[usrbinbash]

> Only time will tell if either of these two missions were actually worth it.

No time required, we already know the answer: neither of these two goals is worth the enormeous pile of resources burned to achive it.

1. A permanent human presence on the moon serves what purpose exactly that Robots cannot do? If we want to set up shop there: Why not send robots and an automatic laboratory-repair-bay? It's the moon, we can even remote control the damn things with only 2 seconds latency! What excatly are humans supposed to do there, that robots cannot?

2. Go ask women in underpaid care work and people of color in underserved communities, what they think would benefit them, and the general sense of equality, more: Hundreds of billions of dollars poured into improving social services like adequate pensions for carework, childcare, better supervision programs against discrimination in the workplace, better educational systems, etc. OR hundreds of billions of dollars burned by space-billionaires to let some old politician say "We did it!" at a press conference?

[nathan_compton]

People who get miffed at putting women and poc in space also don't want to spend more on social services, though, so its kind of a false dichotomy. It's not like if we could somehow convince the powers that be to cancel the space program they would put it all into education, jobs programs and basic income.

[jodrellblank]

Money isn't burned when spent on space programs. resources, e.g. fuels are, but money is spent, it stays down here on Earth, employing people, boosting corporate profits (and therefore pension funds and other things which invest in them), employing people (who maybe women and people of colour).

[rurp]

You could make the same argument about any government spending program, no matter how wasteful it is. The money always goes into the economy. The question is how to get the most useful output from that spending.

[jodrellblank]

> "about any government spending program"

"hundreds of billions of dollars burned by space-billionaires" is what I was replying to. It would be more serious if the "burning resources" in the original comment's first paragraph meant fossil fuels, for example. Non-renewable things. Their second paragraph clarifies that they mean money (and not even taxpayer's money in their comment), which isn't burned.

> "The question is how to get the most useful output from that spending."

That is a question, not the thing I was replying to.