Criticism of space exploration
Human space exploration has been criticized on several grounds. Opponents point to the substantial financial costs, suggesting that funds allocated for space exploration could be better spent addressing urgent issues on Earth, such as poverty, healthcare, education, and environmental degradation. Critics express concerns about risks to human life, environmental impacts like potential contamination of celestial bodies, and the possibility of militarizing space, which could exacerbate geopolitical tensions. These critiques reflect ongoing debates over resource allocation, technological priorities, and the responsibilities of humanity both on Earth and in outer space.
History
Apollo missions
In 1963, years before the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing, German-American critical theorist Hannah Arendt argued:Throughout the 1960s, Students for a Democratic Society organized anti-NASA protests on college campuses. Sit-ins occurred at Columbia University's Pupin Physics Laboratories and MIT's Instrumentation Laboratory, as both conducted NASA research which was implemented by the United States military in Vietnam. In July 1969, civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy organized a protest at Cape Canaveral to oppose the "inhuman priority" of space exploration over tackling poverty and racism. When addressing a white suburban audience filled with space and electronic experts, Unitarian Church Rev. David Eaton, said that "he $23 billion we've spent going to the Moon has stolen money the black man needs for job retraining and schools."
Contemporary arguments
Climate change
Amitai Etzioni wrote in 2018 that space colonization "brings with it an unavoidable subtext of despair", distracting from efforts to halt anthropogenic climate change, arguing that "any serious Mars endeavor will inevitably cut into the drive to save Mother Earth". Some studies suggest that the projected increase in space travel will damage the ozone layer. A single rocket launch produces 300 tonnes of carbon dioxide, staying longer in the upper atmosphere than emissions caused by airplanes or jets. Thomas Fink, however, argues the long-term benefits of space science offset the ecological risks.Wastefulness
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. condemned space exploration, labeling it as wasteful. In the lead up to the Apollo program, Congressmen voiced doubts about the costliness of the missions. In 1977, Governor of California Jerry Brown was criticized for prioritizing space programs over addressing social issues.Political
Alexis C. Madrigal, writing in the Los Angeles Sentinel in 2012, said thatHaris Durrani, writing in The Nation, argued in 2019 that "paceflight almost invariably involves activities that directly subjugate marginalized peoples". Mark R. Royce, writing for Providence magazine, argued in 2020 that rather than being a non-partisan, inoffensive, and humanistic endeavor, space exploration is "largely irrational, originating at the intersection of the early Cold War arms race, the mass hysteria of the Red Scare, and the utopian worship of technical progress that characterized the mid-twentieth century." Gabrielle Cornish argued in 2019 that the moon landing was "at its core, a territorial conquest" in the context of the Cold War.