What's Up? May. 2014 it is 24 pages | Page 8

$ Cash for NASA $ By Omnia Noser Since the twentieth century, studying the space started to pay much attention. When NASA was founded in 1958, The USA began to dedicate part of its budget to improve research about the outer space. The US government imposes a certain percentage of tax on the citizens to fund these researches. In 2010, The U.S spent about $18.7 billion dollars on space exploration. In other word, the American citizens had to pay $60 of their yearly taxes. In contrast, there is the reality in which the levels of poverty are getting higher and starvations are widely spread. Therefore, people split into two opposing groups; one of them support spending money for space research, but the other one reject. Thus, our group made a survey questioning the Aucians whether they agree to keep spending money on space exploration with providing a reason for their choice. Actually, the results of the survey was a bit shocking to us: Yes 54 % No 46% Those who chose Yes, expressed these reasons: New alternatives to living in the outer space can be offered such as, finding water in Mars. 4% It is important for me to know what is out there, just for the sake of knowing it. 7% It will help me have a broader idea of my surrounding and connect spiritually to it. 11% It is important to know our surrounding in order to prevent or know how to deal with spatial catastrophes. 21% All the choices 39%