Why Space Exploration Is Worth the Cost 276
mlimber writes "The Freakonomics blog has a post in which they asked six knowledgeable people, Is space exploration is worth the public cost? Their answers are generally in the affirmative and illuminating. For example David M. Livingston, host of The Space Show, said: 'Businesses were started and are now meeting payrolls, paying taxes, and sustaining economic growth because the founder was inspired by the early days of the manned space program, often decades after the program ended! This type of inspiration and motivation seems unique to the manned space program and, of late, to some of our robotic space missions.'"
Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
No. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure that would clear things up.
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
John F. Kennedy, 9/12/1962 [virginia.edu] mp3 [virginia.edu]
We will go. The only question is: will we be first to climb this mountain, or will we be shown the way by better men?
Broken window fallacy (Score:4, Interesting)
Space exploration may be justified, but let's see if we can talk about without getting dazzled about all the jobbies it creates.
Yeah, yeah, flamebait, etc.
Re:Broken window fallacy (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right. We shouldn't have to justify our ambitions economically, it's such a depressing way to see the world. Lets just do something because its awesome.
We should be capable of deciding what are the goals for mankind, especially those we cannot realise as individuals. I suppose the economic benefits help to sugar the pill for those who are not inspired by exploration and understanding of the universe.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Broken window fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with space is that humanity dropped the ball. We should have done more sooner. Of course part of the problem is that America had to keep footing the bill. But think about what space travel has brought:
GPS, Satellite Media, The Ability to detect global warming, Satellite phones, etc, etc...
I am even thinking if we had traveled and lived in space quicker we would have less of a global warming problem. After all to be able to live in space you better be efficient and learn how to recycle...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps you're misunderstanding the question. It's not realty "why do anything?". For a question like that, you don't reall
Re: (Score:2)
Because it is hard (Score:5, Insightful)
John F. Kennedy, 9/12/1962 [virginia.edu]
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, too many people do think that way these days.
Kids today, know the price of everything, and the value of nothing
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously though, imagine if society spent as much time and money and devotion on space travel as we probably do just on creating, distributing and reading news about Britney Spears *alone*. And that's just one of the many none-too-amazing things we expend our productivity/wealth on
Re:Broken window fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of life is to survive. Being stuck on this planet will lead to your extinction either caused by ourselves or external forces (aka. asteroid). It is just a matter of time. All the talk about military in this discussion (see other threads) just underscores that we are still thinking small. We'll kill each other for the tiny resources on this small planet instead of taking what is freely available elsewhere.
We should be at war with universe*, not ourselves. We must shed our stone age mentality, now.
* - this means in terms of "conquering" new places that are deemed inhabitable and making them habitable. Like Moon or Mars or Ganymede or Titan.
Take it from the military. (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, why should my tax dollars finance an over-powered military which sucks hard at stopping current terroristic threats? Because you're pants-filling fear says so?
(Hyperbole used for effect)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Because that's the way the world has worked since the time the Pyramids were built.
Re:Broken window fallacy (Score:5, Informative)
Your ancient history knowledge is 50 years out of date. Archaeological evidence shows that they were built with paid labor, not slaves.
And in every single stage of history you mention, people were taxed to pay for big government projects. They still are. Why do some people act as if they're surprised by this?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, one should realize that many pyramids were constructed over a period of a thousand years, so who's to say that in every period that pyramids were constructed with societal labor. We don't know ancient Egyptian culture that well, even with pictographs.
Re:Broken window fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Space Exploration serves economically as an impetus for invention and innovation, and as general inspiration for the nation at large. It is a national contest, and national contests have positive economic impact. Space Exploration isn't a broken window -- it's the game of baseball.
The most common form of national contest is war -- if you're having a hard time understanding it, think of it this way. Space Exploration is a way to have the economic benefits of a nation-at-war state, without the significant economic drains from the actual war.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I would offer that space exploration requires solutions to problems that wouldn't otherwise exist and/or be known - as with any untried or unimagined thing. Solving these problems has benefits here.
