Space Exploration - Essay Example

These are some of the flashy images that come to one's mind when thinking about space exploration. The government and NASA have conspired to brainwash the ordinary person with these images, with the aim of grossly exaggerating the budgetary allocations assigned to NASA in every financial year. The statement put across here is that success in space exploration can only be achieved through government funding by employing billions of dollars to fund NASA’s space exploration operations. This statement is a fraud that the government and NASA would have us believes to be the only strategy of achieving success in space exploration programs.

NASA would have us believe that extravagant expenditures are the only way of reaching an advanced technological breakthrough in space exploration. However, this is not true, because space technology can be easily equated to an expensive toy, which is flashy and exciting while new but irrelevant and outdated once it has outlived its uses when newer and more exciting toys hit the market shelves. Although government funding is necessary in space exploration, it does not necessarily mean that the funding has to be stretched to billions of dollars begotten from the public coughers.

Space exploration may be expensive, but this does not necessarily mean that NASA should ask for exorbitant finances from the government for their space operations. This is because expensive technology does not essentially translate to operation success, but rather a chance at innovation to develop simple, efficient, and cost friendly space technologies. NASA should not, therefore, employ the ‘sledgehammer’ approach to space technology, where they employ the sophisticated technology card to every challenge faced by the program.

Instead, the government should provide limited funding, which is centered upon responsible spending and efficiency of space exploration technology. This is because of the rising need to instill the practice of responsible spending on NASA to cut extravagant costs and ensure that the surplus is effectively utilized in the other sectors of the economy. Therefore, NASA’s illegitimate claim that success in space exploration can only be achieved through government funding by employing billions of dollars to fund its space exploration operations can be effortlessly disapproved.

There is thus no justification to the extravagant funding offered by the government to NASA for its space exploration plan. Once, Socrates, the Greek philosopher, was seen by some of his good friends seated by the market observing as people did their shopping. His friends, curious as to why he was just seated by the market entrance, inquired what he was doing since he did not seem to be shopping for goods. In reply to this inquisition, Socrates just answered that he was observing all the unnecessary commodities that people buy (The Spiritual Scientist, 2011, p.1). Similarly, not all the space journeying machinery is obligatory within the space exploration program.

Some of the technology employed in space exploration may be easily categorized as mere luxuries for NASA to continue with space exploration. Moreover, commentators recently dubbed NASA’s space program as being too pricey in the current monetary calamity rocking the economy (Freeman, 2011, p.62). This is evident in this year’s NASA fiscal budget, which proposed to use $19,450 billion as its annual budget (NASA, 2011, pp.1-22).