Somya D. Virginia

Funding for Space Exploration - Denied!

Funding for space exploration should be reallocated to foreign aid and other domestic programs.

Dear Future President:

Have you heard the quote "Money doesn’t grow on trees"? This quote signifies that money is not something that you can find everywhere in the world. Some people live in poverty and others in luxury. If we ask ourselves, how much is the government spending on things that clearly will not benefit the people? You will be shocked by the answer. I am here to talk to you about space exploration, something I strongly disagree about. Hopefully, we can see eye-to-eye on a more strategic way to spend our money.  

According to NASA, the United States spends around 18.4 billon dollars on space exploration. If you think about it, that’s a lot of money! Not everyone is able to have that money and wasting it away is as useless as space exploration itself! This issue is important to me because I am Indian, and India has a lot of poverty. Without money, men and women are not able to pay for necessities in life. Such as food, water, and shelter. I want to government to take some of the $18.4 billion and help other countries in need. There is nothing wrong with creating alliances. This is not just important to me, but to everyone else in need of the 18.4 billion dollars.   

What would we gain from space exploration? So far I know two things about space. One, there are 8 planets in our solar system. Two, some guy stepped on the moon and made a cool quote. That’s it, I don’t think we're going to find any kind of life close to ours in a very, very long time. Our technology just isn't advanced enough. Even if we did have the technology, we have about 400 billion stars in the sky. It would take 150,000 YEARS to discover. If everyone lived to be about 75, it would take approximately 2,000 people's lifetime to discover all the stars. With all the other more important things in life, I highly doubt that people will be interested in space as we grow closer to the future. We would gain some knowledge about space, but with things going on down here on earth, is that really necessary?   

So Future President, here's is what I think you should do. Use the $18.4 billion dollars and spend it on something that will actually benefit us on down here on earth, instead of the so called "E.T" life. A school lunch costs around $2.18. The population of India is around 1,252,000,000 people. You could feed them easily with money to spare. Asia's population is roughly around 4,436,000,000. You could feed the ENTIRE population of India and Asia with $2,752,366,972 left to contribute to space exploration. And if it isn't enough, well we know more about the moon then we do about the ocean. Hopefully we can set a new path together as a country, a country with all of it's people happy.  

Sincerely,

Somya D.