, no. The human spirit yearns for it though, and I think it shoukd be given a treat from time to time.

How else will we be able to someday mass travel through space to find another planet once we inevitably kill this one?

Human space exploration seems a bit gratuitous to me. Probes can do almost anything crew can do, and many things that crew cannot. The only thing human space flight seems to do is help us get better at human space flight.

Absolutely and unequivocally yes. Nothing should constrain the boundaries of scientific study in space, especially now that our years are numbered due to climate change and dumbass fascists and dictators with launch codes. Whities on the moon, while a noble and valuable sentiment, should be altered to whities on patrol or something.

I’m so sick and tired of seeing Americans bitch about space exploration colonialism and remain silent on the colonialism that continues to kill and exploit Innocent people across the world.

Yes, we need better social infrastructure desperately, but that should come at the cost of terrestrial imperialism, not space exploration.

Do you rather propose we stop producing movies, adult content and series and use that $$$ to space exploration?

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/chandrayaan-3-lands-successfully-isros-moon-mission-budget-less-than-christopher-nolans-interstellar-elon-musk-responds/articleshow/102988184.cms

Necessary, yes. Furthering our knowledge of the cosmos is a worthwhile pursuit for its own sake. That being said, the sudden focus on NASA is pure political distraction, a clumsy attempt to foment nationalism that isn't going to be as effective as its architects were hoping.

Yes, but I think the efforts right now should go into solving the climate crisis rather than going to the moon.

Space exploration falls into the category of "luxury spending" for me. Only when every human on Earth is fed, clothed and housed should we be looking out to the heavens.

Yes.

Yes. Space exploration and further colonization is the only possibility for humankind to survive after politicians and military will nuke the Earth to stone age, so we need to preserve our species.

Looking at the list of government expenditures, I don't see space exploration as problematic as other things we are spending money on.

Yes

There's a special kind of nerd that I call Puzzle Demons. They have big brains and they get satisfaction from solving puzzles without thinking about them. It doesn't matter what the puzzle is so long as it's a challenge to solve. They'll look back on their work with satisfaction because they solved the puzzle, regardless of what that work is.

Puzzle Demons in the 1940s built V-2 rockets. We gave them space travel and the puzzle became making the rocket leave the atmosphere instead of hitting cities. That space travel made helpful consumer technologies to survive in extreme environments, things that were otherwise too expensive for commercial R&D.

Then we killed NASA in the 1980s. The Puzzle Demons had no socially positive puzzle. They built the tech industry instead. I dated a Puzzle Demon whose fun little puzzle to solve every day was designing the UI for smart locks that go on the bunkers of the wealthy. She was thrilled to make locking herself out of the bunker more user-friendly. There are Puzzle Demons at the social media websites whose entire job is making them more addictive for children. Puzzle Demons gave us crypto, guided missiles, murder robots, AI slop, and corporate efficiency consulting.

We need space exploration to pacify the Puzzle Demons. Without it, the population is still encouraged to go into STEM but most of the STEM jobs are profoundly evil. You stick them in a NASA office and they're just building useful things. Otherwise the prestige jobs are with defense contractors, tech companies, and multinationals.

I am of the opinion that space exploration and settlement is the single most important thing humanity should be doing. Currently humanity exists only on this planet, which through the course of its existence has had numerous mass extinction events. It is hubris to believe that we will never be affected by one. Right now all of humanity's eggs are in this single basket, and if that basket gets kicked over, humanity could cease to exist.

Now I will grant you that there are lots of things down here on earth that we should be spending money on to better the lives of humans generally, but these things are not mutually exclusive. Right now we're spending orders of magnitude more money and resources waging war on one another than space exploration. In the US in 2025, the US military budget was around $920b, whereas NASA's was $25b. The military budget was 36 times higher than the space budget. It's not even close. Space is not where dollars are being wasted.

Studies have also shown that NASA's impact is a net positive on the economy, consistently generating more economic impact than is put into it. It creates well paying jobs that employees find fulfilling and satisfying, generates public interest in the sciences, and benefits society as a whole as new technologies are developed that we all get to enjoy.

I would argue that what we NEED to do is stop needlessly murdering each other over religious and social disagreements, and spend our resources on feeding, clothing and taking care of one another such that we all have the time, security and ability to watch humans go out into space with wonder in our hearts.

Setting aside all the intangible benefits such as answering why we are here and providing inspiration to generations there are tons of short and long term benefits.

In the short/medium term, research is so much about solving problems and your solutions having unexpected applications in other areas. A lot of our minituarization in tech happened because we needed things smaller and lighter to lift into space, think things like your smart phone camera or laptops. Also things like cordless tools and even memory foam were originally developed for their application in space travel.

