[warfangle]

Human space travel is a waste of money from a capital market sense, perhaps.

Think of all we've learned by putting humans into space. Think of all we'd have to learn to put humans permanently on the moon - from long-term temperature regulation to ecosystem habitats and materials science.

It's not the destination of the journey that matters. It's what we need to figure out in order to get there that does.

[quanticle]

So what, specifically, about space travel would cause us to make those discoveries about temperature regulation and ecosystem habitats? Unless there's something specifically about hard vacuum and freefall that makes it easier to study these topics, they could be more easily and far more cheaply studied on Earth.

[warfangle]

Sorry, I was writing more in context of permanent outposts due to recent political rhetoric.