SATELLITES: AGREE OR DISAGREE

Hi, we are a group of students as you know, and this entry will be the first one that we will write in English. Today we are going to talk about how satellites can change our lives.

Satellites are really important in our life, to have  a normal life in our planet. Today there is about one thousand  satellites. We are creating a technological society, where mobile phones, computers, TVs... and new technologies in general, are essential.

We need the internet for almost everything we do, and this enormous information web is related to satellites and how they allow information to go around the world.

A simple question: How much time do you spend a day on social networks? The Internet is not only important for information, it can also help us with our social relationships, with applications like Whatsapp on mobile phones, Not all these functions are controlled by satellites.

Companies use the internet to promote their business and to communicate with their employers or with other companies. Telephone and mobile calls, not only depend on satellites, but without them a big part of the net would fail inevitably, including our comunication with the rest of the world.

 Satellites are also very important for gps systems so that we don`t get  lost. They also influence our TVs .

They are important in transport because of the GPS (for not getting lost) and control the planes so that they don`t crash in the air, and they can also locate where  oil spills  in case of an oil boat accident.

There are satellites  for taking photos and to send them to the Earth, so that we can know information about many facts in the past, things that are happening now and to make predictions for the future.

But satellites not only have the some benefits as other machines but they also have undesdirable factors. Some disadvantages of satellites:
- They are REALLY expensive, to launch ONE kilogram to space we need about... 10000-15000 euros!

- When they have finished their purpose, they become spacial junk, and sometimes they fall onto the Earth,  oceans; others  continiue in orbit, and others  crash against the atmosphere and they become a ball of fire.

- Investigation to build a satellite takes about 10 or 20 years, and all this time about a half of the world`s money is invested in it.

- They can also have radiation, which is carcinogenic.

And now, let's think:  should we spend millions of euros on satellites?
In this part of the entry we´re going to explain our own opinion:

SANTIAGO FERNÁNDEZ:  In my opinion no. We don´t need all the electronic systems that we have. Before the invention of the mobile phone, no one needed a mobile phone, but now we have an important dependency on it. What we can´t say is that we don´t have money for illnesses investigation or that we can´t fight Ebola in Africa. In the case of Spain, we spend only a 0.17 percentage of our PIB for poor countries, but we are the fifth country which invests in ESA! Technology must only be for science and for medical investigation, but not for ordinary things for society, that make us lazier and less intelligent people, because  the computer is our ``second brain´´ in this world where we live.

CRISTINA ABELLÁN: I think it is important to invest money in satellites, because the benefits are bigger than the money you invest. If we hadn´t invested in the past, it would not have been possible  today to have all that technology and the information we have about space, solar system, Big Bang...
We need satellites, and I think the negative parts of that aren´t as important as its functions.

LUCÍA RODRÍGUEZ: I think we don´t need all the satellites for one only purpose. The satellites are very expensive, and this money is important for other things, like helping people who need it, but we need it, we can survive without them, as we did before the invention of satellites. So, why do we use them now as a part of our life?

ERIKA DRESSEN:  I think satellites are a really important part of our life, but we shouldn´t spend all this money on them. Now here is the question: where should we spend our bank money?

 JAVIER MARTÍN: I think we should spend a lot of money on satellite investigation  because the future of  humanity won´t be on the Earth. There is research showing that life in our planet will be finished in 60,000 years(when the sun explodes and becomes a Supernova) but  people from Greenpeace are warning that life on Earth will be finished in less than two hundred years. Then the satellites will be extremely important for us. They will help us to discover other places to live. Humanity´s future depends on satellites. Wouldn´t you take advantage of them?