Why Space Matters

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Look, I am not going to disagree with people who say billionaires need to give up more of their money to help others.

But Branson’s trip to space has led to a resurgence of the “Stop all this space stuff until every problem on Earth is fixed” movement. (Which, of course, ignores…or perhaps not…the fact that every problem on Earth will never be fixed. Sorry, but we’ve had problems since we were still arboreal).

So I’m going to talk about why it is important that we don’t “Stop all this space stuff.” About why space matters, and why we can put up with a few billionaire stunts (note that both SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are supporting science) to get the benefits.

Forecasting Space Weather

I’m putting this at the top because it’s one of the most important reasons we need space. The Carrington Event in 1859 set telegraph lines on fire, caused the sky to turn red, and created auroras people could read by halfway to the tropics.

If such an event happened today, it would take out the GPS system, slow the internet to a crawl, and cause cascading power grid failures that could last for months.

With our current technology, there is precisely one way to keep a massive storm from doing that.