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80% of our oceans are not explored so should we continue spending our valuable resources on space exploration? We should not spend our valuable resources on space exploration because we need to explore Earth more, We need to fix the planets issues like pollution, and we need to explore our seas more.

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We should not spend our valuable resources on space exploration because we need to explore Earth more, We need to fix the planets issues like pollution, and we need to explore our seas more.

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We need to fix pollution because.......

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Shouldn't We Fix the Earth First? So Many Problems Here, Why Go To Space?

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Scientists have successfully photographed a black hole, landed rovers on Mars, and sent spacecraft to the dark side of the moon. Yet, one of the last unknown frontiers - and one of the most deceptively familiar - is on our very own planet.

More than 80% of the ocean remains unexplored. And because it's difficult to protect what we don't know, only about 7% of the world's oceans are designated as marine protected areas (MPAs).

With this in mind, we explain why a body of water that covers most of Earth's surface is also one of the most vulnerable - and least understood - places in the universe.
Under pressure
One of the biggest challenges of ocean exploration comes down to physics. Dr. Gene Carl Feldman, an oceanographer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, explains that the ocean, at great depths, is characterized by zero visibility, extremely cold temperatures, and crushing amounts of pressure.

"In some ways, it's a lot easier to send people into space than it is to send people to the bottom of the ocean," Feldman told Oceana. "The intense pressures in the deep ocean make it an extremely difficult environment to explore."

Although you don't notice it, the pressure of the air pushing down on your body at sea level is about 15 pounds per square inch. If you went up into space, above the Earth's atmosphere, the pressure would decrease to zero. However, if you went diving or hitched a ride in an underwater vehicle, those forces would start to stack up the further down you went.

"On a dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, which is nearly 7 miles deep, you're talking about over 1,000 times more pressure than at the surface," Feldman said. "That's the equivalent of the weight of 50 jumbo jets pressing on your body."

Of course, human-occupied submersibles aren't the only way to explore and study the ocean. We can even learn some lessons from space. Feldman specializes in satellite technologies that record the color of the ocean as a means of measuring the distribution and abundance of phytoplankton, which can change rapidly and even double in a day.

When these technologies were first used in the late '70s, satellites were able to capture detailed images of the ocean within minutes, while it would take a ship 10 years of continuous sampling to collect the same number of measurements, according to Feldman.

With that said, some things are better measured in the water - however difficult it may be to get there.
'Bearing witness'
Ocean exploration technologies have come a long way. Floats and drifters, devices that rely on ocean currents to carry them while they collect data, have been complemented in recent years by an ever-sophisticated fleet of underwater vehicles. This can include human-occupied vehicles (HOVs), remotely-operated ones (ROVs), and autonomous and hybrid ones.

In a recent webinar hosted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, film director and ocean enthusiast James Cameron called for an "all-of-the-above" approach, but also highlighted the value of continuing to plunge people into the great unknown. In 2012, Cameron set a record when he visited the Mariana Trench - the deepest part of the ocean - in a "vertical torpedo" sub.

"I call it bearing witness," Cameron said. "There's something very exciting about being physically present and using all of your senses. Plus, you can come back and tell the story, and that engages an audience. The most important aspect of exploration, in my mind, is coming back and telling the tale."

Oceana uses a combination of technologies on its expeditions, which have charted previously unexplored waters, including areas off of Southern California, several seamounts in the Canary Islands, and a deep trench south of Malta. Another seamount near Morocco, which was also previously unexplored, led to the discovery of a deep-sea coral reef - the only one of its kind that is still growing in the Mediterranean Sea.

In Europe's biodiversity hotspots, expeditions resulted in the first-ever record of a live brown-snout spookfish, as well as the documentation of two starfish species, one black coral, and one stony coral that were previously thought to only live in the Atlantic Ocean.

And in Chile, following Oceana expeditions which recorded the rich and unique marine life in the Desventuradas and Juan Fernández islands, the government was persuaded to make those places marine parks. A multiple-use MPA was also established in the Caleta Tortel commune following multiple Oceana expeditions.

While the benefits are undeniable, expeditions are expensive, and the lack of detailed maps and data make them all the more challenging.

