This essay was submitted in response to our April 2018 Your Turn prompt.
Space exploration is something that needs to be prioritized correctly so we can focus on other matters. Space exploration should not be the world’s top priority.
First, we can get focused on foreign aid and prevention of diseases. Several countries are spending billions of dollars on building and launching rockets. Instead, that money could help children and adults that are homeless, deprived of food and water, and that have diseases or sicknesses. The money that we are using to build and launch rockets now can be used to get medicines and cures to prevent and heal sicknesses. There are so many people dying in the world at such a fast rate because we don’t spend the time, money, and effort to help them get better. There are so many nations in the world that are destroyed by natural disasters and by many other things, but they don’t have enough money to repair or renovate it. So, the United States should focus on foreign aid like stopping refugee crises and much more.
Secondly, we, as the citizens of the Earth, need to fix our world first before worrying about others. We are here polluting and trashing our Earth. People always say, “We need to stay green and everyone needs to take care of the Earth.” But right now, it doesn’t look like that’s happening. Before anyone starts to explore different galaxies or planets, fixing our planet should be our top priority. We must mend and settle the rivalries between national and political leaders and countries. Doing this will bring everyone great benefit because then we can accomplish things with far greater speed and quality. Therefore, we should repair the cracks in our world, then look to explore other ones.
Third, exploring Mars has its advantages, but exploring space later has more. Some advantages are that if we explore Mars or other planets in our galaxy, we are one big step closer to exploring new galaxies or even colonizing new planets. Colonizing Mars would benefit us in case something happened to the Earth. The Andromeda Galaxy is going to collide with the Milky Way Galaxy in about four billion years. So if we colonize Mars, we would have had the experience of colonizing a new planet so if we need to relocate again, it would be much easier. But we need to explore Mars to do that. There are only a few good reasons to do space explorations now instead of later, but the advantages of exploring space later completely outweigh the advantages of exploring Mars now instead.
If we prioritize exploring Mars first then taking care of other matters, this will not be effective and won’t have any benefit to us as people and the world. But taking those matters into our hands now will be of better value. Because of my three claims—we should be focused on foreign aid and prevention of diseases, we need to fix our world instead of worrying about others, and the advantages of not exploring space first outweigh the advantages of exploring Mars and space now—should show that this is the wisest option there is and we should use that option so it will be in the better for people, environment, and the world. Therefore, I believe we should focus on other matters first before exploring Mars or beyond.
Varun Mukund is a seventh grader from Texas.
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