On October 4 1957, Sputnik 1 became the first satellite to be launched by humans, inaugurating the space age. On April 12 1961, Yuri Gagarin, onboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft, became the first human in space. The Apollo 11 spaceflight, which on July 20 1969, achieved its goal of landing the first humans on the Moon, was arguably one of the most memorable events in 20th-century space exploration. On April 25 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was placed into orbit by crew members of the space shuttle Discovery. These are some of the most renowned space explorations, some of the most intriguing space explorations and some of the most enthralling space explorations. Yet, can it be argued that all of those expeditions into the vacuum that is beyond our atmosphere were pointless?

Space exploration gives us no direct benefit. Why have we decided it to be the utmost importance to investigate every single celestial body in our Solar System when the Earth itself is not fully explored yet. A commercial space industry is taking over – Elon Musk’s SpaceX company is starting to become ingrained into everyone’s minds. The world needs to understand that there are problems that we have to solve on our own planet before we can interfere with possible life on other planets. We have priorities that need to be sorted out before we can look at other bodies in the Universe.

In addition, space exploration can lead to two types of risk: radiation and altered gravity. These come simply from being in space – it is hard for the human body to quickly adjust between two completely different powers of gravity. Extensive research by NASA has shown that both can have major negative effects on the body, and even the brain.

We, as a world, have wasted several years to identify that Mars has some traces of water, when our bigger planet is made up of 70% of water. Billions of dollars and roubles have been spent in constructing spaceships and other forms of high-end technology to take a couple of astronauts to the Moon, or a satellite to Pluto.

What has been achieved is impressive, However, there still fails to be any purpose in investing time, money and energy in these laborious tasks: we know that Mars has water, but it isn’t realistic to say that even 1% of the world’s population will live on Mars by 2050.

Space exploration is indeed pointless, but that won’t stop Elon Musk or NASA from investing more of their endless supply of resources into fruitless explorations of the vacuum that is several kilometers above our heads.