Ricardo Aguilar, the leader of Oceana's expeditions in Europe, said they can't bank on bathymetric information - which can serve as a guide to an area's underwater terrain - because in most cases it doesn't exist.

"We only have good information on less than 5% of the world's oceans, and maybe sparse information on another 10%," Aguilar said. "Therefore, how can we protect areas where we have no clue what is there?"

Herein lies the catch-22: We need exploration to collect more information, but many agencies around the world are reluctant to fund projects where there are too many unknowns.

"There seems to be an increasing trend towards avoiding risk at all costs, which means that you often have to prove that you know all the answers before you can even start your investigation," Feldman said. "But this is the wrong approach. Science is not only about having the answers. Science is really about asking the questions."
Evidence, not excuses
Oceana has protected nearly 4 million square miles of ocean to date, and expeditions have been crucial to this success. Expeditions yield photographs, video footage, scientific data, and narratives that can all be used to bolster the case for new or expanded protections.

"By exploring previously unexplored areas, we have been able to discover new species and new habitats, but also to identify vulnerable habitats or threatened species that were protected 'on paper,' but because nobody knew they could be found in these places, there were no measures to effectively protect them," Aguilar said.

"One of the most common excuses governments have used for not taking action is the lack of information to choose which areas to protect and how to manage them. Also, the opposition of different stakeholders to creating new MPAs was due to this lack of data."

Oceana endorses plans to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030, a goal known as 30×30. While the world still has a long way to go, continued ocean exploration can supply the evidence needed to protect the ocean and the many resources it provides.

Even though data is useful, Feldman says a compelling case for MPAs can still be made when the reverse is true. Because scientists do not have a complete understanding of how one change to the ocean affects the entire ecosystem - and which of those changes may be the tipping point that causes collapse - it is common sense that areas should be designated for protection and further research.

"Since we don't know how all the pieces fit together, setting aside areas where we just say, 'We're leaving these alone' or 'We're going to have minimal intervention' is perhaps the safest thing to do until we know better," Feldman said. "The idea of setting aside areas that are environmentally important and unique is probably a really smart move until we can get smarter about how we manage the ocean."

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Why does so much of the ocean remain unexplored and unprotected?

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Scientists have successfully photographed a black hole, landed rovers on Mars, and sent spacecraft to the dark side of the moon. Yet, one of the last unknown frontiers - and one of the most deceptively familiar - is on our very own planet. More than 80% of the ocean remains unexplored.

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Plastic is slowly killing the world, we need to solve this before going into space.

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Every minute, the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic is dumped into the ocean.

This marine litter and plastic pollution endangers aquatic life, threatens human health and results in myriad hidden costs for the economy. Such a global threat requires a global response, and the upcoming United Nations Environment Assembly ( UNEA 5.2) is an important stage for governments and policymakers to catalyse change.

At the resumed fifth session of UNEA - held virtually and in-person in Nairobi between 28 February and 2 March 2022 - world leaders will focus on plastics and deliberate on proposals with the aim of establishing an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to work towards a legally binding global agreement.

Marine litter and plastic pollution can alter habitats and natural processes, reducing ecosystems' ability to adapt to the climate crisis, according to UNEP's From Pollution to Solution report. This affects millions of people's livelihoods, food security and social well-being. Urgent, multilateral action is needed to identify where plastic waste enters waterways and how to

To optimize policy changes to plastic production and use, it is important to identify how plastic pollution makes its way into the sea. Of the estimated, 11 million tons of plastic pollution that enter the ocean every year, up 2.7 million tons come from rivers. UNEP leads two key initiatives to study and address these inputs.

In North America, through the Mississippi River Plastic Pollution Initiative, UNEP engages citizen science by working with thousands of community volunteers to track upstream and coastal plastic pollution data along the Mississippi River. This data is collected using a free, open-source mobile app called the Marine Debris Tracker.

In South-East Asia, UNEP's CounterMEASURE project identifies sources and pathways of plastic pollution in river systems, particularly the Mekong and the Ganges. With the use of technologies and innovative approaches like GIS, machine learning and drones, the project has developed plastic leakage models for localities in six countries that can be scaled and replicated across continents.

