Perils of exploring the final frontier

GLOBAL food crisis. War in Iraq and Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden running loose. Mass killing in Darfur. Spaceship lands on Mars. Spot the odd one out.

With all the many problems crying out for attention here on Earth, what drives countries, and the US in particular, to cast off and explore the universe? The Phoenix lander set down on Mars last week to search for water and signs of life. None of this is cheap - NASA is asking to increase its budget to more than $US17 billion ($A18 billion) next year.

To put this into proper perspective, that is more money to spend in one year than the Rudd Government proposes to devote over the next decade to the Murray River water woes. The budget for the US space agency alone is nearly 10 times what Australia has spent in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. Imagine what all those extra billions each year could deliver for health care, schools or tackling poverty.

So why do it? The past gives some guide. The early days of space exploration played out against the backdrop of the Cold War, where competition between the superpowers drove progress.

The Soviet Union shocked the US and the West when it catapulted its Sputnik satellite into orbit 50 years ago. US president John F. Kennedy's famous choice - to go to the moon and beyond for missions in space, "not because they are easy, but because they are hard" - was a direct result of Soviet pressure.

Those days of intense superpower competition are long gone. The modern satellite system is the upshot, with all the benefits it brings - the speed and ease of telecommunication, carrying a little box in the car to give directions via a global positioning system, or finding people lost at sea thanks to the beep of an emergency rescue beacon. Part of the rationale for a space program is upkeep and enhancement of this system.

Now, instead of a space race, 15 countries have joined to build an international space station as an orbiting science laboratory. And private enterprise is offering big prizes for the successful development of commercial space travel.

Government spending still eclipses these private efforts, however, and official space exploration is continuing in large part out of habit and electoral imperative. In the US, cutting back on the space program would slash jobs in politically sensitive areas such as Florida and Texas, home to the Kennedy and Johnson space centres. Only a brave politician would risk the backlash, and that means spending a lot of money on Earth beforehand.

But there is a darker side to space exploration too. National rivalry is still playing out as much off the planet as on it. China has developed a missile capable of destroying an orbiting satellite. Europe has banded together to develop a network to rival the dominance of the GPS and reduce the reliance on the US for this service. Russia is also determined to keep a stake in the development of space technology. And the US is pushing forward with the creation of a missile defence shield, prompting further fears of the militarisation of space.

Australia is a bit player here, but one being encouraged to play a greater role. A Senate committee is examining Australia's space science and industry sectors and has received more than 70 submissions - the Mars Society Australia had a say (who'd have guessed we had one), along with various specialists, business and arms of government.