[DanielBMarkham]

"Earth always has been, and in all likelihood will forever be, screwed up."

Agreed. Not only screwed up, but screwed up in multiple ways. Throwing more money at the dozens of money sinks here does nothing to significantly help ensure our long-term survival. It might be the right thing to do, and over time continuing to do things like this may mean that mankind enters into some new wondrous universe free from pain and suffering. But right now, right here? We need an insurance policy. We need to get the hell off this ball of mud.

Want to know why the space program never went anywhere? Because back in the 60s and 70s, people said exactly the same thing "We need to spend our money on earthbound problems"

We've spent trillions on those problems. They are still here. In fact, the places we've made the most progress are the places we didn't try to fix.

I'm not in favor of a new huge national mission. I think a huge national goal to decrease LEO launch costs by 99.9% or more would be worth spending tens or hundreds of billions of dollars on. But heck, if we narrowed our focus to just that, we could probably get it done a lot cheaper than if we went down the mission creep road again.

[ethbro]

To be accurate, we did go to the moon and do the other things.

The other things at the time happened to be ensuring people weren't lynched for the color of their skin and ensuring Vietnam didn't fall to communism on the current administration's watch.

[DanielBMarkham]

We did the other things. You are correct.

Care to go back to that porch in the Appalachians that LBJ sat on when he declared his war on poverty -- a war that has cost trillions -- and take a look at the results?

Or heed Bono, when he states the obvious that dumping money on things because they are politically important is a counter-indicative factor of success of the effort. In fact, just look at the evidence.

Political systems exist for political reasons.

The danger, as I have outlined it, is that instead of spending money in some kind of mathematical way, we behave as humans always have, and spend money based on immediate pain or rewards.

That's fucked. We need to leave. Now.