An exhibit at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi explores the toll of plastic pollution on the world's ocean. Photo: UNEP / Ahmed Nayim Yussuf

To highlight the scale of the issue, UNEP has prepared a plastics exhibit in Nairobi for UNEA 5.2. The exhibit presents visitors with a visual representation of key data related to the plastic pollution problem by using plastic waste collected on the Kenyan coast.

One installation uses lobster traps that were abandoned and lost. These traps are one metre wide and have been filled with 50 kg of plastic litter each. This represents the amount of plastic per metre of coastline that enters the ocean every year.

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Why we need to fix the plastic pollution problem

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UNEP's work on the threat of plastic pollution provides an important foundation for UNEA-5.

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In conclusion, when we spend our valuable resources and money on space travel instead of fixing our planet and its issues we slip into a hole. We have 5.25 trillion macro and micro pieces of plastic in our ocean 60% of plastic ends up in landfills for innocent birds and creatures to consume. Meanwhile we are trying to go to space and find life or inhabitable planets so on and so forth.  Our oceans have barley been explored, what if we find something new and special like a different species, or maybe a new mineral or plant. That is why we need to spend our valuable resources and money on our planet before we take it to space.

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At the time of the moon landing in 1969, many people envisioned that by the beginning of the 21st century, space travel would become routine, and we would be visiting other planets in our solar system and perhaps even daring to venture into interstellar space.

That future didn't arrive as planned. In fact, humans haven't made it any deeper into space than when we landed the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s, though we have operated a manned orbital outpost, the International Space Station, which has been continuously occupied for more than two decades [source: Howell]. NASA currently is planning to resume human missions to the moon in the mid-to-late 2020s, as a prelude to astronauts eventually traveling to Mars [source: Dvorsky].

We've also seen the rise of private space entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, who has described his dream of building a rocket capable of reaching Mars and supporting a permanent human settlement there [source: Torchinsky]. And other countries are looking to reach Mars as well. China, for example, aims to send its astronauts to the Red Planet by 2033 [source: Kharpal].

But those who've long dreamed of humans becoming a truly spacefaring race argue that exploring space provides down-to-earth benefits in areas such as health, mining and security. And more inspirational benefits, too. Here are some of the most compelling arguments for continuing the exploration of space.

If we don't want to go the way of the dinosaurs someday, we need to protect ourselves against the threat of being hit by a big asteroid. According to NASA, typically about once every 10,000 years, a rocky or iron asteroid the size of a football field could smash into our planet's surface and possibly cause tidal waves big enough to inundate coastal areas.

But it's the real monsters - asteroids about 328 feet (100 meters) across or bigger - that we really have to fear. Such a collision would unleash a firestorm of heated debris and fill the atmosphere with sun-blocking dust, which would wipe out forests and farm fields and starve the human and animal life that it didn't immediately kill [sources: NASA, NSS].

That's why it's vital to develop a way to neutralize such a threat to Earth. NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, set for launch in late September 2022, will be the first mission to demonstrate a technology called asteroid deflection by kinetic impactor. A robotic spacecraft will be crashed into the binary asteroid system Didymos, in an effort to show that it's possible to slightly alter the path of an asteroid. That would enable NASA to redirect potential threats to miss Earth [sources: DART, Mann].

A very long list of gadgets, materials and processes originally were developed for the U.S. space program but found other applications back on Earth - so many that NASA has an office that looks for ways to repurpose space technology as products. We all know about freeze-dried food, but there are plenty of others. In the 1960s, for example, NASA scientists developed a plastic coated with a metallic reflecting agent. When used in a blanket, it reflects about 80 percent of a user's body heat back to him or her - an ability that helps accident victims and post-marathon runners to stay warm.

Another more obscure but valuable innovation is nitinol, a flexible but resilient alloy that was developed to enable satellites to spring open after being folded into a rocket. Today, orthodontists equip patients with braces made from the material [source: Independent].

According to NASA, other inventions spawned by the space program include CAT scans, LED lights, memory foam, freeze-dried food, shock absorbing materials used in artificial limbs, the computer mouse and portable computers, and a key nutritional ingredient in baby formula [source: JPL].

