Reply #12: Becasue it's our one solid chance at survival? [View All]

We live on a fragile planet which we have thoroughly trashed and which is reaching a turning point which nobody can reliably foresee.

So what if planet Earth becomes uninhabitable? Wouldn't it be a damned good idea to have working knowledge of how to live in a deadly environment?

What if a comet drops in from the Oort Cloud to ruin our day? What if it's something bigger?

Wouldn't it be a good idea to have humans living at some remove from the planet itself?

What do you do with a hundred thousand scientists and engineers who are currently expert in creating machines for killing people, when the defense budget is slashed? Let them find work in third world nations, building A-bombs? Or putting a man on the moon?

NASA's budget, of which manned space flight is only a part, is currently costing us just about as much (around $20 billion a year) as the paltry sum America spends on its Indian tribes and other native Americans. Or, comparing it in another direction, we could have funded manned space flight ten times over each and every year we've been diddling around in Iraq. If we told just one bank to go to hell, we could pay for the whole thing in one lump sum.

But the thing is, we don't need to cut anything to pay for NASA. NASA pays for itself by providing an entire sector--a civilian sector--of industry experts and expertise, which can be applied to any other field which requires that expertise, and by creating a demand for innovative new materials and methods, which (unlike the fruits of military research) are then offered for public use.

You can't better spend your money making life on the ground better if the people smart enough to do it have gone on to become firemen, soldiers, and truck drivers, because there's no future in space.