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Did you know that the budget for NASA is 22.6 billion dollars? If we didn't spend so much money on space exploration we would still have over seventy percent of the world's oceans unexplored, we would be putting less money into space exploration and more into ending poverty, and we need to protect endangered species rather than explore the planets that, as far as we know, can't sustain life at all.

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If we didn't spend so much money on space exploration we would still have over seventy percent of the world's oceans unexplored, we would be putting less money into space exploration and more into ending poverty, and we need to protect endangered species rather than explore the planets that, as far as we know, can't sustain life at all.

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What is the point of exploring space, a place we can't live in, when our oceans are eighty percent unexplored? If we can't take care of our own planet, the 70 percent of it that's water, then why should we start exploring new ones?

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Much remains to be learned from exploring the mysteries of the deep. From mapping and describing the physical, biological, geological, chemical, and archaeological aspects of the ocean to understanding ocean dynamics, developing new technologies, and unlocking other secrets of the ocean, NOAA is working to increase our understanding of the ocean realm.

The ocean is the lifeblood of Earth, covering more than 70 percent of the planet's surface, driving weather, regulating temperature, and ultimately supporting all living organisms. Throughout history, the ocean has been a vital source of sustenance, transport, commerce, growth, and inspiration.

Yet for all of our reliance on the ocean, more than eighty percent of this vast, underwater realm remains unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored.

Given the high degree of difficulty and cost in exploring our ocean using underwater vehicles, researchers have long relied on technologies such as sonar to generate maps of the seafloor. Currently, less than ten percent of the global ocean is mapped using modern sonar technology. For the ocean and coastal waters of the United States, only about 35 percent has been mapped with modern methods.

NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research is leading efforts to explore the ocean by supporting expeditions to investigate and document its unknown and little known regions. These expeditions are led by scientist-explorers equipped with the latest exploration tools.

Meanwhile, NOAA's Office of Coast Survey explores the ocean in a different way, employing hydrographic surveys to generate nautical charts. Since the mid-1830s, the U.S. Coast Survey (a NOAA predecessor agency) has been the nation's nautical chartmaker. Today, Coast Survey is still responsible for creating and maintaining all charts of U.S. coastal waters, the Great Lakes, and waters surrounding U.S. territories.

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Sonar, short for Sound Navigation and Ranging, is helpful for exploring and mapping the ocean because sound waves travel farther in the water than do radar and light waves. NOAA scientists primarily use sonar to develop nautical charts, locate underwater hazards to navigation, search for and map objects on the seafloor such as shipwrecks, and map the seafloor itself. There are two types of sonar-active and passive.

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national oceanic and atmospheric administration

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The ocean is the lifeblood of Earth, covering more than 70 percent of the planet's surface, driving weather, regulating temperature, and ultimately supporting all living organisms. Throughout history, the ocean has been a vital source of sustenance, transport, commerce, growth, and inspiration.

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There's no point in going off our planet if we're just going to ignore all the people suffering in poverty. The budget on space exploration is incredibly high, despite people who live on Earth with us living in poverty. There are around 1.8 billion people on Earth living on less than 3.20 per day. A lot of people live in poverty because

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We pollute our oceans despite them making up 70% of Earth.
We pollute the air we breathe even though we need it, and instead of trying to fix it, we're spending even more resources on space travel. Pollution can be stopped, but many people don't want to stop what they're doing. Stopping pollution is important because

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Learn About Pollution Prevention | US EPA

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Pollution prevention is reducing or eliminating waste at the source by modifying production, the use of less-toxic substances, better conservation techniques, and re-use of materials.

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Many people say that without space travel, there wouldn't be important things like gps, accurate weather predictions, and the like, and I agree, to a point. Yes, those technologies are useful, but that should be what space travel is primarily. If space travel were mainly about furthering our technology with useful things like gps, then it would be a good use of money. However, since the purpose of space travel is mainly exploration, it is wasted money. What's the point of exploring unlivable areas when we should be exploring where we live already?

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In conclusion, we shouldn't spend valuable resources like oil, gas, and money on space exploration because we need to take care of ourselves and the Earth first. We pollute the oceans and continue on looking around space like it's gonna solve our problems despite the fact that, so far, the only planet that we know can sustain life is our own. We need to take care of Earth and the people in it since, as of 2021, approximately 1.8 billion people live in poverty with wages under 3.20 a day. We should not be spending our resources, resources we got from Earth, on exploring space when we need to take care of Earth and the plants and animals that live on it.