[Amezarak]

> There's no major financial incentive go to the moon or mars, other than would-be space tourists or colonists that are willing and able to pay for their own trip.

I don't think there's any incentive at all. What reason is there for anyone to go to Mars other than to say they did, at enormous expense and technical effort? Best case scenario, after spending tens of trillions of dollars, we're able to build a base that needs continual resupply from Earth and in which you're basically living in a box - you'll never be able to set foot outside except in a suit, worse even than our Antarctic bases. And even then, we can expect long-term health effects. Well, you can live in a box on Earth.

The reason there isn't major funding for space is because most people don't care all that much. It's a nice thing to have, and I wish more people did support increasing this sort of funding, but it's perfectly understandable why most people don't want to contribute significant percentages of GDP to a scifi dream.

[AlecSchueler]

We're not talking about a vanity Mars visit, we're talking about building an X-ray observatory. The JWST has already been phenomenal, it feels like it's delivering an almost daily barrage of discoveries, many of which are already affecting long standing understandings of the universe. The benefit of these projects is that they actually help us to answer the basic questions of existence in a way nothing else does.

[Amezarak]

Yes, as I said, I wish projects like this did have better funding, but the comment I was replying to mentioned going to the Moon or Mars.

[ziddoap]

While I mostly agree with what you've said in respect to a Mars base -- I think you are leaving out a critical benefit of these types of endeavors.

The technology invented and/or adapted to facilitate these enormous space projects is very often applicable in other fields or daily life.

Some examples from the past include metallic glass (now used in power plants), translucent polycrystalline alumina (now used in invisible braces), water purification technologies, the coatings used on launch pads was adapted for use in coating steel for high-rise building projects, etc. The list is quite long.

There are hundreds of spin-off technologies, many of which are used daily, which originated from various ambitious space projects.