Space travel, schmace travel.

Now, don't get me wrong, the universe is amazing. Not "OMG Justin Bieber is soooooo totes amazing" kind of amazing, but actually mind-bogglingly, jaw-droppingly, intriguingly and beautifully amazing. And big. Very big. Its also quite high up. Much higher than you can jump. As a consequence of space's bigness and high-upness, it is very expensive to get there.

On average a NASA space shuttle flight costs £982833000. That is enough money to buy 98283300000 midget gems. Taking the average midget gem to be a centimeter in length, that is enough sweets to reach to the moon and then wrap around the equator 14 times, with 3739007100 left over to eat. That is enough to feed 341 people for their entire lives*. Surely this money could be better spent. Millions of people each year still die from famine, drought, disease and war. The entire planet is facing an energy crisis. Not to mention overpopulation, food production, climate change, pollution, deforestation, sea level rise, species extinction, the nuclear threat, corruption, greed, the fact that Justin Bieber is so popular, economic collapse, a growing gap between the rich and poor, obesity, natural disasters, dependency on technology, terrorism and anything else I may have overlooked. The point I'm making is that we should probably try and sort things out down here on earth before we start exploring space, especially when it is so expensive. The amount of money spent to fund space exploration could instead fund research into solving many worldwide issues.

It isn't just a simple matter of priorities, but history shows us that we don't really advance or expand until we have solved a more immediate problem. Until the wheel was invented things for early humans were going pretty slowly. Since then we've managed to invent cars that can go over 200 mph and provide Jeremy Clarkson with employment. Until we invented efficient farming methods to ensure a relatively consistent food supply we couldn't focus on anything else in any great depth. It is unlikely that Albert Einstein would have come up with his theory of relativity if he had to tend to his crops every day. Space exploration is complicated (like trying to solve a 3D sudoku from 300 yards away using a robot operated by your foot. Underwater. In the dark) and it won't get the attention and funding it needs to succeed until the issues on our own rock hurtling through space at 67062 mph have been solved. And if we can't solve them then the least we can do is build that tower of midget gems to the moon.

*Calculations based on average weight of and calories in a single midget gem, a life expectancy of 80 and the recommended calorie intake for a UK male. Please correct me if I am wrong. I also acknowledge that people can not survive on midget gems alone. Please do not try this at home (or anywhere for that matter). Although if you are stupid enough to do this then your inevitable death is probably not such a great loss to humanity.