That's a great sound bite, but don't avoid my question I clearly laid out. Further expansion to space where? Do you have an idea what distances are involved to the next solar system?
It's a sound bite that accurately reflects reality. In anycase what I mean is push out to the other planets and moons in this solarsystem. Earth isn't the only planet here.
Then solve them here on Earth first, and apply them to space.
Doesn't always work that way. For example, the Apollo project pushed a lot of the early research done on integrated circuits in order to miniaturize the then monstrous computers to fit on the Apollo capsule. After words that, combined with increased engineering talent that occurred from being inspired by the project, helped drive the computer industry to be where it is today, and of course one of the side effects of this has been greatly improved research efficiency, especially in medical research.
That doesn't justify the spending on human based space exploration.
Yes it does because the research being done has helped to push back the frontiers of science that much more. That and the technological developments have made it worthwhile, certainly much more worthwhile than the military adventures we've gotten ourselves into.
Why do we need to build stuff in space?
Any number of reasons. R&D facilities, the people that live and work there, other people that want to live in space (or the moon or wherever), space probes, exploration ships to further explore the outer areas of the solar system, probably a few others too,
Um, okay... I don't buy this argument. What 'potential' to develop space. Apart from satellites, its a big tourist attraction.
Space has a lot of space, but more importantly it also has resources. Most of those resources wouldn't be sent back to Earth, but the more valuble ones would be.
I never said to throw money at anyone. Where did I say that? Please, do not put words in my mouth.
It was implied. You said we should instead do things like cure poverty and so forth instead of sending people into space. The implication being that money being spent on sending people into space would instead be spent on trying to do that. I'm saying we've, for the most part, been doing that for more than 30 years without effect.
Nuclear energy isn't a silver bullet.
Actually it is, maybe more so than you realize. Combining this with the electrification of most parts of our private transportation system would vastly reduce carbon emissions.
Do you have a source for this claim? I'm also not talking about going around making clean water for other countries on tax payer money, so I hope you did not interpret my post that way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_purification
We have clean drinking water not just because we developed the science and technology to do it, but we actually built the facilities to make it happen. Poor countries in the world generally don't have access to clean drinking water because they didn't build the infrastructure needed, and the massive amounts of aid money that have been sent to them to do stuff like this disappeared into a few corrupt hands.
And as for your second point, yes, that is exactly what you are saying. The money for manned space exploration has come from taxpayer dollars, so therefore if it isn't being spent on that and instead being spent on making clean drinking water, by definition it is using taxpayer money to make clean drinking water in other countries.
and they definitely will not see another star in person,
Never is a long time. 200 years ago people said we could never fly, 75 years ago people said we would never break the sound barrier, and we managed to do those things. Obviously there's a difference in technical difficulty, but the concept is the same.
We could call it the Whippersnapper Tax for Exploration.
