{"id":522434,"date":"2026-04-10T00:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T00:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522434\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T00:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T00:51:08","slug":"is-space-exploration-worth-the-money-and-effort-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522434\/","title":{"rendered":"Is space exploration worth the money and effort? | Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zoe Williams speaks for many of us when she notes that the US space mission is pointless (Let\u2019s stop going into space. There\u2019s nothing to see and no one to talk to, 7 April<\/a>). Unfortunately, it is worse than that. With a $100bn budget, the Artemis programme represents a truly spectacular misdirection of human creativity and resources.<\/p>\n

The UN World Food Programme, before it was cut back by Donald Trump\u2019s massive reductions to USAID, was $10bn a year. This global programme, which benefits over 150 million people annually in more than 120 countries, could be fully funded for 10\u00a0years by the cost of the pointless Artemis programme alone. It is not a difficult choice to identify which of these two investments would deliver the most social, environmental and security benefits to the modern world.
Robin Hambleton
Emeritus professor of city leadership, University of the\u00a0West\u00a0of\u00a0England<\/p>\n

I wholeheartedly agree with Zoe Williams\u2019s article. I would go a step further and suggest that some standard parenting should be applied to this frivolous activity. No one should be allowed to go to space until the human race has stopped killing each other and destroying the planet that we inhabit.<\/p>\n

In the 40-odd years that have passed, no one has surpassed Eric Idle\u2019s assessment<\/a>: \u201cPray that there\u2019s intelligent life somewhere up in space \/ Cause there\u2019s bugger all down here on Earth.\u201d
Gabriella Herrick
Bath<\/p>\n

Does Zoe Williams not understand that if humanity is to survive after the Earth becomes uninhabitable as our sun begins to expand, we have to live on other planets and eventually other solar systems? Going to the moon was once called a \u201cgiant leap for mankind\u201d. In reality, what we are doing in space exploration right now are very tiny baby steps for our species.<\/p>\n

If we don\u2019t end up wiping ourselves out in another global war or we fail to control our climate, then our very, very, very future selves will thank their existence to what we are doing right now. At a time when things look so bleak because idiotic autocrats and religious bigots seem to be taking us to a very dark future, let\u2019s\u00a0celebrate the shining light of\u00a0hope that space exploration brings to humanity.
Peter Watts
Rhyl, Denbighshire<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very brave of Zoe Williams to voice her thoughts so clearly about what a waste of money, energy and effort the space race is. As to the question \u201cWhere is everybody?\u201d, I\u2019ve always thought that if there are other forms of life sharing this multiverse, they probably have a much higher standard of what intelligence is than we have. A read of the Guardian on any day shows the\u00a0level of intelligence reached\u00a0by\u00a0us humans.
Ian Hogg
North Leigh, Oxfordshire<\/p>\n

Saying that there are no aliens in the universe because we haven\u2019t seen them is like scooping one cup of water out of the ocean, finding no fish and declaring the entire ocean is void of life. The observable universe has approximately a septillion stars in at least 200bn galaxies. The closest star to our sun is more than 40tn km away. Even with advanced space technology travelling at 20,000 miles an hour, it would take over 33,000 years to reach it.
Michael Fuller
Ampthill, Bedfordshire <\/p>\n

Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please email<\/a> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zoe Williams speaks for many of us when she notes that the US space mission is pointless (Let\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-522434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}