From the image description: The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there’s no good reason to go into space–each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
I wonder, if all the money we’ve spent fighting the war on drugs, and/or the war on terror were instead spent on R&D grants & loans for space exploration & exploitation, would we be busy mining asteroids and inflating them into space stations?
You don’t need to put that money into actual R&D, you need to put it into math and science instruction in elementary through high school, then into the Engineering colleges after that. When you have enough physicists and engineers, you will get your breakthroughs in both theory and the hardware it supports, and we will get off this God-forsaken planet. I suspect, as Gene Roddenberry did, that filling those exploratory spacecraft with scientists, engineers and a FEW warriors will bring the results you look for. Performance artists and politicians need not apply.
No utopians either. I hear way too many people say “we need to fix our probl;ems here on Earth before we start going to the stars”. They -and their massive entitlement/ wealth redistribution system- are what keeps us from funding our path to the stars. Those tyypes bitch about the military-industrial complex, but at least those people working in the industry were working on productive jobs, not just being handed government checks for staying off the streets.
Agreed
Also, opening up space will create massive opportunities for people to get out of poverty. The problems here at home will start to self-correct a lot once we open up the resource pool.
Also, if the Earth-bound socialists overstep their bounds, we can annihilate their capitols easily. Gravity wells. HA!
Does this mean colonizing the space? An ambitious idea. But first, instead of spending for space explorations, let us use that money to rehabilitate mother Earth.
Problem is, RPS, that as long as people keep having babies and consuming resources found on or in old Gaia, we’ll never be able to rehabilitate her. We’ll still need to mine for resources, and clear land for agriculture, and drill for oil, etc. If we get off this rock, even if it’s just within the solar system, we greatly expand our available resources from off world sources, which would mean we wouldn’t need to hit up the planet we live on so much. Additionally, the increase in available wealth will provide even more money for rehabilitation.