People like to poo on the billionaires investing in space technology as a play thing for the super rich, which Earth suffers and slowly boils. And that's true. But it's also very wrong.
There are loads of really, really, really, really important reasons that we need to invest in space, and do it now. I'd like to present a few that I can think of off the top of my head.
1.
Mitigating the damage from Coronal Mass Ejections
A coronal mass ejection (CME) is a significant release of plasma and accompanying magnetic field from the solar corona. They often follow solar flares and are normally present during a solar prominence eruption. Coronal mass ejections can disrupt radio transmissions and cause damage to satellites and electrical transmission line facilities, resulting in potentially massive and long-lasting power outages. The largest recorded geomagnetic perturbation, resulting presumably from a CME hitting the Earth's magnetosphere, was the solar storm of 1859 (the Carrington Event), which took down parts of the recently created US telegraph network, starting fires and shocking some telegraph operators.
If a "Carrington Event" happened today, some have said it would be a "
Multi-Trillion Dollar Disaster". It's hard to say what the precise damage would be, and hard to say whether we could see a CME much worse than Carrington. The idea of planes falling from the sky, self driving cars going haywire, nuclear power plants going into melt-down and power-outages across entire continents are speculation, but they're not beyond the realms of possibility.
Maybe it will occur in 10 years, maybe in 100 years. Or maybe it will happen tomorrow. Humans are very very very bad at preparing for "unlikely" events (COVID being a prime example.) But something that has the capability of creating continent wide 9-11 events needs to be taken seriously.
How can space infrastructure prevent this?
CMEs travel fast, but slower than the speed of light. Currently our best "early warning method" is from our probes at the L1 Lagrange point, which sits directly between the Earth and the Sun. Unfortunately, by the time the L1 probes would detect these CMEs, they are already 99% of the way here. A much better method would be to use a statite (or quasite) probe which sits much closer to the sun, and uses the force of the sunlight to maintain a slower orbit directly between Earth and our star. This would give us a much better early warning system.
The only caveat to this is that, we could mitigate these dangers by improving our infrastructure here on Earth and preparing for these events.
2.
The search for intelligent life beyond Earth.
Aliens.
No, seriously, aliens.
Talking about Aliens is always going to get people rolling their eyes, but life exists here. Life exists on Earth, and it existed pretty much as soon as the conditions were suitable for it to exist. In the billion years since then, it took a long time for an intelligent technological species to exist. But what about elsewhere? Are we the only critical thinkers anywhere in the universe? The FERMI paradox is a thought experiment that asks, where is everyone? But without investigation, it maybe that we're alone or it maybe that we're not.
So far we've had received a few signals that could be from alien civilisations. The "WOW" signal, and more recently a signal still being analysed by
a private organisation. But frustratingly, no one really knows if these signals were from alien civilisations or just from a rogue satellite (or another man-made signal).
What we need is a to put detectors and telescopes in the quietest area of our solar system; the "Dark side of the moon" (more correctly, the far side of the moon)
The "dark side of the moon" isn't actually dark (well, aside from the 14 days per 28 day cycle that it is dark) but it is permanently facing away from the Earth. Man-mad signals, whether from Earth-satellites or ground based, won't reach there meaning we can far more easily detect SETI signals. (Although watch out for the increasingly common man-made Lunar satellites).
Also, the far side of the moon, during Lunar night, will likely be the darkest area of our solar system. We should be building telescopes there to investigate the original of our universe.
https://www.space.com/nasa-telescope-far-side-of-moon.html
https://www.wired.com/story/alien-hunters-need-far-side-moon-to-stay-quiet/
3.
The search for non-intelligent life beyond Earth.
As previously mentioned, Life on Earth appeared pretty much right away when Earth was "ready" for it. Mars however, was likely "ready" for it, far sooner than Earth was, with warm liquid water and an atmosphere.
Did life exist on Mars before it did on Earth? Did Earth life originate from Mars? Did it exist separately? Does it still exist there now?
What about life on Venus?
Specifically in the upper atmosphere.
What about
life on Europa? Or
Enceladus?
Finding life on other planets, even former life, would have a profound impact on us here. We might not be holding hands and singing songs together overnight, but it could have a massive impact on politics worldwide.
Probably, the only way we're ever going to know if life exists in our solar system is to go there. By sending humans.
4.
Gamma Ray Bursts.
Gamma ray bursts are caused either by the explosion of a giant star, or the merging of two neutron stars, and are speculated to have already caused an
extinction event on earth. GRBs are a candidate explanation as to why aliens don't exist everywhere.
One of my favourite shows on Netflix is "Into the night" a Belgium show about a "Solar event" that suddenly starts killing all life on the side of the Earth that sunlight reaches. It's a great show, and I'd seriously recommend watching it. I like to pretend it's not our Sun killing everything in the show, but a star that happens to be nearly in-line with our star. Either way, it shows the disastrous consequences of such an event, although it doesn't deal with GRBs destroying our Ozone layer and changing the chemistry in our atmosphere (maybe that will be in Season 2?)
It's unlikely that a GRBs event would happen in our life time, but we need to know about the true likelihood of these events.
5. Meteors.
A big one killed the dinosaurs. Smaller ones likely have caused many a megatsunami (although these seem to be more often caused by volcanic activity and land-slides) . A big meteor will strike earth at some point if we don't do anything to stop it.
There are loads of reasons to invest in Space. Humans are bad at preparing for unlikely but catastrophic events.