Is space exploration worth the money and effort? | Letters

Readers respond to an article by Zoe Williams in which she argued the space race was pointless

Zoe Williams speaks for many of us when she notes that the US space mission is pointless (Let’s stop going into space. There’s nothing to see and no one to talk to, 7 April). Unfortunately, it is worse than that. With a $100bn budget, the Artemis programme represents a truly spectacular misdirection of human creativity and resources.

The UN World Food Programme, before it was cut back by Donald Trump’s massive reductions to USAID, was $10bn a year. This global programme, which benefits over 150 million people annually in more than 120 countries, could be fully funded for 10 years by the cost of the pointless Artemis programme alone. It is not a difficult choice to identify which of these two investments would deliver the most social, environmental and security benefits to the modern world.
Robin Hambleton
Emeritus professor of city leadership, University of the West of England