Writing Feedback / Space exploration costs tax payers an exorbitant amount of money each year. -Ielts Task 2 Essay [4]

Is It Worth It? the Costs and Benefits of Space Exploration

Space exploration costs tax payers an exorbitant amount of money each year. What are the advantages and disadvantage of spending money on space exploration?

There is a huge investment carried out by the government to support space exploration and a large part of it is charged from people in the form of tax. This essay will highlight the benefits and drawbacks that have resulted from this investment.

Looking firstly at the positives, a crucial advantage that investment in space exploration provides is the ability to forecast natural disasters. This is because the satellites that are placed around the earth's atmosphere can monitor the changes going around by detecting any anomalies and passing the information to the connected systems back on the earth. This allows the authorities to prepare better contingency plans which can, in turn, save many lives in the event of any calamity. Besides this, the data collected by space expeditions are extremely helpful in scientific studies. For instance, a recent study by Harvard University stated that how the metrics sent by one of the satellites has helped to discover the impact of gravitational waves on the planet.

However, the investment done on space expeditions does present some disadvantages, the most obvious of which is the infrastructure cost. Although the exploration of space is useful for research work, it requires a large amount of money to manufacture a spacecraft and carry out the operation. Furthermore, many times the launch of spacecraft fails thus resulting in the waste of the money which could have been better spent in other areas to improve people's life. Another significant disadvantage is the loss of human life which sometimes happens when these expeditions fail. For instance, in 2003 all the astronauts who were returning back from moon died due to the malfunctioning of the spacecraft's equipment.

In conclusion, the space explorations are beneficial in terms of forecasting natural calamities and providing breakthroughs in scientific research, it is important to consider the infrastructure cost which they add on and the unlikely events of failure of a spacecraft and its concomitant death of astronauts.