Recently, what factors should be considered when governments and individuals decide to start
space explorations has become a problem. From my perspective, people should start space
explorations: the most important factors are the costs of space explorations and internal
international responsibilities for different countries as global citizens.
Mr. Roberts brings an invalid point in terms of the proportion of the costs in “using taxpayers’
money to fund space traveling.” (Source H), arguing that funding space explorations create
unnecessary costs, and, thus, tax burdens on citizens. However, this is not the case. According to
the Tax Foundation (Source C), it only costs “less than 0.06 pennies” of everyone penny of each
federal dollar spent on various programs, which means the cost of space explorations is only a
tiny part of the cost distributions of federal dollars. Since the “all others” part contains many
other distributions such as administration of justice, international affairs, and energy, the sole
costs of space explorations to citizens themselves are trivialized. In addition, since paying taxes
is the fundamental duty every citizen has to practice, it is unreasonable and useless to question
how governments would use the federal income. This is because the governmental policy won’t
be changed if citizens have complaints about it; Instead, suggesting a better way to spend federal
income through legal institutions may be a more effective way.
The reason Mr. Collins views many countries, to a smaller extent, “the political leaders”, as
irresponsible, is that they only consider “national interests” rather than “global interests” when
they are making decisions (Source G). This is true due to the ongoing polarization of political
ideology and radicalizations of nationalism indeed narrow down the global corporations and
pursuit of commonwealth among countries. However, starting space travel would accelerate
international interactions and collaborations (Source A) since many countries have common
goals——having space in space explorations and constructing better lives for global citizens.
Compared to ongoing global conflicts on the Earth, which are inevitable due to limited resources,
people could live together in the space, solving problems and improve their lives since there will
be no boundaries living in the space.