During the 20th century, space travel was seen as the future of aviation, with many countries investing huge amounts of money to travel into space. However, those same countries have reduced their budgets for space significantly over the last 15 years. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of space travel.

The subject of space travel is a divisive topic in and of itself. This is a complex issue and one that has a variety of benefits and drawbacks. Yet, when one specifically highlights how much these programs cost, this issue becomes even more problematic. This essay will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of space travel. It will explicitly focus on how benefits such as how space exploration creates a lot of practical technologies suitable for earth, while illustrate drawbacks including the massive budgets these programs need to operate.

As research and development becomes even more expensive and time consuming for private corporations to take on, public entities must be able to increase their R & D budgets to continue advancing societies technological abilities. One of the programs most suitable for this endeavor is the space agencies around the world. By pursuing their inherit goals of space exploration, many projects within these organizations produce technologies previously unimaginable. These new devices or mechanisms are often distributed to the wider market and then private companies utilize this public knowledge for the advancement of everyday living.

On the other hand, the devolvement of these space programs is an immense budget constraint. The hiring of engineers, product testing, and materials is very expensive, and in a time with many governments short on cash, administrators see better uses for this money. In addition, many see public funding for these goods and services unfair if private companies are able to seize those technologies and use them for private gains.

With all things considered, the main reward for continuing to fund space exploration programs is to improve the technologies in everyday use, while at the same time, is plagued with the negative aspects of being inherently unfair and very expensive for the public to fund. It is imperative that both of these talking points are including in any discussion surrounding the idea of space exploration in future societal deliberations.