Earlier, we mentioned the ominous notion of international conflict in space. But it doesn't have to be that way, as evidenced by the cooperation of multiple nations on the International Space Station. And a U.S. space program could allow other countries, large and small, to join in their exploration efforts.

A 2018 paper from NASA points out the benefits of international cooperation. For one, the hefty costs could be spread around. For another, it could forge stronger diplomatic ties between nations such as the U.S. and India, and help create new jobs in both countries, for example.

In 2020, NASA awarded the first contracts to four companies to collect small amounts of lunar regolith, the loose rock and dust that sits atop the surface, when missions to the moon eventually resume in the 2020s. It could be the first step toward mining of raw materials from the moon. "Space resources are the fuel that will propel America and all of humanity to the stars," Mike Gold, NASA's then-acting administrator for international and interagency relations, explained at the time [source: NASA].

Our primitive ancestors spread from east Africa to all over the planet, and since then, we've never stopped moving. We're running out of fresh territory on Earth, so the only way to meet this ancient urge is to find somewhere new to go - whether it's making brief jaunts to the moon as a tourist, or signing up for an interstellar voyage that will take multiple generations.

In a speech, to the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, former NASA administrator Michael Griffin differentiated between "acceptable reasons" and "real reasons" for space exploration. Acceptable reasons would be issues like economic benefit and national security. But real reasons include concepts like curiosity, competitiveness and monument-building.

"Who among us does not know the wonder and mystery and awe and magic of seeing something, even on television, never seen before, an experience brought back to us by a robotic space mission?" Griffin added that "when we do things for real reasons as opposed to acceptable reasons, we produce our highest achievements."

Why Space Exploration Matters FAQs

Why is space exploration important?

Humans have always been curious to find hidden mysteries of the universe that lie far beyond our Earth. How was Earth formed? Is there life outside planet Earth? How big is the universe? All these and many more questions are still unanswered and we will only find their answers by exploring space. Addressing these challenges helps humans develop new technologies, make new innovations and reconstruct scientific expedition to a whole new level.

What are the cons of space exploration?

One of the major cons of space exploration is exposure to harmful radiation. While in space, astronauts are prone to experience galactic cosmic radiations that are 10 times more dangerous than radiation on Earth. Cost is another significant negative to exploring space. NASA's 2021 fiscal year budget is $23.3 billion. Space exploration also creates a ton of space junk.

How has space exploration benefited health and medicine?

Space exploration and NASA specifically has can claim credit for a several medical innovations, including ear thermometers, automatic insulin pumps, implantable heart defibrillators and improvements in digital mammography technology. Other innovations include laser angioplasty, voice-controlled wheelchairs and programmable pacemakers.

How is space exploration important for national security?

Even if the U.S. privatizes much of space exploration, it still wants to ensure that companies can mine the moon or asteroids without worrying that interlopers will usurp their claims or steal their production. That's why it's crucial to back up diplomacy with a NASA spacefaring capacity that could be converted to military use, if needed.

What resources can we get from space?

Space is believed to hide valuable substances such as gold, platinum and silver. It's only with space exploration that humans can amass these valuable raw materials. For example, the moon contains lucrative sources of a rare gas helium-3, which costs around $5,000 per liter.

Author's Note: 10 Reasons Why Space Exploration Matters to You

I was a child in the 1960s, a time when many of us believed that someday we would be flying off into the cosmos in search of adventure. I can't say precisely when that dream ended for me, but I remember that back in the mid-1990s, the British folk singer Billy Bragg recorded a song that seemed to capture some of what I felt. In "The Space Race is Over," Bragg sang of staring at the moon as a child, and dreaming that night of walking on the Sea of Tranquility.

But decades later, he stood staring at the same sky with his young son, who asked him, "Why did they ever go?" As Bragg lamented, "The space race is over, and I can't help but feel that we're all just going nowhere." Despite the beauty of his lyrics, I must differ with him respectfully on that last point. I continue to believe that humanity still has a chance to become a truly spacefaring race, and that we must find a way to do so.

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10 Reasons Why Space Exploration Matters to You

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Yes, we have some amazing inventions thanks to space exploration, and we're curious about life on other planets. But the cosmos also touches a deeper part of our psyches. Here are 10 reasons space exploration matters to you.