Sure we probably would have eventually invented: TV Satelite Dishes, Medical Imagers, Ear Thermometers, Vision Screening tests, Fire Fighter Equipment, Smoke Detectors,
Re: (Score:2)
There is economics terminology for this, and I wish people would use it.
Pro-space exploration people [1] seem to be saying that space exploration has the status of a national or global "public good", whose benefits can't be captured by private organizations and therefore will be underfunded by the private sector compared to how much benefit can be so created.
Anti-space
Re: (Score:2)
Pro-space exploration people [1] seem to be saying that space exploration has the status of a national or global "public good", whose benefits can't be captured by private organizations and therefore will be underfunded by the private sector compared to how much benefit can be so created.
No, I think you may have missed the point --- when people say space travel is "more important than economic considerations", I don't think they're claiming there is a "public good" at all, but rather, that we do it for re
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Broken window fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that economics provides no real way to quantify the relative benefits of either space exploration or curing childhood leukemia, apart from the obvious jobs created, non-stick pans, boring etc. How do you economically measure the magnificence of space travel or the fulfillment of human ambition? Can you put a value on knowing how the Earth looks from space?
By the way I am a medical researcher, and although I think my work is valuable, I often wish my job was more about achieving something positive for mankind, rather than just preventing bad things from happening. I also sometimes am involved in health economic assessments, and to see a year of healthy life expressed in its worth in $$ is also quite depressing.
Re: (Score:2)
Only if the results were donated to science.
Actually, there's a more subtle fallacy there (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a more subtle version or relative of the broken window there. The fallacy is assuming that those jobs wouldn't have been created by someone else, for another purpose.
The thing is, since we've been Keynesian [wikipedia.org] all along, all the governments have known about the Phillips curve [wikipedia.org] too. In fact, applied it.
The short and skinny is that there's an interdependency between inflation and unemployment. So for more than half a century what all governments did was try to stay at a point of their choosing on that curve. That's the reason the Federal Reserve tries to keep inflation at a given point, for example. Because too much inflation is bad by itself, but too little creates unemployment.
So in doing so, it fixes the employment where it wants it too.
Basically if those jobs hadn't been created by the space program, then they would have been created somewhere else. Not the same jobs, mind you, but a roughly equal number anyway.
The even more insidious part of the "but it created jobs!!!" sophistry is that it tries to imply that something was gained where nothing would have been created instead otherwise. People already nod and imagine that all the things those people achieved in those jobs, are surely better than nothing at all, because they wouldn't even be employed without a space program. Which just isn't so. Those people would have been employed, and would have produced _something_ in all this time, with or without a space program. Each job there, came at the expense of exactly one job somewhere else. Every 8 hours day spent reviewing why the shuttle's heat tiles broke, are 8 hours that weren't spent (by that guy or someone else) on some other project.
A point could still be made whether we benefited more from those jobs, than from the alternate history version without a space program. Unfortunately, none of us knows what would have really happened in an alternate history. Maybe all those jobs would have been cabbie and McDonalds jobs instead. In that case, sure, we're better off with them working (directly or indirectly) for NASA instead. But at least theoretically it's equally possible that they would have worked on some better project instead. Maybe in that parallel universe without a space program, all those smart people worked on fusion power instead and now have cheap energy everywhere and a bunch of innovative electronics trickled to other domains from _that_ research. We don't know.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
At some point in the future, that exponential growth of a market economy and the fixed size of the planet are going to crash, hard. We either transition to a flat, non-growth economy, or leave the planet in search of more resources. It's as simple as that.
