Space travel is a luxury, not a necessity. We’ve got all kinds of problems on the rock let alone what we may gain in the stars. Some things may have to go on the back burner for a while until the funds are available. The porterhouse steak dinner has shifted to smaller less expensive cuts for the moment.
wy69
> Space travel is a luxury, not a necessity. <
Good post. A robust space program would be good for the country. But as you noted, it’s not a necessity. As an analogy, a family deeply in debt should not be borrowing money to pay for educational vacations. Get out of debt first.
(And yes, I know the government funds even worse programs. Cut ‘em all until we’re out of debt.)
There is a national security component to space. Like Air supremacy, space awareness and dominance are vital to our defense and to our war fighters in ways most people do not think about. NASA contributes some to this, but not all that much with DoD doing much on their own.
We have sent many probes to the other planets and learned much, but the payoff for more has probably diminished, and NASA has too many desires between launch systems, ISS, going back to the moon, and deep space exploration. I would argue that going back to the moon is the only one that has national security value.
Space travel is not even the subject of the video. NASA has solved many many problems - been in a hospital lately? Used a cell phone? All that, and a list that would fill pages, are problems that NASA science has solved or made better.
No more, as remaining science problems will come from China now. You’ll be happy no doubt.
There will be no space travel in the next 100 years. First they need to solve propulsion needs. As long as we travel as far as possible, and with just enough to get home, mankind is just not ready.