Von Braun: Why send people into space?

Noting that the (then) recently completed manned mission around the moon yielded very little valuable information and cost a great deal of money—Werner von Braun wrote that space exploration is still worth it.

Why?

“To say at this time that man in space has made little contribution to scientific knowledge or to economic returns is like saying that an eight-year-old child has made no worthwhile contribution to humanity,” wrote von Braun.

I guess that was his way of trying to keep the dollars flowing: he suggested that the returns will come later. But I don’t think that this is a very sensible or honest answer. Decades later, we still can’t justify spaceflight based on economic returns. It’s costly and the monetary returns are questionable.

The real answer is this: financial returns is not the only reason for doing things.

We don’t have children based on financial returns. It costs a lot of money to raise them, and they often do not “pay off.” We don’t go out to dinner or to movies or amusement parks for financial returns. We just enjoy doing those things. Financially, they harm us.

The real reason to send people into space makes sense only if you have a sense of wonder, get a thrill from trying to accomplish difficult, untried things. If you are energized by discovery. In other words: if you are human.

Yeah, some humans—especially “bean counters”—will never understand the appeal of space travel. I pity them; they miss out on so much.