The world was in awe early last week when news spread that Russia had been hit by a meteor. NASA estimated that the space rock exploded in Earth’s atmosphere with a force greater than Hiroshima, an astonishing equivalent of roughly twenty atomic bombs. The damage was immediate, and Chelyabinsk, Russia, soon found itself with thousands of destroyed buildings and nearly a thousand injured citizens.

Considering no nation, including the U.S., has a developed enough space program to detect incoming meteors, let alone deflect them, the events in Chelyabinsk set off policy concerns worldwide. As if global economic concerns and increasing violence in politically unstable nations isn’t enough, the impact in Russia serves as a unique reminder that we aren’t as in control of our world as we’d like to think.

The U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology quickly announced they would be discussing the implications of meteor explosions and the necessity of investing in space technology. After all, if we’re serious about protecting our borders from foreign enemies, it’s important we realize there are more diverse and complicated threats than the weakly centralized terrorist groups we’ve been hunting for the past decade.

This isn’t the first time events in Russia have prompted U.S. space exploration. In fact, the Armed Missiles Race of the 60’s set virtually all of our accomplishments in space in motion. What most people have a hard time understanding is that our brave adventure to the moon was nothing more than another national defense maneuver to place us above competing ideologies. When the rest of the world lost interest in space, so did we.

Ever since our retaliation against the launch of Sputnik, NASA has been operating on a microscopic budget. Unbeknownst to most Americans, the program has been running off of roughly four tenths of a cent for every tax dollar. That’s less than one percent of the national budget. Disturbingly, the bailout of Wall Street banks back in 2008 was more than NASA has spent in over fifty years of operations.

At the risk of sounding like a conservative, perhaps our problem-solving skills in the sixties were representative of a better and brighter America. The stars have always perplexed mankind and have given us an immense sense of wonder. When America intelligently galvanized that wonder, it saw improvements in education, the nourishing of top scientific minds and subsequently, brand-new technological innovations that brought our economy to life.

Unfortunately, as a nation, we’re slowly losing our competitive edge and increasingly becoming a service-sector market. It seems that the innovation America thrived off of in the past has all but dried up. As a result, most economists predict China will surpass the U.S. by 2030, and the other BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations will likely follow. Of course, none of that matters if the world can’t stop meteors from causing another mass extinction.

As traumatizing and unfortunate as the event in Chelyabinsk was, it was a much-needed wake-up call. For whatever reason, though I suspect it has a lot to do with our monetary values, America and the world at large have a hard time thinking long term. If the threat isn’t immediate, we don’t worry about it. The insolvency of Social Security and rising medical costs are more than enough for us right now.

Still, whether we’re comfortable admitting it or not, there may come a time when humanity has to leave Earth behind, either because of our own irresponsibility or even the threat of meteor annihilation. If we don’t seriously reconsider the national importance of space investment, we’re doomed to repeat the mistakes of invasions like Vietnam and Iraq and launch into an environment we have no idea how to navigate.