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Comment by bpodgursky | Hacker News Reader

> increasingly lack stable income/house/food

This is a good soundbyte, but misses that the world overall is getting richer and safer every year. The UK is not getting poorer. The US is not either. There's always going to be someone, somewhere who falls through the cracks. That doesn't mean we need to stop humans from exploring the solar system until everyone, everywhere is covered.

If you really care about solving homelessness and income inequality everywhere, why not take it from the truly "useless" industries like entertainment, cosmetics, toys, or luxury cars? Rather than the one industry trying to build a long-term future for humanity.

The US spends $50B a year on pet food or whatever. Get rid of the pets and take that money if you want. I don't see why you are offended that a couple billion is being spent on something that actually matters.

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> This is a good soundbyte, but misses that the world overall is getting richer and safer every year. The UK is not getting poorer. The US is not either. There's always going to be someone, somewhere who falls through the cracks. That doesn't mean we need to stop humans from exploring the solar system until everyone, everywhere is covered.

The number of food banks and their use is on the rise in the UK. The "Gig economy" takes all the worst bits of the precarious situation people were put in by zero hours contracts and additionally ditches pension benefits, holidays, and maternity/paternity leave. House prices are up ~13% on last year. Countries on aggregate might be getting wealthier, but that wealth is going straight into the pockets of those at the top end of the scale. On the lower end you'll find yourself in a damp filled flat run by a dodgy landlord with people who spent the pandemic working from home telling you to feel grateful.

> If you really care about solving homelessness and income inequality everywhere, why not take it from the truly "useless" industries like entertainment, cosmetics, toys, or luxury cars? Rather than the one industry trying to build a long-term future for humanity.

The benefits of this "space race" are limited to a few billionaires, the sectors you named largely benefit wide swathes of society.

> I don't see why you are offended that a couple billion is being spent on something that actually matters.

I don't think it does matter, at least not in the near/mid future.

"why not take it from the truly "useless" industries like entertainment, cosmetics, toys, or luxury cars"

I couldn't be more pro-Billionaire Astronauts, but at the same time there is danger in them spending their money and influence on things that may not work.

If they had gone out and bought more cars, yachts, and real estate, that's money that goes into mature industries with efficient supply chains that support the livelihoods of many people.

You can look at a billion dollar yacht and say, "What a waste", but the shipwrights, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and welders who built the yacht, not to mention the crew that steers, maintains, and cleans it probably don't think it was a waste, nor do the people who work in the industries that provide the materials for it.

> If they had gone out and bought more cars, yachts, and real estate, that's money that goes into mature industries with efficient supply chains that support the livelihoods of many people.

The same can be said about rockets and spacecrafts. They also need an efficient supply chain that provides all the parts. Even if these billionaires failed, they would have spent the money to feed upstream industries. Furthermore, they are thinking to commercialize such travels in future. More jobs and a bigger market if succeeded.

> That doesn't mean we need to stop humans from exploring the solar system until everyone, everywhere is covered.

Sending billionaires into space so they can film Tik-Toks from an in-orbit Tesla roadster and get mining rights to all the precious metals in the solar system while patenting and monopolizing critical space travel tech doesn't advance humanity at all, it sets us back. Government investment in and exploration of space pushes us forward, as do massive taxes on billionaires and redistributing their wealth to the general populace and public works projects.

It's astounding to me that there is any non-billionaire alive that doesn't realize this.

You are just asserting things that sound good on Twitter. Please try to have a more constructive dialog on HN.

How many more astrophysicists would we have if the current wealth of the top 10 billionaires went to our educational system and bringing people out of poverty? Sending billionaires into space accomplishes nothing that the rest of humanity can benefit from, and actually would do a good bit of damage to our future. Sure, the tech will get better, but it will be patented and upcharged in a way similar to our pharmaceutical industry, only with fewer regulations. Space is too important a frontier and space exploration is too important an endeavor to squander in this way. We need NASA in space, not billionaires.

At this point any kind of business that does repeatable and sustainable space flights is good, is even if it's for the entertainment of the billionaires. Slowly and surely the process will get improved and the cost will go down and maybe some of those taxpayers will see space after all.

As I've stated elsewhere in this thread, this is not true. It is quite possible to do actual damage to our future if we allow corporate monopolization of the resources or means of getting into space. Work like this is too important to leave to privatization, but funding of our space program has lagged so grossly that the only option left is billionaire charlatans who want to stake their claim on the stars in a race to monopolize the resources of space.

I think we can wait to argue about who gets the space resources until we can reliably get to space. Currently the resource being exploited by the "charlatans" is pretty views from upper atmosphere. As long as they don't leave trash in orbit, which this is very far from, they can do it all day long for all I care.

Also this whole focus on the billionaires is misguided. Up until very recently only large nation states could afford to have a space program that is any more ambitious than delivering a satellite to orbit. Now it's eccentric billionaires. Tomorrow it'll be small cap companies. Elon Musk is not getting Mars, don't worry.

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