But that’s not quite right. If there were a market demand for the kind of service SpaceShipOne could provide, then it would still exist. But there ain’t. The X-Prize was a stunt.

The economics of space flight are such that the only way you can make a profit is if you don’t have to send a product back to Earth. Satellites are great in this respect, as their product is massless radio waves. Also, since commercial satellites don’t have to be brought back intact, the launch systems and overall design can be much, much simpler than what is needed for manned flight.

Sending people to Mars is just another stunt—something we might be able to do, but which wouldn’t lead to much of anything. Proposing it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what we can do in space or, more accurately, what it makes sense to do in space. (Just because we can do something dowsn’t mean it makes sense to do it.)

We’d be better off sending out a fleet of robotic explorers to study the composition of various asteroids as well as prospect for minerals on the moon’s surface. I wanna know whether space can support us before we start planning on settling the damn place.

Anyone who’s read Feynman’s second volume of autobiography knows how dangerously bureaucratic NASA became after the Apollo era. The fact that money is still being spent on the ‘Space Station’ and that the head of NASA can talk about going to the moon again with a straight face, shows that it still is.

2. Yes humans are more flexible than robots, but our fingers aren’t, especially when wearing space suit gloves. It’s pretty stupid to send humans into space to give instructions to robots now that we have mastered the technology of sending and receiving radio waves. Leave the brains on the ground, send the robotic fingers up there.

3. If I lose my keys and then go fishing. It is possible that I will catch a fish, slice it open and find my keys. However, I would probably do better if I looked under the cushions on the sofa. In much the same way, if your goal is to save lives, it is probably better to put money into stopping AIDS and malaria than it is to shoot people into space.

4. Don’t give up hope! Yes humans will colonize space, but we need safer and more affordable technology in order to do it. In only twenty years time we might have the technology to build a space elevator, Japanese companies will invent robots that can build mars bases for us, Indian researchers will develop biotech that will enable self sustaining life support, a Turkish man living in Malta will work out how to heal a spinal cord after it’s been riddled with radiation. But to try to do it now is like buiding wings out of wax. They’re just going to melt. It may be glorious, but it will be murder.

Her face and arms began to swell and Whitey’s on the moon.

I can’t pay no doctor bills but Whitey’s on the moon.

Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still while Whitey’s on the moon.

The man just upped my rent last night cuz Whitey’s on the moon.

No hot water, no toilets, no lights but Whitey’s on the moon.

I wonder why he’s uppin me. Cuz Whitey’s on the moon?

I was already givin’ him fifty a week but now Whitey’s on the moon.

Taxes takin’ my whole damn check,

The junkies makin’ me a nervous wreck,

The price of food is goin’ up,

And as if all that shit wasn’t enough:

A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.

Her face and arms began to swell but Whitey’s on the moon.

Was all that money I made last year for Whitey on the moon?

How come there ain’t no money here? Hmm! Whitey’s on the moon.

Ya know, I just about had my fill of Whitey on the moon.

I think I’ll send these doctor bills

airmail special….

to Whitey on the moon.

And it’s the long term which is important; For sake of argument, forget living on Mars, maybe for a century or two, say (the timescales we’re dealing with here are in the millenia at least), but right now there are useful, non-glamourous programs like tracking near-earth asteroids which demand a space focus and could save billions of lives.

As for the commonly held belief that if NASA were scrapped tomorrow all the money would be used to eradicate poverty…well, I applaud some people’s faith in humanity. But I would suggest that there are many far more egregious examples of waste right here on earth that do absolutely zero to advance the Human condition. I am sure you could build a Mars probe or two for the cost of the USS Jimmy Carter, for instance…

And as andrew c and Heppenheimer said, NASA isn’t all that good at it.

If there were no NASA, SpaceshipOne would still exist.

They are. Decades ago, I read an essay by Wendell Berry to the effect that space exploration/colonization/industrialization is bad per se. It went like this:

1) humans are destructive and wasteful.
2) the more wealthy they are the more wasteful and destructive they become.
3) space industry would make them infinitly wealthy.
4) therefore whey would become infinitly wasteful and destructive.
5) 4 is bad.
6) therefore we shouldn’t attempt to move into space.

A good use of NASA’s budget would be tax breaks for corporations to accomplish NASA’s previously defined missions.

This strikes me as completely invalid reasoning. Remember “If we can put a man on the moon, then we can find a cure for cancer?”.