Re: (Score:2)
As to the fallacy itself I can't entirely agree with it. It's not as simple a problem as it appears. Often people will not circulate money as quickly as could be desired. Often the money will be spent in such a way that it is circulated through only a small part of society. Perhaps by circulating the money among tradesmen (a lower segment of society) before it migrates to th
The Late Carl Sagan's Argument (Score:5, Insightful)
But anyway, at some point in that book, he talks about ordering this novel device that is a world in a globe. It's a nutrient mix in water with some sort of tiny aquatic animals. But the globe is sealed. The instructions are to leave it where sunlight can hit it and let nature do the rest. So Sagan puts it on his desk.
The next day, the water is foggy. Soon after it is teaming with microscopic life.
But after a short amount of time, the globe goes silent and there is a dark residue on the glass with nothing else in the water. Sagan pondered if the earth had a similar "maximum capacity." Now, there are differences, we can cite different natural processes that replace what we take making them a replenishable resource. But our numbers and pollution threaten them. He also discusses population control and ends up with the general conclusion that war, diseases, natural disasters and the like will cap us out somewhere around 2010. I, unfortunately, don't see our growth slowing as much as he projected.
In fact, it made so much sense to me that, at the age of fifteen, I wrote a letter to my Minnesota senators urging them to push for more spending to NASA & even subsidizing the private sector--after all, how many billions go into defense? Surely some of that could be better spent to begin the lengthy process of insuring that we will not have a glass covering over the earth. My words fell on deaf ears as I received no response. I don't believe I've written a letter to a politician higher than the county level since then although I have received a letter from the vice president for completing the Eagle Scout Award
The point is that if we continue down the path we are taking with pollution, don't invest in space travel and continue to procreate, we are sitting in a glass casing. It's only a matter of time before we put ourselves in a near suicide contention with constrained resources. If we don't have peaceful space exploration and means of growing outwards, our only solutions are war, mass genocide, famine, disease and many horrible ugly scenarios.
I still see the need for making extraterrestrial planets sustainable to human growth and development.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I have also found that people in government respond better to faxes (about narrow issues and better yet specific bills) that they respond to emails or phone calls. I usually snail mail letters on important issues. Given the right tech faxing is just like emailing and isn't as inconvenient to send as a snail mail.
You can find out about the specific bills and about voting records on OpenCongress.Org
We don't need people (Score:4, Insightful)
It has changed before and it will change again, homo sapiens or no.
In my opinion, the capricious nature of Nature is an even better argument for extra-terrestrial human colonization.
In other words, saying we need to develop space travel because we are screwing up this planet is pretty lame. A big rock can fall from the cosmos next month and kill us all. That should be motivation enough.
Re: (Score:2)
We're not screwing up this planet. We're probably not even capable of really screwing up this planet. It's a matter of time scale... given a few million years, the Earth will recover from whatever we've done.
On the other hand, we are perfectly capable of making the Earth terminally uncomfortable for ourselves, for the next few hundreds or thousands of years.
That's not to deny the terminal inconvenience of big rocks, either.
On the other hand, the Co
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Launching 5 billion people into space would take all the energy and bankrupt the planet. I agree that we need to branch out, but more as a hedge against wars and asteroids, not overpopulation. Unless we find super-cheap energy, moving existing crowds into space is a medicine worse than the disease.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm pretty sure that Greece has telephones. They certainly have a country code assigned to them. I'm sure they built telephones there at some point in their history, even if now they just import them from countries with cheaper labor.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see how this is supports an argument for *publicly* funded spa
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You're right: Influenza, AIDS, SARS, West Nile Virus, H5N1... sooner or later one of these beauties is going to come along and we're not going to be able to treat it. However, that sort of argument is never going to make anyone pay attention in a world where yet-to-be-invented technologies are invoked as a panacea for global warming.
You really don't have to look very deep into history to see that money is always the driver for expansion and colonisation. Fore example, Britain was exporting religious nuts
I've Seen All I Need to See (Score:3, Insightful)
Get out of your basement and do some traveling.
