Economy

Many people are interested in the topic of Mars. But how many people ask themselves what this means for our economy? How much does it all cost? Should we invest the money in something else? You can read about answers to these and many other questions down here.

General

Why should we spend billions of dollars to explore space if we still have so many problems on Earth? Mark Rober, YouTuber and former NASA engineer, has uploaded a video discussing this question. The title is "Is NASA a waste of money?". He talks about the American budget, why NASA is improving life on Earth, with projects like SMAP. How NASA is sheltering our Earth, and about all the technologies, techniques, and discoveries we are making along the way is also addressed. The video is linked below.

Numbers

Let's talk about some numbers. Both NASA and SpaceX's missions cost a lot of money, but how much exactly? Let's take a look.

SpaceX

SpaceX's "Starship" project has its costs. From the beginning of December 2020 until the end of March 2021, the company has launched four prototypes. SpaceX spends about 2 million dollars per launch. That brings the total to 8 million dollars. Even if this figure seems very large at first, you have consider the following: Starship is not only needed for a mission to Mars. SpaceX has planned much more, like the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS). NASA also funded part of SpaceX's lunar landing platform. They supported them with almost 3 billion dollars.

Source: Wikipedia, "Starship HLS Moon landing"

NASA

NASA's project costs a lot more. It is estimated that it will cost about 28 billion US dollars. Again, this is an enormous figure. This budget is to fund the research and work of the Artemis program. For the years 2021-2023, the US government requested an increase of their budget by a total of 35 billion US dollars. However, after President Trump got voted out of office, only a quarter of the money was approved. Now a human landing on the moon by 2024 seems unlikely. You can learn more about the Artemis program here.

Source: Wikipedia, EricMuss-Barnes, "Own work based on the NASA", Gemeinfrei"

The most important of all these points is probably the following: People are discovering and exploring space with no guarantee that anything awaits us. This phenomenon could be compared to the discovery of Australia. Scientists assume that humans discovered Australia about 65000 years ago. To get there, they had to travel a long way, through waters, without consistent food sources, and possible dehydration. And they have taken all these risks without any knowing surely that something awaited them at the end. This has not changed in humans to this day. It seems that discovery is written into our DNA. And as Sarah Treadwell puts it, all it ultimately brings us is hope. Hope to achieve the impossible if we settle aside differences and work on what seems surmountable.

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