Introduction to WP4

                Have you ever witnessed a tragic car accident; one where cars are flying in all sorts of directions without any regard for human life and jeopardizing the very life that we live? Well, if you have seen an accident of this magnitude and stuck around until the fire department got there moments later, you might have seen then use a wonderful and life-saving tool very appropriately titled “The Jaws of Life.” These are tools in which the first responder stabs into a wrecked car door and by his own force is able to pry apart car doors, roofs, trunks, anything that will help free the helpless victim stuck inside. Where do you think the inspiration for such a ridiculous invention came about? Well, let me answer that for you. The Jaws of Life were a “Spinoff”,  as Tega Jessa states in her article titled “Benefits of Space Exploration”, from the very instruments used to pry the Space Shuttle from its booster rockets. This may not intrigue you or implore you to continue on discovering the affects that NASA has had on our technological advances over the years, but let me tell you, Jessa shared a link to NASA’s Spinoff section which so proudly displayed the technology that has come about and has been inspired by their goals of sending humans into space. I was quite perplexed while reading this as the list goes on and on…

But you may also ask yourself, “is the cost that all this newfangled technological advancement comes with worth it?” Answering that question will be the sole purpose of this paper, and while doing so I hope to maintain a non-biased opinion on the matter because while entering into this research I was in the mindset of many Americans in thinking “why go blow all of our money outside our own orbit when there are people sleeping on the streets eating garbage?” But some of the research that I have conducted has proven quite promising. However, some of the methods that scientists are proposing that we achieve greater distances in space seem rather pricey, but at what cost are we willing to better ourselves as a society? At what point will we decide that the welfare of our families is more important to us than achieving new heights in the realm of space? 

Worksheet for Chosing a Topic

 There have been many, many rockets/planes/probes sent into space, but little, if ANY scientific gain from any of it. As a consequence those many rockets were funded with billions of taxpayers’ dollars that were spent into oblivion for absolutely no reason at all.

My purpose is to analyze the exact dollar amount spent on the space program. I will accomplish it by asking questions like “What scientific data have we gathered from the moon?” “What new technology has been produced from the information that we retrieved from the moon?” These questions will be answered and criticized by a simple loss and gain ratio. I will take into account what money was spent, and what money was generated with any of the “information” scientists gathered from beyond our planet. 


Title - “Fellow Taxpayers, Where Has Our Money Gone?”

The question that will be answered is also the title (also look in the second paragraph of this post.)