An endeavour that has always been heavy on taxpayers’ pockets is that of exploring space. This essay will analyse both its benefits and drawbacks.

To begin with the positives, it has caused rapid advancement in telecom technology and the internet. The primary purpose of most countries’ space efforts has been satellite launches into space. This is because satellites are intricately linked with the way our mobile phones and the web works. As a result, the world has seen a huge surge in the use of these two media in the past two decades. Besides this, space exploration also helps to track asteroids. As a planet, Earth is always at the risk of being hit by a stray rock which has the capacity to wipe out the entire human race, as it happened with the Dinosaurs millions of years ago. Thus, always keeping an eye out for such objects helps us to take precautionary measures and that is only possible through space exploration.

Nevertheless, such an approach also causes some problems. These ventures are extremely expensive and consume massive amounts of resources. For instance, Nasa’s budget for the year 2019 was approximately 30 billion dollars. If this amount was funneled properly, it could eliminate two thirds of world hunger. Another significant disadvantage is the amount of space debris caused by spaceships. As if polluting the world was not enough, humans have now started polluting space. At last estimate, there are some 70,000 pieces of debris flowing around Earth’s surface. These include astronauts’ excreta, coolants, various pieces from crashed satellites and many more.

In conclusion, although space exploration is beneficial when it comes to furthering telecommunication advancement and tracking asteroid movement, it is important to consider that it is an expensive branch of science and arguably not the cleanest too.