Why Is David Livingston's Is Space Exploration Worth The Cost?

Kaitlyn Vlahoulis

Mr. Rob Awesome Girard

AP Language & Composition

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Free-response 5 Revision: Considerations for Future Space Exploration Space is the final frontier, but many people ask what considerations we should act upon when claiming it. When Neil Armstrong first stepped on to the moon people around the world cheered in awe of the impossible. The Space Race had brought about a competition between the super powers of the world, Russia and the United States, in order to complete a political and scientific endeavor. However, in the rush of who could put a man on the moon first, between two fiercely democratic and communist nations, some issues were put aside to be dealt with after the initial infancy of space

Accordingly Livingston’s passage disproves Russell Roberts oral commentary “Funding Space Travel”, where he states, “as much as I like space and the idea of people on Mars, I don’t see the case for using taxpayer money to get it done… leave the money here on Earth” (Source H). Livingston emphasizes the point that the small amount of money allocated for space research and exploration, as demonstrated in Andrew Chamberlain’s “Pennies of Each Federal Spending Dollar” (Source C), is also being used to help the economy by indirectly warranting the need for more jobs directly related to the space program and those created by the city of Houston which has grown to accommodate the space industry and all of its’ employees. Through the small investment of money put into space, the return has benefitted “corporations and businesses both large and small” (Source A), not to mention the

She maintains that when we continue our space explorations we must keep the ethics of what we do to the Universe in mind or else we may destroy it, but the idea shouldn’t be what can we do to ruin space but rather what can we do to make it meaningful to us. When we reach the point of colonizing new planets, I think it is imperative to decide how we will use our resources to be productive, while conscious of our effect on the environment we choose to make our new home. We cannot as a society move forward into the exploration of space if we are too hesitant to disturb the undiscovered or possibly, but unlikely, nonexistent forms of life on other cosmic bodies, as demonstrated in Richard Greenberg’s fear of “Infecting Other Worlds” (Source F). Instead humans and the invasive species we are responsible for must learn to adjust and be accountable if a nonthreatening life form is discovered in our