Ever since man first made contact with the moon in 1969, there has always been an ongoing desire to gain more knowledge about the unknown realm of the universe . This has led to countless efforts in dynamics outside the earth. In a study conducted in 2011, space shuttles flew around the Earth on a total of “135 missions, starting with Colombia in April 1981 and ending with Atlantis on July 21” (sciencenews.org, 2011). It was also recorded that NASA conducted space travel totaling 542,398,878 miles traveled, or 21,156 orbits around the earth, spent a total of 1,332 days, 20 hours, 1 minute, and 34 seconds, and flew 355 individuals in this period of time (sciencenews.org, 2011). This effort put into NASA has certainly spent a large amount of money. To get an idea of ​​how much money NASA spends, in fiscal year 2012, the US federal government approved NASA with $3.9 billion in funding. NASA ended up investing around $20 million into their projects (NASA). In particular, over the course of its existence, NASA has spent approximately 790 billion dollars, starting from 1959 (Hamilton). At first glance, this amount of money may seem unreasonable, but compared to other federal departments, NASA is actually not that expensive. For example, provided what other departments finished spending in 2013: • Department of Defense – $618 billion • Health and Human Services – $78.3 billion • Education – $71.2 billion • Housing and Development urban - $33.1 billion • Energy - $28.4 billion • Agriculture - $21.5 billion billion (Amadeo, 2014) NASA actually just racks up more federal spending than the Department of Justice, Transportation, and to the Treasury. In... middle of paper... welfare programs that NASA money could contribute to if the government focused exclusively on its own social programs. Space exploration represents an important part of the advancement of knowledge of the human mind, but we are unable to determine whether or not this compromises the quality of some human lives. Taking money away from space exploration does not automatically mean that there will be an increase in the solution to the world's economic and social problems. That depends on the government and the people spending the money. The question that needs to be addressed is whether NASA is truly a productive and worthwhile financial investment while other people are constantly experiencing hardship in their lives in the form of hunger and homelessness. Additionally, we must determine whether U.S. progress in NASA's efforts in space exploration can be, or is being made, in an ethical manner..