Institute of Adaptive & Spaceflight Physiology
 Graz, Austria
Institut für Adaptive und Raumfahrtphysiologie


Space flight - what for?

Since there is enough problems on Earth to resolve, why go into space?

Galileo Galilei’s observations revolutionized the way how we view our world. Michael Faraday’s work ultimately gave rise to the construction of the electrical generator. Alexander Graham Bell’s achievements led to the construction of the telephone.
These are just a few examples to demonstrate that the desire to pursue science and adventurous spirit can lead to new, unexpected results. At the moment of their discovery, many observations seemed useless, but in the course of time came to fundamentally change our world. Mental, physical and psychological challenges broaden our way of perceiving and understanding the world, and boost our understanding and capabilities.

In a very special way, human space flight represents such challenges: It pushes the envelope of conventional thought and directs the mind to work on peaceful and humanistic goals. By doing so, it touches historical, sociological and political issues. One of the ideas of space flight is to shift human fantasies from negative, everyday, egocentric issues to long-term perspectives. To work on global goals gives hope and stimulates to fight destructive impulses and uncontrollable damage in a political and social framework.
 

The high costs of human space flight are often used as an argument to call for a different use of resources. But by comparison to other fields of investment it becomes evident that only a very small part of the taxpayer’s money is indeed spent on space flight. For example, the Austrian citizen contributes about 10 cents per week for spaceflight-related activities (backflows not considered). On the other hand, spending money on space flight is an investment into the future because it is of humanitarian, scientific, cultural and technical importance. Space flight opens the door to new economical perspectives, meaning that this investment fosters innovations in many economic fields. Another example: The cost of the ISS, including development, assembly and running costs over a period of at least 10 years, will come to 100 billion Euros. However, that 100 billion figure is shared over a period of almost 30 years between all the ISS participants: the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and 10 of the 15 European nations who are part of ESA. The European share, at around 8 billion Euros spread over the whole programme, amounts to just one Euro spent by every European every year: just about the price of a cup of coffee. 

There is a still deeper dimension to all this. Looking down from orbit at the only known life-supporting spacecraft in the Universe -- our Earth -- best helps us to realize our responsibility for life on Earth, and stimulates the wish to protect it. This emotion is the starting point for innovations to better understand and protect our ecosystem ('Earth does not have an emergency exit' - B. Lötsch). Astronauts get the chance to see our planet from an outside point of view, as a precious ecosystem within the huge dimensions of space that might quickly be destroyed by human activity. In fact, astronauts having experienced this kind of emotion, change their way of thinking and living (Overview-Effect). Earth is home to every one of us, and every single one of us shares the responsibility for our common home. Therefore, to put humans in space is not only a technological, scientific, and biomedical endeavor, but has much more subtle meaning.

Ultimately having the fate of the entire planet in mind, space life sciences creates important ideas and concepts in the context of life within Biomes and Biospheres, its exploration, understanding and protection. It also sets the stage for scenarios of making our neighbor in the Solar system a life-supporting planet (again?) ­ i.e., to terraform Mars, and possibly other heavenly bodies as well, in centuries to come. There is hardly a more challenging peaceful mission for mankind that could be imagined for the third millennium.