Well, I know I'm not supposed to feed the trolls but ... I have been to the boundary waters canoe area twice. For two weeks, we went about 50 miles in towards Canada from Minnesota. Beautiful. Just unbelievably beautiful. Northern Minnesota soil used to have a higher moisture content than the everglades. Yeah, hard to believe, huh? Well, the settlers came along and cut drainage ditches into it so they could farm it. Used to just be switch grass and sorghum and the like, now they were growing beans a
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Baloney. Complete and utter baloney. If you don't believe that the earth has limited resources and finite carrying capacity, get some common sense, read some Malthus, or take a look in a biology book. We might be fine for the nearby future, but an unsustainable earth appears to be an inevitability. The earth cannot, will not sustain human life forever. The birth of this planet only provided it with so many resources, and our unregulated consumption paints a very bleak future for us. The problem is further c
private spaceflight (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Just imagine what would have happened if we had tried to go to the moon with tax breaks and encouragement. We would have been laughed out of the space race.
Re: (Score:2)
How about this, "If you can get to an astro body and exploit it for a profit, it's yours."
All of a sudden there's a huge interest in space. The Russians would have been the first to the Moon. But we would have set up mining colonies, settlements, antenna arrays...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Basic research is almost always done with government funding, mainly because the purpose is to gain knowledge, not to make money.
Governments are inefficient in providing funds for research.
The governments award grant to whoever is friends with a member of parliament etc... even if the research is bogus.
Research funding should come from rich nerds and gentleman scientists who actually care about science and have the funds to pursue their dreams. The public can also donate funds to not-for-profit associations to support scientific research. Governments could just encourage people to donate funds and time towards a cause. But
private industry only does TOURISM-mod parent down (Score:4, Insightful)
parent is a troll...doesn't provide even the most basic support for his contention
please mod down
on topic, i think private space exploration is great...too bad no one is really doing it. right now, the only active presence of private industry in space is for SPACE TOURISM, not exploration...it's all about some rich guy doing a sub-orbital shot and going 'whooopppeee!' during his 10 minutes of 0g
space tourism is not the same as true exploration, no private industry has any legit plans/funding to actually DO any exploration...all they have is a power point presentation and a sales pitch...slashdot has discussed this thoroughly...can't we accept this and move on now?
citizens can go to space without governments (Score:2)
doesn't provide even the most basic support for his contention
You don't expect me to write essays on Slashdot, do you? Raising an opinion you don't like is not trolling.
no private industry has any legit plans/funding to actually DO any exploration
Private spaceflight isn't only about business companies, it's also about not-for profit associations of citizens. I am a member of the British Interplanetary Society and the Planetary Society. Who launched Cosmos-1? Planetary Society did! Who studied nuclear pulse propulsion? British Interplanetary Society did! And now Planetary Society is going to launch Cosmos-2. So, we can go to space wit
Re: (Score:2)
Funnily, that's why I don't want to leave this task to politicians.
It might be but we'll never know ... (Score:2)
"Everyone seems to be in agreement! I would think so being that 4 of the 5 panel memebers are current or former NASA employees! Perhaps more care should have been taken in ensuring the diversity of the panel. There must be some arguments to the contrary out there and I'd be curious to see those debated as well.
-- Posted by Mike Mogie"
Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
- G. Scott Hubbard, professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University and former director of the NASA Ames Research Center
- Joan Vernikos, a member of the Space Studies Board of the National Academy and former director of NASA's Life Sciences Division
- Kathleen M. Connell, a principal of The Connell Whittaker Group, a founding team member of NASA's Astrobiology Program, and former policy director of the Aerospace States Association
- Keith Cowing, founder and editor of NASAWatch.com and former NASA space biologist.
- David M. Livingston, host of The Space Show, a talk radio show focusing on increasing space commerce and developing space tourism
- John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute and acting director of the Center for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs
They all said yes. Who would have thought.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They weren't just asked if space exploration is worthwhile, they were asked why it is worthwhile.
So, yes, it's not surprising that they all said "yes," but their reasons why are still worth reading. And that's what the story is about, reasons in support of space exploration.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose that in your world we have football players commenting the merit of building of new stadiums.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like a self-solving problem.
