[giantrobot]

Precious? The primary elements "wasted" in space exploration are aluminum, silicon, hydrogen, and oxygen. All of those things Earth is just lousy with. Even launching a rocket a day wouldn't put any sort of dent in the availability of any of those elements. A rocket a day also wouldn't meaningfully add to levels of harmful pollution. The Earth is really big. It has lots of pretty much everything.

Doing stuff in space is expensive in an economic sense but it's not really all that resource intensive. Most of the cost is paying people to design, test, fabricate, and operate the hardware.

[imhoguy]

Ok, but to put a rocket in space you need a surrounding economy on a specific technological level which is costly resourcewise. Could SpaceX or NASA happen in e.g. Congo, Nepal or Papua New Guinea alone?

[jjk166]

Well okay, we can stop exploring space when we dismantle the entire industrialized world.