NASA Should Spend More Money

National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA), do they have too much or not enough money? NASA has been around for 58 years, each year after the space race the budget gets cut every year. Supporters are saying that NASA needs more money in order to make better advancements along with discoveries. Critics say that NASA has too much money and isn’t spending it wisely. Either way, NASA has made many discoveries along with advancements, helping the people on earth, exploring space, along with making a lot of other progress in previous years. Space exploration, got to the moon in 1969, reaching Mars by mid-2030’s, or will NASA make it. NASA had planned to get to Mars much sooner, but due to budget cuts, NASA won’t be sending people to
Mars until the mid-2030’s. (1 Journey to Mars Overview | NASA.) If NASA had a larger budget, they could keep the International Space Station(ISS) in commission, NASA could also get the impossible Emdrive to work, they just need more money into research and technology to get everything NASA has planned, and more. The impossible Emdrive is a controversial proposed type of electromagnetic thruster where an anisotropic electromagnetic field inside the microwave cavity purportedly produces little if any thrust, scientists do not know why so little or no thrust is released. NASA’s new budget request for 19 billion dollars for 2017, they only use about 10 billion on space exploration. NASA uses only about 52% of their budget on space exploration, but they do more than just space exploration, they also help the people.(2 ”NASA's FY 2017 budget request.”) Supporters believe NASA has been doing plenty of things for the people on Earth. Just alone the ISS is helping in over 15 ways, a few examples are; supporting water purification efforts worldwide, improving eye surgery with space hardware, making inoperable tumors operable with a robotic arm, and much more. Though NASA also helps people without using the ISS, they could also help the people if NASA budget was larger to come up with new technology or improve the technology that is around today. With more money, NASA could help work on solar panels, which of now only absorb and converts 14% of light energy. NASA has already made plenty of progress in advancements with the money NASA has now, so just imagine what NASA could do with more money. Science enthusiasts believe that the progress NASA has made is very spectacular. They also believe that NASA could do more with more money. For an example, NASA could spend more money on researching the Emdrive, where China has already had a breakthrough with it. Some of the biggest breakthroughs we have had in the last ten years are; discovering the Trappist-1 solar system, what Mars looked like before it lost its atmosphere, along with a possible way to restore the Mars atmosphere. Which all of these would be easier to accomplish, or get more information about if the budget was larger. Critics are saying that space exploration is unnecessary and is a waste of money (at least for this moment) and that the Federal Government should cut NASA’s budget even more.
Their belief is that the government should spend more money on fixing the earth, and come up with new technology to make the world a better place. Maybe the government should spend more money of exploring the ocean in hopes of finding new species. Billion’s of dollars has been spent on failed space missions, plus over ten fatalities in the last 17 years, NASA should do more planning and tests to get rid of human fatalities. (3 ”List of spaceflight-related accidents and incidents - Wikipedia.” and “4The Fallen Heroes of Human Spaceflight - Live
Science." NASA has been practically throwing money out the window, chiefly on failed missions. Just alone the SpaceX rocket failure cost 110 million dollars, but there has been plenty of more failed missions, causing families to lose loved ones. (5 "SpaceX rocket failure cost NASA $110 million - LA Times.") NASA has been around for 58 years, and has only gotten people to the moon, with the amount of money they have they should have gotten further, is what many people believe. NASA does more for the earth than just space exploration, and maybe NASA shouldn’t spend money on getting nowhere in space exploration. It is a good idea to stick with going to Mars rather than changing the mission, wasting more money on a mission that died. NASA should use their money more wisely like China. China's space program has a budget roughly about 6.1 billion dollars, which isn’t even half of NASA’s budget.(6 "The rise and rise of China's space program – in numbers | World ....") With China's space program being so much lower than NASA’s they are still able to make a breakthrough on the impossible Emdrive.
The real questions that critics are asking is “why is NASA still around?” With over twenty people dying on a count of NASA being established, should NASA still be around, are their lives worth the money they spent on taking precautions that still failed? With NASA’s plan of getting to Mars, the people here on earth where we live and should take better take care of would wonder what would be next, what would NASA do on Mars, and how many people would die on the Mars
mission. NASA’s budget is lowering every year, whether they are asking for it in hope of getting approved, or just getting denied the initial request. Supporters are saying that the federal government should give NASA more money, whereas critics are saying that they should cut the budget more. With NASA constantly doing more and more missions, the debate could continue to rise, for whether NASA needs more money, or needs less to spend it better. If NASA’s budget was increased it could easily be more efficient to get more discoveries and getting missions that NASA is working on finished. Now if the budget was decreased more the federal government could spend more money on fixing Earth, and make a better environment. Would it be better to give NASA more money or cut their budget even more?