Why are they spending more time exploring space than our ocean?

busterwasmycat

"they" are not the same people, for the most part, so no one, really, is spending time on space that would have been otherwise spent on ocean exploration. Humanity is capable of studying both at the same time if people so choose. Society, through government or private pursuits, decides what to investigate, and the reasons are complex. Space is big and everyone can see it from their back yard, and space has always been a source of wonderment for all humans, ever since the earliest times that we can identify or which are recorded. That is why space is being investigated, on top of the large potential for a payoff (financial or social gain). Why are oceans not investigated to the same extent of detail? I am not sure that is precisely true, but there are difficulties in deep-sea investigations that make the effort less rewarding for the costs, as a gross idea. You can't see far underwater, the pressures are enormous and hard to deal with physically (vacuum is nothing by comparison), and when we do examine the sea, there is a lot of nothingness with occasional reward. Contrast the fact that we have been able to see space for all of our existence, but we have only been able to see below ocean surface for a distance beyond about 30 meters for 50-75 years, and I think you will see the primary reason. People want to know what is down below, but dang, it isn't easy to do. We are exploring the undersea world though, just the same. I am not convinced that more people are involved in space exploration than in undersea exploration, myself.

Bela

Are they? What space exploration is actually being done. You can't count all the money spent on satellites and on the space station and whatnot. Those dollars are capitalist dollars developing and implementing technology for financial gain, not space exploration. About all you can attribute to space exploration right now is the occasional probe we send to mars. But if you set that next to all the recreational diving and even deep-sea diving that goes on by droves worldwide, all of which is exploration, it doesn't hold a candle to it. At any rate, it might be smarter to spend more on space exploration, though. An asteroid hitting Earth and killing nearly all life on the planet is a mathematical certainty. It's already happened six times. It's just a question of when. So if humanity is to survive that, for it may be something that we cannot with all our technology at the time avoid, we need to find a way not to have all of our eggs in this basket we call Earth. We need to find a way to get ourselves off this rock and alive and thriving on another rock. Anyway, think about it: only a handful of countries worldwide even have a space agency or any space exploration going on, a venture that is so expensive that only entire governments can take it on, but nearly every country in the world has people exploring the oceans, whether the government or universities or institutes or even individuals who have on their own taken up that mantle. That's because of access and because minimum cost of entrants is so much less, resulting in many spending a little to collectively spend more than a few spending a whole lot to collectively spend less.

ioerr

space is by far the bigger challenge and represents the greater potential payoff but yes it's often been observed that ocean exploration should not be stinted at the same time, and of course there's no reason both can't be pursued although i think the environmental impact we're having on these oceans is already pretty grave, and there needs to be a lot more concern about that as well

Raymond

Who is "they"? What do you mean by "time"? I spent a lot more time exploring oceans (as a coat guard officer) than exploring space (as an astronomy master). In general, humans have spent far more time exploring the oceans (thousands of years) than exploring space. At the stage where each field has reached, it is certainly easier, now, to explore space than the oceans.

NONAME

i guess you are right...

Dixon

The deep ocean floor is a harsh and dangerous environment even compared to the vacuum of space and it seems to offer no particular rewards.