Human spaceflight is wasteful, but were still going to spend money on it.
Even without returns, it is simple matter of security. With another country like China taking absolute control over space US would be quickly incapable to take care of its interest here on Earth. Just imagine China deciding to incapacitate all US satellites and US having no way to respond to it.
So it is same old weapons race, it is just trying to score some extra side quests a bit outside of the main quest. Haven't you ever tried to do side quests to get some extra exp to help you with main quest line?
projected by who and how many % of his guesses turned out to be right ?
It's not inconceivable that having platinum become plentiful might also be such a boon.
Impossible to tell, but a ton more than what aluminium industry pulls in.
An entire universe, void of all life, that doesn't get to experience itself deeply saddens me. Though that might just be the fitness-function within me talking.
We might be better off spending the next couple hundred years focusing on making sure we don't destroy our own home before trying to move on to the next (or at least more comprehensive threat detection). There's a very good chance we'll off ourselves before we have to start worrying about anything at even a solar system scale, let alone galaxy or universe.
That's precisely the reason why we will be better off by investing into space exploration now.
Even if Mars or another planet were to survive the destruction of Earth, a stand-alone colony or space station would be doomed. At best I think we're at least 100 years off for any long-term self-sustained space colony... and it's quite possible we'll be sidetracked significantly if the climate causes widespread migration and famine as expected.
If we can't solve exponentially simpler earth-based problems, then I think we have no business in expanding, and would be unlikely to succeed regardless.
I support space exploration and development, but putting more resources outward when we have so many inward problems feels like a fool's errand.
We can work on both, but one's a much more imminent danger.
Given the current low-level of funding we should be focusing on defense (climate reliance, threat detection) rather than colonization. I'd be over the moon if space industries were better funded to do both... but more often than not total funding as a percentage of GDP has been decreasing, not increasing.
We think alike - but IMHO that's going to happen only if we begin now. That's why we shouldn't hold off.
> If we can't solve exponentially simpler earth-based problems, then I think we have no business in expanding, and would be unlikely to succeed regardless.
It's not like there's a single "we" that can keep attention at one thing at a time only. There are a lot of great engineers excited about space stuff, who don't care about ecology/whatever else at all. It makes sense to use their skills and enthusiasm while other engineers excited about that work on solving our Earth-bound problems.
Another point is - whatever helps us survive on Mars and the Moon will help us greatly to reduce harm done to Earth.
> Even if Mars or another planet were to survive the destruction of Earth, a stand-alone colony or space station would be doomed.
> We can work on both, but one's a much more imminent danger.
For sure, but there are also dangers other than climate change - war, asteroid impact, pandemics, rogue AI takeover... It's not that either Earth gets destroyed and the Martian colony will die anyways or nothing has happened and we don't need the backup.
Perhaps there will be another pandemic and the people on Earth will die off but the Martians survive. Perhaps asteroid impact will make Earth uninhabitable for 10-50 years but no more. Etc
There's no need to take it to infinite extremes. There are always plenty of values in the slider between short-medium-long term to choose from to find meaning in life… whatever floats someone's boat.