>>>Nothing is stopping you and your like minded citizens from forming a corporation WITH YOUR OWN MONEY and exploring space to your heart’s content. My problem is not with space exploration per se, but with the people who think that they shoudl rob their fellow taxpayers to do it. Bad enough to be robbed to support some a$$hole welfare recipient who made a lifetime of bad choices, but then supporting a bunch of engineers and PhDs who could actually earn a living seems even more excessive.
The problem is that countries pay others to do exploration, and then the companies follow - as it has always been. Who paid Columbus? Who paid Lewis and Clark? Who made the space station? After foothold has been established, then comes the companies.
>>Lewis and Clark were paid by TAXPAYER DOLLARS.
>So what? You think the space program is in any way analogous to L&C? Ha ha.
Very much so. I’m sure Lewis and Clark’s discovery of Yellowstone was analogous to Armstrong’s first step on the moon - it was all a discovery and a foothold for people to later follow.
>>Undoubtedly. In fact it has happened before, and appears to happen on average ever couple of hundred million years, but look there is still life on the planet, and who is to say that the vast wealth required to explore space would not be better survive a disaster right here. There are much more likely catastrophes than a meteor strike. (like a second 0 term)
I am in total agreement about the second Obama term. However, a devastating meteor strike, a spread of modified bird flu, or any other disaster necessitates another family at other places to carry on.
On this we will NEVER be in agreement. I keep coming back to the inflation adjusted cost of returning anything from the moon, and of course the fact that the moon consists of unremarkable (from a resource viewpoint)rocks and dirt. You can get rocks and dirt without paying $4.5 million an ounce for it.
that countries pay others to do exploration, and then the
SO let the Chinese screw up their economy to do it, and then follow them. They're currently more capitalistic than we are, so I'm sure they would not be adverse to foreign investment if there were anything worth investing in to be found there.
Meteor strike
If the dinosaurs had technology, then they probably would have survived without leaving the planet. There have been volcanically induced "summerless" years in the past, and humanity survived.