About a week ago, my girlfriend and I went to see the phenomenal new movie, “Men In Black.” I was surprised when I left the theater with more than great entertainment. It left me thinking as well.

Nobody knows how far the universe goes or what is contained within.

There are endless possibilities, some within the realm of the human imagination and some far beyond. Recently, movies like the remastered “Star Wars Trilogy,” “Men In Black,” Independence Day” and “Contact” have focused on these aspects of the universe. The latter two have cost around $100 million apiece to make.

According to the executive director of SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), the cost of making just one of those movies would finance its entire operation for the next 600 years.

For those of you unfamiliar with SETI, it is a group which uses giant satellite dishes to constantly monitor all wave forms that cascade toward our planet.

It hopes another life form is sending a signal through space that can be detected on Earth.

NASA has had a lot of recent trouble securing its funding. Money that had been previously earmarked for the exploration of the galaxy has been redirected to other programs to benefit society. In the last ten years, NASA’s budget has shrunk by almost 15 percent.

Not that this isn’t nice or necessary. Our country has a vast amount of unemployed and homeless people to take care of.

We have to protect ourselves by building bigger and better weapons of war, especially since the government is spending tons of money destroying the older models and its nuclear arsenal — those they aren’t secretly selling, that is.

The space program has been severely hurt by this. But funding isn’t the only wound it has had to bandage.

The space shuttle Challenger explosion on January 28, 1986, tarnished the program forever. This incident has haunted the nation for more than a decade. It has made us all wonder if all the effort is really worth it. More importantly, it is a dark cloud over some of our greatest fantasies.

Humankind has always been fascinated by space.

Our late ancestors gazed up at the stars, moon and sun wondering how to get there and what they would find when they did.

When Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon on July 20, 1969, he provided the nation with more than a temporary relief from the horrors of the broadcast Vietnam War.

It gave hope that someday they might be able to visit or live on other planets. It rekindled interest in space.

Recently, the Pathfinder landed on Mars and began sending back the first pictures of the red, rocky planet.

The exploration of Mars is directed toward finding signs of life or whether the planet could support life.

For years, there has been speculation on whether there were forms of life on Mars. The most compelling evidence came from a Martian meteorite found in Antarctica that contained microorganisms.

The Martian probe is vital to the future of space research. It will go a long way toward proving that space exploration is worth taxpayers’ money. It will also add more fuel to our vivid imaginations.

It is plausible by searching through space we will find answers to the creation of humankind, our planet and the galaxy.

It is possible we will find extraterrestrial life and learn from them.

We could find evidence to prove God does or does not exist. We could learn how to colonize other planets and spread humankind throughout the stars.

Unfortunately, places of space research like SETI and NASA have to battle for funding.

So the next time you go to see the next big-budget space flick, keep this in mind. After all, the money would be better spent to further our knowledge and species forever, not to provide two hours of entertainment that will be forgotten in less than a month.

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Ben Jones is a sophomore in English from Des Moines.