Why are we spending money up there when we need it down here? It's a question I hear: on social media, on television and in real life about space exploration. One day our planet will cease to exist; it is an indisputable fact. Space exploration is important not only to the survival of our species, but it is also a driving force for technology and our economy. The need for NASA and advances in space exploration is as great today as it was in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Even though we are not in the middle of a Cold War today , our country is fighting another battle: that of a lack of ambition. The United States dominated the space frontier during those two decades, but since then our progress on this frontier has remained minimal. With the exception of the Hubble Telescope and the Mars Rover Mission, our presence in space is lacking. There are many reasons why advances in space exploration are important, but the most pressing reason is that our planet will not be able to sustain itself forever. In approximately 7.59 billion years, our Sun will become a red giant. This happens because the sun lacks its main fuel, hydrogen, in its core. When this happens, “the Sun's current radius will expand to 256 times its current size, but it will lose 33% of its mass (Schroder, KP & Smith, Robert 2008). » As the Sun loses mass, its gravitational pull on Earth weakens. "With the reduced solar mass and, therefore, weaker gravitational pull, all planetary orbits, including Earth's, are bound to expand (Schroder, KP & Smith, Robert 2008)." The speed at which the Earth is moving away from the Sun is not fast enough to exceed the speed at which the Sun is expanding. The water on Earth will be boiled and the Suns will be middle of paper......continuation as a people. Creating NASA infrastructure can be expensive and will most certainly prove a challenge, but it is a challenge that our country can overcome and benefit from. I would like to end this article with a quote that I believe applies to the challenge ahead and provides insight into how to move forward. This is a quote from Antoine De St. Exupéry: “If you want to build a ship, do not encourage people to collect wood and give them tasks and work, but rather teach them to aspire to "infinite immensity of the sea." The meaning of this quote alone won't get the job done, but it highlights a shift in how this problem needs to be solved. We can no longer view NASA as an agency looking for help. We must regard it as an agency as it really is; an entity that creates solutions to advanced problems that benefit everyone.