Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn’t we do those things directly, without going there?
It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.
I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that’s why we poors support it, but that doesn’t “pay the bills.” What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?
Why? There are plenty of reasons. If Earth is the only place that ever will be habitable or the only place ‘we’ are stuck on, there will come a point where that’s going to be a massive problem, and it seems that time is coming pretty quickly. So figuring out how to explore and expand just beyond earth would be pretty important to the long term survival of the species.
Despite the best efforts of Humans, the Earth will always be better for life than Mars or the Moon ever could. I guess ‘long term’ is a long time but the biggest danger to Human life is still Humans.