The real question here is why bother spending 1% of our GDP on space exploration? What tangible benefits is it going to bring, and why are those benefits worth more than the benefit that will come from spending 1% of our GDP on something else?
The real question here is why bother spending 1% of our GDP on anything?
It's the same argument as to why we shouldn't invest in infrastructure "don't build those high speed train routes, we'll only see the benefit in 30 years" - space exploration is an investment in the future, and like a lot of investments, the potential payoff is variable but we can never know without trying.
If we take a VC analogy (being here on HN and all), then you might as well utilise some of your fund on a literal moonshot - if it fails, you scrub it off, take the learnings (and employ, I suspect, a tonne of people in jobs trying to make it happen). If it wins, you get your outsized outcome to 10x.
Sometimes we need state actors to make big bets - like investing in CERN (which has given us the WWW, the LHC, etc...).
True - it was probably a stretch to include it alongside the VC analogy, but CERN's also delivering projects with unsure outcomes a la most investments [0]. If they turned the LHC on for example and found precisely nothing of note, it'd have been a failed investment, but was certainly worth the punt.
I think one of the issues with space exploration for people is that it just feels so pointless and intangible - its perception so locked into the realms of sci fi that the act of trying feels more of an indulgent nod to starship fantasies and "space race" dick-waving than to realistic scientific progress.
[0] money the "whatabout" brigade say should go to cancer research, which too, is also an investment with unsure outcomes (and which usually helpfully ignore things like CERN's impact on cancer research with second order applications of other discoveries...)
Failed in terms of science spending maybe, but even if they found everything they wanted the intrinsic value of this new knowledge to society is not really valuable in the same sense that the steel needed for the construction is valued.
It is now more than 20 years since the top quark was discovered, has society profited enought from knowing the mass of the top quark that the Tevatron is paid off?
Or is this way of thinking of science funding just destructive?
You can't just point to a list of inventions that came from research in space exploration - you also have to make a case that these inventions would have otherwise not come about, or at least would have come about much later.
I disagree. You would have to make the case that these inventions would come about without space travel - that there were alternative commercial interests and government incentives that would finance the necessary research.
But you're the one using these inventions as justification for future space exploration - shouldn't the burden of proof fall on the one making the claim?
Those inventions provide justification for space exploration - they establish this field as a tried-and-true way of generating very useful spinoff tech.
To counter this argument, the other side needs to justify that either those same inventions can be achieved in a different and more cost-effective way, or that we don't really need new tech (relative to its costs).
Well, unless we outlaw reproduction without government approval we will hit the limit of what the planet can support as far as human life.
Unless we start recylcing 100% of our materials we will run out of various elements we use for production of effectively everything.
Commercially available sea salt has been found contaminated with microplastics, that means are oceans are already screwed so envetually it would be nice to have a new world to do things right on.
Opening up space opens up more physical space for humans and other life, it opens up more resources for construction (asteroids contain unfathomable amounts of rare and common elements that will be easy to exploit once the appropriate technologies are developed).
Space exploration will continue to add more and more technological and general scientific breakthroughs as it has been now for several decades. Look how GPS has changed the world, it's used in everything from tracking wildlife to your watch to moving goods around the world. Literally impossible if we'd not developed a space program.
> Well, unless we outlaw reproduction without government approval we will hit the limit of what the planet can support as far as human life.
The birth rates of richer nations are significantly lower than the birth rates of poorer nations. I'm not convinced that overpopulation will be an issue as long as we can provide cheap and easy access to birth control to the entire population.
> asteroids contain unfathomable amounts of rare and common elements that will be easy to exploit once the appropriate technologies are developed
This is actually my favorite justification for space exploration, but if this is our goal, we should be focused on asteroid mining and not moon bases or manned mars missions.
> Space exploration will continue to add more and more technological and general scientific breakthroughs
You don't know this. It's just a guess. No one can know if the side effects from space research will prove to be more or less useful than the side effects from cancer research or any other kind of research. It's not something that can be known.
