 At my last Stargazing party, I was going to make a vegetarian pizza, but it turns out that those guys like something... ...medier. The Martian is in theaters now. As the internet has noted, Hollywood has now spent millions upon millions of dollars retrieving Matt Damon from whatever trouble he's gotten into this time. I got goosebumps when I read it. Many people, including myself, feel a swell of rhapsody when thinking about space travel and exploration, only partially due to being raised on Star Trek. You might get warm fuzzy feelings when you see the Caba or the Grand Canyon, but when I watch a video of a shuttle launch, I get the distinct feeling that NASA should employ a staff organist. However, there are some who believe that NASA and space programs in general are needless expenditures of federal funding, that getting humans off of Earth is a waste of money for the purpose of spectacle, a highly technical fireworks show. The question is frequently raised in political discussions. How can we justify the less than half of 1% of the US discretionary budget that's spent on the space program? Now, you've probably already guessed which side of this particular debate I come down on, but to be fair, if we absolutely had to pick and choose between federal programs to spend money on, given a choice between building infrastructure and developing countries that will save thousands upon thousands of lives and seeing what kind of webs spiders weave in zero G, there is a compelling case to be made that there are more terrestrial problems that we should be spending money on. I'm not saying that NASA is the most important thing full stop. However, I also strongly believe that space exploration is something that is important and necessary that we should be doing. I think that there are good rational reasons for investing in a space program for any nation, maybe more than we currently are. Let's start by getting something out of the way. Space exploration is not important because of the incidental technological discoveries that happen along the way. Sometimes, when apologists are trying to provide tangible examples of the benefits of NASA, they'll talk about things like memory foam and scratch resistant lenses, inventions that were developed in response to the unique challenges of space travel. I mean, defense research initiatives have also developed a ton of cool tech, as have many more terrestrial research programs. It's not like space travel is unique in that regard. It's also not important because of the trillions of dollars in platinum and other precious metals that some entrepreneurs are hoping to coax out of asteroids. I mean, yes, that would be cool, but if that's the end goal, we're wasting a ton of money sending probes elsewhere. So, what defense can be offered for investment in space exploration? Why should we spend billions of dollars every year on testing and launches and building adorable plucky little rovers that are so brave? Let's start with something obvious, the science. The sheer mind-numbing volume of knowledge and information about the universe and how we fit into it has been exponentially expanded thanks solely to efforts of space exploration. A quick example, when we first sent astronauts to the moon, when they got back, instead of parading them through Times Square like heroes, we instead kept them in a tiny quarantine trailer for weeks. We did that for four Apollo missions before it was confirmed that there were no pathogens on the moon. In fact, no life at all. That seems stupid to us here in 2015. Of course, there's nothing alive on the moon. It's a vacuum and it's being constantly bombarded by solar radiation. But we honestly didn't know that until we went there and checked. The Apollo missions took us from uncomfortable uncertainty to common knowledge in just two years. Also, some experiments just need to be performed in a vacuum with no gravity. Like, did you know that flames become spheres in zero-G? We only know that sort of stuff which has tremendous theoretical and practical value because NASA's able to do experiments in space. There's another important practical benefit to the space program that people generally don't think of because it's only occasionally useful. In fact, the last time was 65 million years ago. Giant asteroids are not a rare thing by any measure. There are over 150 million of them, more than 100 meters across, in our solar system alone. It's a good thing there's so much space for them to zoom around in, but it only takes one. And I really do mean one. I like to think that human beings are adaptable and good at responding to crises in a pinch. But the rapid and global fallout from a decent-sized meteor strike would make Chernobyl the recent devastating Japanese tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina look like child's play. Several very smart people think that it's absolutely essential to get human beings colonizing other planets. Just in case some global catastrophe like a meteor strike makes life here near impossible. If you've ever heard of SpaceX, Elon Musk started that company solely to achieve that goal. Space travel is the only real insurance we have that if one of those 150 million asteroids crashed to Earth tomorrow and caused another global extinction event, some people might stay alive somewhere and keep humanity going. So it's good for our understanding of the universe, and it's our best defense against a global apocalypse of all human life. But there's something reverent about space travel for many people that isn't just about knowing stuff or avoiding extinction. Now, this next bit is a bit of a leap of intuition, but it is based on a decently established phenomenon. Let's talk about the overview effect. Many astronauts have reported that flying into orbit over Earth, seeing the entire planet spinning slowly beneath them, has caused a meaningful shift in how they think. Think about what? Well, everything. Themselves, their place on Earth, politics, nations, humanity, the fragility of the environment. According to several people who've been to space, from up there, your perspective of everything fundamentally shifts to be more global. That's actually not really hard for me to believe. Anecdotally, watching something like this for a long period of time makes me significantly less likely to argue over whose turn it is to do the dishes. But among the revelations carried by the overview effect, there's also a sentiment that humanity, every single person on this little floating rock in space, should be united in a common noble purpose. And from inside a gently leaking tin can in lower Earth orbit, it's not hard to imagine what that noble thing might be. Getting the best brains that humanity has together in one place to leave Earth, putting our most outstandingly disciplined individuals through years of training before putting them into giant machines that allow them to ride controlled explosions into the sky and explore beyond. Literally going where no one has gone before. Yeah, that could be worthy. I think that's at least partially the reason why many people who begin learning about the space program become such huge fans of it. It's this feedback loop of wanting to do something that's worthy of humanity's potential. And then every time we achieve it, realizing even more clearly how frivolous things like the new iPhone or Trump Tower really are by comparison. And it might be why space travel has this magnificence to it. It makes us forget about the petty crap and unifies us in looking out from our world with a common goal. Getting otherwise small, insignificant primates out among the stars. That's a pretty efficient generator for those warm and fuzzy feelings that make civilization and society possible. And it makes people pull together in a real and measurable way. Now, that in and of itself isn't unique. Religion does that too to some extent, as do community projects or international events like the Olympics. But space exploration is the only one among those that has the psychological power of the overview effect going for it. Watching Michael Phelps destroy world records is moving. But this? This is a map of every world record, every swim lesson, every drop of water that anyone will ever swim in. That's a few orders of magnitude beyond some gold medals. Also, while the space race was very divisive, since that point, space exploration, as with many other scientific disciplines, has tended to be pretty non-denominational with respect to any particular nation or demographic. I mean, when the ESA landed a probe on a comet, I was shouting victory at the top of my lungs in my office. I wasn't grumbling that NASA could have done it better. That sort of unifying perspective shift is significant and useful. It's definitely important enough to warrant a little bit of federal funding, and it's a hell of a lot better than an expensive fireworks show. Although, if you like spectacle, NASA's got you covered. What percentage of your taxes would you like to go to your space program? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to blah blah subscribe, blah share. And don't stop dunking.