[anigbrowl]

Lofting stuff up into space 'just because' rather than because it meets some technological or economic need is a waste of time. I am very much in favor of becoming a spacefaring civilization and will cheerfully argue for the necessity of manned missions despite the availability of robots and so on. But wasting money on putting things into space is counter productive to that end.

This has nothing to do with our economic system. It's basic economics, in the sense that it's resource-intensive to put stuff into space and some resources are scarce. Regardless of how your domestic economy is organized or what sort of monetary policy you favor, the physical resources required for space projects are steep.