America still needs space travel: Mark Kelly

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has laid out his company's plans to land humans on Mars within a decade. His ultimate goal is to establish a self-sustaining city of a million people on the planet.

As a former NASA astronaut and ardent defender of the public agency, I'm rooting for SpaceX and other private space explorers wholeheartedly. America's economic and technological pre-eminence — and maybe even the fate of humanity — depends on continued space exploration. And since the federal commitment to exploration has atrophied, we'll need the help of private firms to reach the Red Planet and beyond.

Federal funding hasn't kept pace with the government's space ambitions. NASA's budget has plummeted from over 4% of government spending in the mid-1960s to half a percent today.

Private firms offer a solution to this shortfall. They're saving NASA tens of millions by conducting cargo and crew launches. And they're investing their own billions in space exploration technologies.

Space travel is difficult. While preparing for a privately funded commercial satellite launch, SpaceX recently lost a Falcon 9 rocket due to a launch pad mishap. United Launch Alliance has experienced technical troubles with its Delta II, Delta IV and Atlas V rockets.

Sometimes, the setbacks are tragic. A Virgin Galactic co-pilot perished in the 2014 crash of the company's SpaceShipTwo spacecraft. And of course, NASA's Columbia and Challenger accidents remain seared into our collective memory.

It's important to keep such accidents in perspective. Strapping oneself to a rocket is inherently risky — although not as dangerous as some might think. About 500 people have undertaken manned space flights since the end of the Apollo program, and they've experienced about a 4% fatality rate. A 96% chance of survival would have looked like pretty good odds to explorers such as Magellan or Shackleton.

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And with great risk comes great reward.

Space exploration has yielded enormous practical benefits for Americans. CT scans, enriched baby food, digital cameras, firefighting equipment, GPS systems and microcomputers all resulted from technology developed by America's space program.

Continued space travel is sure to result in technological breakthroughs that we can't currently imagine.

The benefits of space travel are astronomical — and the sky is definitely not the limit. Consider an asteroid that recently passed within 1.5 million miles — just six times the distance to the moon — of Earth. Scientists speculated the asteroid contained more than $5 trillion in precious metals and minerals. Imagine if we could one day fly to asteroids and extract their resources. Who knows what treasures and resources other planets might hold?

Aside from economic and technological benefits, space travel might be necessary to preserve humanity. Apocalyptic scenarios that make Earth uninhabitable — such as nuclear war or an asteroid strike — are not unthinkable. Colonizing Mars would serve as homeowner's insurance for the human race.

Space travel also stirs a chord deep within the human soul. We need to explore; this desire defines us as humans. Exploration fosters the best of our competitive instincts — and channels them into beneficial, rather than destructive, pursuits.

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Exploring such vast and uncharted territory cultivates much needed humility. In 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft sent back a photo of Earth from 4 billion miles away. As astronomer Carl Sagan remarked, in the vastness of space, our home world was nothing but a "pale blue dot."

"In our obscurity, in all this vastness," Sagan reflected, "there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."

Space travel, then, represents the hope that human endeavor can save us, whether via new medical technologies or colonies on other planets. Private firms are much needed partners in this exploration.

We can't let temporary setbacks, such as the recent SpaceX explosion, force us to downsize our ambitions to reach Mars and beyond. Space travel is simply too important to accept failure as an option.

Captain Mark Kelly (Navy, retired) is a combat veteran and former NASA astronaut.

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