[QUOTE=Lord Kuat]What else do I comment on, your mullet?[/QUOTE]

Amazing that he doesn't have one. Hah, you fail.

I'm gonna throw this out and say manned space exploration, while it may seem bold, adventurous, and exciting, is a waste.

Also, we may not be able to "solve all our problems", but come on, let's at least end world hunger before we pour hundreds of billions into something that actually has little scientific value.

World hunger will end when humanity is wiped out.

Firstly, Lord Kuat, you are a moron... Oops I'm sorry, let me spell it, it'll be easier for you M O R O N.

I have to agree with Rob and MBeggar, I currently see space travel as a waste at the moment.

Put the money into health care, education and defense.

Its still putting money into the space program but in a round about way.

rob made me do it

And it's about time too.

While it is indeed a noble thought that we can fix all the problems of the world, perhaps we need to accept that this will NEVER happen. The fact is that we NEED to develop a substantial off-world presence in order to avoid "keeping all our eggs in one basket", as it were.

I will say this. NASA's budget is about $16 billion a year. If this money were instead to be used to feed the hungry and cure diseases, I'd be all for it. Hell, they should have scrubbed the ISS and used that money for more down-to-Earth purposes; instead they have a multibillion dollar house trailer that goes around in circles and takes pictures of the weather. LEO is not where we should be focussing the efforts of the space program. But back to the main point, if we could use that $16 billion for better purposes, it would be great. The fact remains, however, that the vast majority of that money would go towards defense. Nobody with half a gram of common sense could possibly believe that the money would be used to end world hunger. As I stated before, it would be used so that the military could have a few more new fighter jets. If anyone can defend that and show me how it's better than exploring space, I'm all ears. But you can't.

In any case, this argument will soon become moot. Already, private companies are moving in on what used to be an entirely governmental area. In 50 years, I'd be surprised if NASA still existed, except maybe to act as a regulatory agency for commercial space ventures. And while people have every right to criticize how their tax money is spent, they don't have any grounds for complaining if Boeing or Scaled Composites or Google decides that they want to spend a billion dollars on an orbiting hotel or a moon base. And this is where the future is. Near-Earth is rich with opportunity for tourism; farther out there are untold quadrillions of tonnes of resources in the asteroids - the metal content of one 10-km asteroid (of which there are tens of thousands) alone could make mining on Earth redundant.

We also shouldn't forget the massive advancements in science and technology that could come from exploring space. Necessity is the mother of invention, and to explore further involves new levels of technology including more efficient power sources, stronger and lighter alloys, better computers... Eventually, it could be asteroid mining or settlement-building on Mars that drives the development of true nanotechnology - and if you really want to fix all the problems on Earth, nanotech is the place to start. Sure, this is all conjecture, but you can look at historical parallels, and even look at the technology that the space program has brought so far - I'm sure there's a comprehensive list on the internet somewhere, but off the top of my head I remember the Apollo missions giving us scratch-resistant glass and quartz watches. Sure, they may be just small, mundane things, but it's all part of our progress.

Besides, space exploration is cool. Nobody can argue with that.

Oh no I'm getting flamed on the internet, whatever can I do? How incredibly damaging to my self esteem. You win man, I can see that I am no match for you. Thank you for spelling out moron for me as well, that was very magnanimous of you.

Others have made my point better anyway, which is essentially in the name of progress things have to be sacrificed. As Kyle had said, it is possible to do both, so it's really not sacrifice in the strictest of terms. I don't see why anyone would blindly cut off space exploration because they had some notion that it was really damaging to necessities. If that was your train of thought, there is a lot more fat on the beurocratic side that can be trimmed. Why the space program is targeted is that it is just an easy solution, but more harmful in the long run.

Throwing money at things doesn't solve all the world's problems. And, as Rob said, it isn't just about money either. But the resouces taken up by the space program wouldn't really go far to solve other problems. You can't turn scientists and engineers from one profession to another. A person who is a phd in particle physics wouldn't have been a genetic engineer or a teacher by necessity. The space program really isn't stealing resources, because these resources can't just be moved around from one motive to another, unlike money. It could be that if our current efforts were organized well enough, our current budget and resource pool would be sufficent. It's very nearsighted to just cut things without treating root problems; it's like putting a bandaid on a festering wound.

I don't think anyone is saying that NASA's current resources should be given over to something else. I think people are saying that it would be foolish to spend a hundred billion dollars to send people back to the moon or five hundred billion to send people to Mars when we have far more pressing concerns here on earth.

Let's just forget about all of the things we have gotten from space travel that have helped to solve those problems.

Okay, cool.

Continue.

Space exploration has helped in a lot of technological advancements right? They spawned a lot of things like heart pacers and other things i've forgoten about.

Don't we have a seven trillion dollar deficit? Who's paying for that?

Well.

Do you want to solve the world's problems or pay off the debt? You can't do the former without spending money, and the latter would take all the money!