Are the Costs of Manned NASA Space Missions Worth It?

As a child growing up in the 80's, I grew up under the impression that our Space Program was far more advanced than it actually is, and that we could probably have a space station on the moon by this time and age. Unfortunately, as I found out while I was writing this opinion piece, NASA's budget is equal to about 1% of the Governments expenditures whereas the Defense Budget stands at roughly 25% of the US Budget (and 47% of the worlds).

Primarily, I support the idea of using manned missions into space for various reasons. For one, the opportunities involved in manned space missions far outweigh the gigantic overall costs that manned missions are responsible for. NASA's budget is also far too small for our country to spend time worrying about whether or not manned missions are too costly, and to be completely honest I think it is ridiculous to get rid of manned space missions because it would destroy many people's dreams.

Last but not least, I will cover the success rates of manned versus unmanned missions and talk about why manned is better as far as success rates go. The only upsides I can possible see in unmanned missions are that less people will die, and we will have more missions to fly.

The opportunities we have with manned space missions are so huge right now. As of now we can do research on what effect space has on food, people, and animals from Earth, and we can man a space station so that every thing doesn't have to go straight back to earth and we might have time to study the moon rocks and comet dust we happen to collect.

If we use robots, we have much higher maintenance costs than we would just using the decompression rooms I think people need to use when they come back from space. An additional positive when it comes to human flight is that private corporations are now offering people spaces on the shuttle for 20 million dollars and if that becomes popular with the upper classes, 16 people showing an interest and signing up could pay for the flight.

When you decide to have a space shuttle launch and send a crew into space, most people in the "know," understand that it will cost 750 million dollars for a manned space mission and that they also know that the aforementioned number is also a good 2 or 3 times the price of an unmanned mission. However, on unmanned missions, the robots/orbital landers are reduced to bare essentials so that while they may and usually do find significant data on its first try and impress the people down on Earth, the possibilities for follow up tests and second tries are nil.

Our robots are not yet intelligent enough to do follow up tests and do the extra research that is needed. If we have to spend the 750 million dollars to launch a crew of astronauts into space and get loads of follow up data, we should. If you compare that number to the 4.1 billion dollars it costs to just house our soldiers, the costs will stop mattering to you. NASA's budget is something like 1/25^th of the Defense Budget of our country and roughly 1% of the overall federal budget. A few million dollars in a multi trillion dollar budget is not going to make that much of a difference.

If manned flights are completely abandoned as some people fear they might be, then you are going to destroy hundreds of thousands of people's dreams and raise the unemployment rate. A lot of people choose to go to college and get a degree that can help them get into NASA or some other space program, and a lot of people spend their entire childhood dreaming about going into space and being like John Glenn or one of the twelve people who walked on the moon. Without astronauts, many movies would never have been made and thus, more jobs never would have existed.

Finally, manned missions are almost always more successful than unmanned missions. Manned Missions may cost more, but tripling the price of the mission by including human touch seems to increase the success rate of the mission by six fold. If I need to pay 3 times more to achieve a 90% success rate on a mission instead of a 15% success rate, than that makes all the sense in the world to me. Like I said earlier, NASA expenditures are like pocket change to the US Government anyways, and we can have a more successful yet expensive space program that promotes jobs and does not kill peoples dreams, then I have yet to find a reason not to continue the manned missions.

19 people have died during manned missions in the past 41 years. That is roughly 4% of the people who have flown in space. More people have died in this state during the time it has taken me to write this paper than died in a 41 year period of space flights. While human deaths are undoubtedly unfortunate, the 4% death rate here is far too low to pay much attention to. As I initially stated, manned space flight is well worth it and the reasons why are clearly stated in my above paragraphs. Why anyone would want to kill peoples dreams and destroy jobs in order to save some money is something I will never understand