While I agree, I wonder if it is profitable yet. Sometimes the state needs to subsidize projects with vision which are not yet profitable in the private sector, IMO.
Columbus wouldn't have sailed to the New World if it hadn't been for Queen Isabella's funding.
Columbus wouldn't have sailed to the New World if it hadn't been for Queen Isabella's funding.
Let's not forget Thomas Jefferson, usually touted by the uberConservatives as one of our greatest Presidents (and I concur). He pulled some questionable antics to gather together government money to fund the Corps of Discovery. If one were cynical enough, one could tear apart his motivations.
As I said earlier, government funding and support for exploration goes back a long as the country itself. So there is quite a bit of precedent.
I believe it was almost 150 years before the New World started to return some minor products and profits back to the colonising states, and even then only by force and cruelty.
If you will recall, NASA vehemently opposed the 'purchase' of a seat on a round-trip to ISS, even though they went through all of the requirements for qualification, and even then NASA forbid access to the 'American' side. I'll admit to being somewhat ambivalent about that scenario; [can't remember the guy's name-LOL] but the underlying attitude from the US bureaucrats was pitiful and demeaning to the whole enterprise.
Great ideas being passed around here for mankind's future, but the socialist leanings of our leaderships make me fear for the type of future our far descendants will inherit. Privatization and Capitalism seem to be very, very low on their agendas.