In the long term, let's take a look back, what if we had the same stance when we looked at the ocean, and thought why its even necessary to figure out how to navigate the waters. For our species to propagate or even survive, we need to expand. Right now we are one decently sized asteroid from extinction, but if one day we figured out how to expand to multiple worlds, then we become a heck of a lot of more resilient.

From a risk assessment standpoint, space exploration is a VERY good investment. We need to be on multiple planets, preferably in multiple solar systems or even multiple galaxies.

BUT. It absolutely must be paired with NOT destroying the planet we have! This is the only planet we've got right now and the only one we've got a guarantee on habitability - if we don't fuck it up.

So yes, space is vital. But so it protecting this place.

Yes. Because I want an alien girlfriend.

1. The amount of money spent on NASA is negligible compared to the MIC
2. Human intuition about what STEM stuff is useful is very poor. The basis for your ability to securely do online banking is a quirky little number theory equation that was useless for centuries. Or think about the reactionary complaints about “they’re paying scientists to study cat urine” or whatever. Those studies typically have a practical reason for getting some and practical implications once they’re finished. Even the stuff that is practical looks impractical to the layperson. Space travel is very similar in that the technology it enables can have other uses.
3. Whoever figures out asteroid mining first is going to make a lot of fucking money

It is a virtual certainty that at some point a meteor large enough to wipe out all multicellular life on the planet will strike the Earth. It is an absolute certainty that the Sun will eventually burn out leaving the planet uninhabitable. Something else might wipe out our species long before either of these things happen, but it's not a bad idea to have another inhabited planet or two as a backups.

We had problems on earth before space exploration, and we’ll have problems on earth after space exploration. And if we colonize other planets we’ll have problems there.

Because every time humans solve a problem they create more, bigger, harder to solve problems.

Space exploration doesn’t affect this.

Spaceflight creates jobs.

Yes, absolutely, science in general is necessary for any kind of desirable civilization. Space exploration contributes a massive amount of knowledge to scientific research and betters the human race.

But it shouldn't be a playground for billionaires to plan space hotels for ultra-wealthy clientele. Public works for the public good, for the betterment of our human race as a whole, not just for the super rich.

There have been over 1800 “spin-off” technologies that came from the world’s various space agencies. Some of those inventions are life saving and there’s people alive today thanks to the pioneering spirit of man and the funding of countries. I don’t see the benefit of stopping now.

Yes but we need to treat the earth as the only habitable place we will ever have and run sustainably. We need to be using less than one earth year of renewable resources each year and use a minimum number of non renewable. I don't think we should be sending people into space all that much. We should as much as possible seek to learn how to mine, process, and produce in space. Its certainly something we cannot do now but if we are ever to make any real progess it will have to be something we figure out. Its also likely the best direction for the resources we put to space as far as return. By that I mean the same way much of our technology was spurred by the space race due to the challenge of getting out into it and to the moon. I feel learning to mine and automate in space will have the greatest returns in technological advancement for us. I think ideally any time we send people to space whe have a destination built already for them to go to. So send rovers and such to the moon and try to excavate and build a dome or such and install equipment. I mean if we could figure out a way to automate making rocket fuel in space and could make fuel depots that would be huge. I also want to experiment with things on the moon. Like I think we should make a moon space elevator. Not because its a very necessary thing for the moon but to figure out the tech. maybe later we try to make one on mars. if we made them on a variety of space objects we might get sure enough to do one on earth.

We came from the stars, we should learn about our origins.

We have plenty of problems on the surface as it is! Why should we go underground? The surface has enough resources to sustain us right now. We don't even need mining, if we pick up enough surface rocks.

It's good to keep in mind that the cost of space exploration vastly pales in comparison to most social programs which also vastly pale in comparison to the military budget.

We should absolutely focus on helping people on Earth, but we don't need to cut space exploration to do that, just war.

Many people find hope in exploration, discovery, and pushing physical frontiers. These were necessarily parts of human history that shaped our intuitions and desires and I think without new frontiers people get cynical or bored that can lead to some awful behaviors and outcomes. It's the same with scientific research it doesn't need to take the majority of the public funds but there is a minimum especially for some planetary scale science efforts.

We have so many problems to fix isn't a good reason not to explore and inspire, I'm sure there were ancient people who thought investing in roads was a waste of public funds why do we need to connect to other cities or lands if we have problems already, but some of those problems were resolved with trade or treaties or pluralistic cultures the roads allowed.

Space exploration is relatively cheap compared to our murder machines, and unlike the murder machines has practical benefits for a wide swath of people.

