[Tialco]

Are you joking? Have you seen the amount of space ventures that have gone bankrupt? Try and start a rocket company and go look for funding. It's a terrible opportunity to create wealth in the short term (10/20/30 year timespan). However, in the 30-50 year timespan, it seems like a terrific opportunity to create wealth (perhaps rivaled only by nuclear fusion) if we can work our way up to sustainable/reusable rockets and colonies on Mars/Moons. If we can get asteroid operations set up and start exploring the rest of the solar system (and eventually the galaxy) then we can have a society without scarcity.

The main problem is, we will all probably die before we see the benefit (instead we'll see losses). So, how do we value the lives of posterity in comparison today.

I find it ironic how the same people who use the "think of the children" argument the most are also the most against investing in space exploration.

My bias is also that we should value posterity the same as we value humans alive today. But then again, we still can't even agree on the basic question of whether a life in Africa is worth the same as a life in the United States.

[sidcool]

I am glad our fathers and grandfathers and ancestors before that had the ability to see beyond their own shadows.

[Kaiyou]

Before you can do this you need to have accumulated wealth that you can spend. It's not a coincidence that the industrial revolution started where it did.