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Wait, why do we send people to space in the first place?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27721383

Good question! The answer is that we know so little about surviving there for any appreciable length of time (compared to a human lifespan), that most don't understand the challenges. Meanwhile they're relative experts with the problems faced by a terrestrial existence.

TL;DR The hydrogen is always redder in the other man's H-Alpha band.

The paper you cited explained why we shouldn't send people to space, not why we should.

The classic answer would be http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html

I'm fine with exploring space. My question is (given the context of how expensive it was to produce lettuce in space), why send humans?

A less of a classic but a really good discussion http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-coloni... (the whole Musk series is worth the read too).

If your goal is to address the existential dilemma posed by an unkind universe, by spreading to humanity to the stars, you'll need to divert the entire economic output of the world to the problem for at least 100 years to produce off-earth self-sustaining infrastructure.

That's a big difference from sending a box of lettuce up into space so that astronauts don't have to eat paste.

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