All the eggs in a basket.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I loved the "Why do it now?" question of a senator... you can ask the same question every day, except the day that is already too late.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if things dont go very wrong in the short/middle term, will be side effects, developing bombs that travel further we got worldwide communication after all.
About diverting money, investing here dont mean to stop worrying about
Oferchrisakes... (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's ask Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, and Attila the Hun if Genocide is | Why not ask some people whose mortgages and careers are not so completely ied up in the venture. What a dumb article. I guess it's just our wonderful News Media coughing up blood and not able to get it up anymore.... as usual...
RS
Re: (Score:2)
"Let's ask Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, and Attila the Hun if Genocide is |"
Ooops. I wrote KEWL in 1337, but I forgot /. uses html, so the 1337 ended up disappearing. Argh.
RS
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The point is not that they think it's worth it, the point is why it's worth it.
Who would you ask for the reasons for space exploration if not those working on it?
I would ask INFORMED individuals who are not involved with it. I would also ask CRITICS of space exploration. Asking the cheerleaders why the football team is cool is not insightful. It is predictable. I could give a large number of well founded and well researched reasons why I think space exploration is worth the money, and my c
Define "Worth it" (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way, I've seen someone talking about private space exploration, but we must remember the amazingly high costs and the relatively high chances of failure in any specific operation. There is no way a private "for profit" organization will take such expenses with this odds against it, not until it's relatively safe and simple due to government-funded research. It is no coincidence that most modern inventions (computers, for example) were made by government-funded bodies or at least, by a company that it's main costumer is the government.
we better hurry up and colonize the galaxy (Score:2)
This is really a debate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is really a debate? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with your assertion though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is really a debate? (Score:5, Insightful)
So if I did my math right, and Iraq is up to about a trillion, NASA could have been funded some 55+ year (not including interest). Or double NASA's funding 27 1/2 years. What a waste.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And what are these conservative investments that you'd put a trillion dollars into? Government bonds?
You do realize that taking a trillion dollars out of circulation just might have some effect on the overall economy and the value of a dollar, no?
You talk about a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon it starts to add up to real money.
All of this is funny on Freakonomics.com (Score:2)
Because their core philosophy is incentives and disincentives, and suddenly they're stuck in the middle of the aforementioned broken window fallacy.
I'm surprised that the same guys who figured out why NFL coaches rarely make risky calls (the coaches make choice that defer blame, mostly to players), can't really figure out what gives with the whole space flight thing.
NASA has been the subject of too much blame. It's that simple.
Since the Challenger accident, NASA has been on a losing streak. Except for
Disincentives. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Heck, if the American beef and wheat industries can invert the food pyramid, and if the CIA and military c
The first trillionaire will be made in space (Score:3, Insightful)
Hogwash (Score:2)
I'd like to see more detailed evidence of this. In the past, there have been some "creative accounting" under such claims.
Space exploration will eventually allow us to establish a human civilization on another world (e.g., Mars) as a hedge against the type of ca
Three simple words (Score:2)
It is more important than most anything (Score:2)
Two words: (Score:2)
Bringing back technology (Score:4, Funny)
It's better than some things we spend money on (Score:2)
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy (Score:2)
The Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson covers a thousand year period from when humans first colonize Mars. It presents a pretty plausible, hard science exploration of that millenium, from the technology to do so at the start, through the social changes that occur on Earth (struggling with massive overpopulation) and Mars (the development of planetary polity), towards the general colonization of the solar system (moons, space stations, and asteroids also inhabited).
It certainly
they asked about MANNED, got answers about ALL (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the answers and justifications include manned and unmanned exploration. If you take the benefits from unmanned exploration out of the responses from the selected pundits, the answers are much less emphatic.
