| Rath said: I also don't get some conservatives sometimes. You complain about the public sector doing anything but when it drops something like space exploration you suddenly exclaim that the private sector couldn't possibly do it and the public sector must. I'm half convinced some people will complain no matter what the government decides. |
Do you realize the difference between the two, or are you just trying to complain?
NASA costs $15 billion a year. It has huge scientific, economic, industrial, and employment benefits. The military costs $700 billion a year and provides far less. The American education system spends ~$600 billion and earns less due to efficency.
When we attack programs, we're usually attacking major pet projects by the government that cost US taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Federal expenditures were $3.2 billion dollars. I am complaining about a $10 billion program over a 15 year period. There is a huge difference there.
Do I want the government to spend money? No. But I think that if the government is going to spend money, it'd be better to spend it on a space elevator or technology that makes us more competitive in the world. Heck, take the $10 billion and give it to SpaceX and tell them to go to the moon. Just do something more entreprenurial than what they are doing. Government expenses should be investing in society, not taking away from it. And unfortunately, 50% of government expenditures do that. I feel that NASA is one of the scant few federal programs that does society good.
@Khan - For solar-based energy, you could beam it back down to earth, or collect it in space to process it for viable endeavours in-situ and transfer the energy-intensive materials back to Earth, alieviating some of the energy requirements on Earth.
@Montana - I'm glad you learned something 
One thing to consider is that when your talking space resources, your not only talking minerals and tangible resources, but the characteristics of space itself - zero/low gravity and a perfect vaccum. Those two things are very costly to reproduce on Earth in large quantities, but can be produced 'for free' in outer space. Those two characteristics may prove hundreds if not thousands of applications on Earth. Metal foam is the grandest example of that. Metal foam is insanely expensive on Earth due to requiring injection of molten metal with expensive compositions. Whereas zero g + a vaccum allow the foam to develop without need of expensive minerals. Metal foam would revolutionize structure and ship building as it would retain many structural qualities while reducing weight by 80-90%.
On the mineral side of things, many resources exist simply on the surface of the moon, or on the face of an asteroid. You want thousands of tons of titanium and uranium? You don't mine it, you sort it from lunar regolith.
Here is a resource map of the moon for Titanium:
The red areas are 10% titanium, by weight. Imagine a mining operation that involved 10% of your soil being Titanium! The other aspect is that we don't know what else is available on the moon.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
