Society has accomplished a ton due to the space race. Furthermore, just because we haven't put humans anywhere doesn't mean we haven't explored anywhere. We have a robot on Mars, had a robot on Venus. We have ships nearing the end of our solar system and sending data back. We have learned tons, and keep learning tons, and have used all of this knowledge to make life on earth better. GPS alone is worth it, let alone everything we've done.
Putting more men on the moon does us absolutely no good besides letting a country puff its chest out more.
Water and food are indeed trickier; the Moon does have some trace amounts of carbon (deposited by solar wind) and hydrogen (at the poles), but extracting enough of those elements to sustainably support living there is unlikely unless we make some major discoveries or figure out a more reasonable way to import such things (one idea is to capture hydrocarbon-rich asteroids and park them in lunar orbit, but that ain't exactly my idea of "reasonable").
As for profitability, the Moon happens to be rich in silicon; a far-fetched idea might be to build a whole bunch of lunar microchip factories. The Moon is also full of raw materials in general, and getting them into space (e.g. to build spacecraft or to import to Earth) is a lot easier than getting such material into space from Earth. This makes the Moon a potentially-valuable staging point for missions to Mars and elsewhere.
If there is indeed water (or some other hydrogen source) on the Moon in sufficiently-abundant quantities, lunar fuel depots would actually be feasible; there's been quite a bit of work in recent decades around using silanes (hydrosilicons) as a useful fuel, replacing the need for hydrocarbon-based fuels (or using hydrogen directly).
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/high-temperature-rock...
You're correct in that large, (comparatively) easily mined water ice deposits are located in permanent shadow at the poles, but there is likely water available in most locations, if you dig down below the surface.
Also, why is a metaphor needed here?
A metaphor compares two things similar from a certain aspect -- they could still differ in every other way. One could use a metaphor from agriculture to clarify their point on a political issue, for example.
>Also, why is a metaphor needed here?
For the same reasons that it's needed elsewhere. To get the point across in a simplified way, because people can understand a phenomenon better in one domain than they can in another (aka "domain dependence").
When I said "the metaphor compares two similar thing" I didn't mean metaphors in general, I meant your metaphor specifically compares two things that are similar. The relevant differences between NY and the moon do not exist between NY and Illinois.
> For the same reasons that it's needed elsewhere
Metaphors are often of dubious value. They can be used to clarify unfamiliar situation, where the bounds of the metaphor are clear; or, perhaps as in this case, encourage similar thinking about two related concepts.
But you provided a metaphor here without providing clarity on what the point was. When I think "why would I build a city in Illinois, when there already one in NY", none of the answers I come up with apply equally to the moon. e.g. land is cheaper/convenient (not on the moon), the scenery is better (maybe true, but not to outweight other more pressing concerns) etc.
While that certainly would be awesome, I'm pretty sure you meant "solar system".
We actually have more than that; in addition to Curiosity, the Opportunity rover is (by some miracle) still in active service and fully operational.
I feel a lot of the return on spacefaring is as simple as making groups of humans, a long way from each other, work together because of shared interests.
Not really. Solving the propulsion and energy generation problems would have done that, but not merely sending a bunch more people to a space rock for a few days using chemical rockets. EMDrive is interesting if it works, but significantly more efficient energy generation still eludes us.
Which of these do you think would generate outrage? Axing the moonshot, or defunding an experimental thruster research program?
Doing cool stuff might not be the most efficient way to do research, but it's a hell of a lot better than nothing, and it inspires generations.
I mean, honestly I'm not so sure what the huge rush is to expand to another planet when we're having so much trouble with just one.
It's not that I don't want to see us move past the boundaries of this planet, but on the list of things I'd want to see before my time is up on this planet, there's plenty of things like the end of world hunger or bringing the poorest people in the world to an infinitely better standard of living that come way before us living on another planet.
In the very long term moving to another planet is a way to stave off the end of our species (amongst other positive things), but in the very very long term the odds are we won't live on indefinitely, I think improving the lives of those who come before now and that time is probably the most worthwhile thing we can do.
Some stuff is actually awesome and worthwhile (and cost effective) like the robotic exploration of the solar system, and a little supports SpaceX which uses the money to develop technology that enables cheap access to space.
But I think most of that money is a jobs program for high paying jobs congressmen want in their districts which help the economy tactically but might not be the best use of those people's effort. But, the provided jobs also support a skills base and supplier ecosystem that would allow shifting some of those people and parts suppliers into doing something more necessary to the government like defense stuff. The thinking is that if that money goes away and those people get laid off, they'll stop working in aerospace, move into finance or whatever, college kids will not study space engineering because they'll hear there are no jobs, and defense contractors will have a harder time hiring the next time a big defense program is funded.
SpaceX is doing what you feel NASA should have been doing in the 80s with 3 decades between then and now, with all that comes with 3 decades.