(not my view, just an observation that the question wasn't properly answered)
OK so let's extend that... (Score:3, Funny)
Soooo... let's make Jane Fonda a budget item.
sloppy thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:sloppy thinking ... prestige (Score:2)
Every country likes to think that it has a superiority in one area or another. Using progress in (manned) space exploration as a prop is part of Kennedy's legacy. It's probably good for another coulple of decades - while people who were young adults during the 60's are still alive. After that I think it'll become much less important both to the people as a whole and to therefore to the politicians. Unless NASA can pull of
All dead if we can not get out of solar system (Score:2)
If you want to know why read a news paper.
We can not get out of the solar system using rockets. Only a fundamental advance in physics can get us out. Therefore money should not be spent on cheap tricks with rockets. Money should be spent on fundamental physics. The builders of the UFOs have figured out how to do it. Therefore it is possible and we should work on figuring it out.
The physicists should play it like a bridge hand, that is, assume the
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it beats blowing each other to hell... (Score:2)
Or eat.
Space travel isn't feasible (Score:2)
Space travel with chemical fuels just barely works. The energy density just isn't there. No matter what you do, your vehicle is almost all fuel tank. That's why we need multistage rockets, weight-reduced to the point they're very fragile, to put dinky payloads in orbit at huge costs. There's been no fundamental improvement in big rockets in forty years. Arguably, rocketry peaked with the Saturn V.
Forty years is a long time. Aviation went from the Sopwith Camel to the Boeing 707 in 40 years. Computer
The only thing right about this article. (Score:2)
This is a great summary of the arguments regarding space exploration and my take on each argument.
Two issues arise here. First, the most likely sources of this sort of catastrophe are created by humans or preventable by our actions. If we spend our effort trying to allow the elite to escape the planet instead of trying to sav
bad arguments (Score:2)
You do not need "space exploration crews" on the space station do conduct global warming research. In fact, anything in earth orbit can be done robotically or by telepresence.
In fact, the authors seem to presume that "space exploration" means "manned space ex
Why we should spend 1/2 of 1% of our budget (Score:3, Informative)
Interviewer asks: "Why should we spend money on space? Why do we need to spend billions building space stations, the ships to get there, unmanned probes, why are we interested in finding and someday visiting other planets in our solar system and, someday, outside it? What's the point? Why have a space program at all?" And I always mentally add the unspoken question of "why does the space program constantly get bad press for using, at most, 1% of the federal budget and why does it still get reamed out for being a money-waster when we spend trillions on killing people, which is not as productive and doesn't inspire dreamers? Please explain to these shortsighted idiots why it's important."
The answer was:
"Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu and Einstein and Morobuto and Buddy Holly and Aristophenes
What the hell is with trolls like this? (Score:3, Insightful)
News flash: the future matters.
Are you really that oblivious that you have to post arrogant, rude, and profanity-laden troll responses on message forums when people dare to think beyond their own tiny little world?
Who still has to wonder? (Score:2)
We're floating in a big not-so-empty void. I'm 25, and still if I look up at the skies, or feel the sun on my skin I feel frustratingly inable to "reach to touch the stars". I try to closely follow NASA's projects, my day isn't complete without the Astronomy Picture of the day [nasa.gov] filling me with childish wonder about the world and reality we live in. The universe is magnificent, at least what we get to see from it thusfar, and there's so much more to be learned and seen.
It's hard to understa
Apollo as a military demonstration (Score:2)
Whatever the merits of a demonstration vs having taken the lives of civilians, the U.S. did conduct a demonstration of the Bomb, for the benefit of the Soviets and others.
Bikini is a widely-used term for a certain type of two-piece women's bathing suit, but is the name of a place in the Marshall Islands where one of the
Re:They asked ..they didn't , read the question (Score:2)
Which is a whole lot different, as it excludes unmanned exploration
Re: (Score:2)
Dude. The Sun will burn out in about 5 billion years. If we don't start pushing Space Exploration now, we'll never get the funding through Congress.
Re: (Score:2)
unless you think that sending richers into low orbit has the same social and scientific benefit as conducting real investigations into the nature and origins of the cosmos.