There's new innovations that come around in order to get into space, new innovations from discoveries made in space, and new innovations made because we've gone to space.

Some of these innovations even help address problems on our own planet. GPS helps keep planes from hitting each other (which was the catalyst for making high resolution GPS publicly available in the first place), satellite imagery aids in weather prediction and disaster response, even global communication is in part because of space travel.

I care less about finding backup worlds, but even that search gives us information about the needs of life and can hint at how life came to be--answers which may be helpful in some types of medical work.

Tardigrade can survive for a shockingly long time exposed to the harsh environments of space. We wouldn't have known that if we hadn't gone ourselves, and understanding why they can survive so long can help us look for ways to prolong resilience in other complex life forms and environments.

The knowledge gained about keeping people safe in space will be critical to keeping people safe in other extreme environments like through the ongoing climate catastrophe.

So for the sake of progress, yes, it's necessary. It's another frontier for humanity to explore, and the more we explore the more we find out about ourselves and how to help people.

The cheapest way to maintain control over the globe via military force is to establish a moon operation that runs at only a slight deficit and hold the specter of lunar regolith asteroid strikes over every person on the planet earth.

Space exploration is not the only thing that generates spin off effects. It's not the only interesting science. Directly funding research into solving real problems actually works. So yes, I think it should be funded, but at this point, unmanned missions are a much better way to spend the resources: for the same money you get more science, more spin off, more everything. Just less spectacle. Space will not be profitable, or habitable in this century and that's fine.

Ultimately, space exploration is outside the realm of production and will stay there at least for a long time. Therefore, what we spend on it is part of our societal surplus: the value we collectively create, that is left over after reproducing society. What happens to that value should be decided democratically. But in capitalism, it isn't. Corporations control almost all the surplus and spend it on what's profitable for them. All of space funding in the US is just crumbs falling off the table of the military industrial complex mixed with the potential for propaganda.

For example, all those year, when Hubble was the best telescope, the imperial oppression apparatus had multiple of Hubble sized telescopes whose potential was wasted on intelligence gathering for wars. Then they got even better ones and offered a few of the left overs to NASA, but NASA couldn't even afford to make use of several free Hubble sized telescopes.

Is making pointy sticks necessary? Is flint knapping necessary? Is agriculture necessary? I'm pretty sure there were people asking these questions at each of those milestones of human development.

No, it's unnecessary and a waste of money

Yes

Of course not, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. We go to space because it’s cool and we can, and that’s a beautifully human thing to do. As for the money, it’s a baseline fact of this world that enormous sums will be spent on things that don’t fix our problems, and space is as good a use as any for that wasted cash. If it were space or solving hunger, solving hunger is the obvious priority, but practically speaking it’s “don’t solve hunger and go to space” or “don’t solve hunger.”

Not really, it's more like a childhood dream that nobody investing will see IF it will give any results and/or is just a over expensive hobby, for the sake of have the knowledge of guessing of what is the planet that is over 5000 years light away from us might be made of. Who knows! It might have some form of H2O!

Nothing is really necessary until you develop it enough to make it so. There is potential there. It could turn into something extremely useful, perhaps even life saving. I don't think we are anywhere close yet, but sometimes you get revolutionary breakthroughs that flip the landscape in a really short time.

Only if music is.

Humanity has already outgrown the cradle called earth, the longer it takes us to leave it behind the greater the risk that will destroy it and ourselves.

For things like Mars and Moon stuff? No.

For things like finding all of those exoplanets we keep discovering if it means a second home for humanity? Yeah, problem with that is, is the impossibly amount of time and resources it'll take to achieve that kind of space travel.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=E6c4IjUO0HY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCP3LZoxABs

"Necessary", no. We're all fine here on Earth, where we evolved, and all that. We've gotten along just fine without leaving the planet.

Desirable? Yes. But, I think we should do it with robots, because humans are too expensive due to being so fragile. Also, what should we do with what we find? Exploiting the resources of the Moon and Mars should not be allowed. Setting up human colonies there seems extravagant at this time.

Whitey on the Moon

Maybe eventually, but we should focus on juusssstttt one or two issues here on earth first.

We're boiling the planet. Yes, it's essential. Lest we perish.

Nah, its even actively harmful / wasteful imo. Under socialism and communism, with society controlled by the workers, it will be difficult to make people do tons of mining, smelting, transport, etc, polluting their land and waters and destroying wildlife, just to allow some scientists far away to do fun rocket building and flying around

Not really, at least not with the current technology and problems down here on earth. It's exorbitantly expensive and all of that money could be put to better use improving the lives of real people in real ways.