Space Tourism Is a Waste

I would not necessarily call it “pointless” as in “totally pointless”. The benefits could be: 1) “Trickling down” of new technologies. Development of new production and operation methods that could be used elsewhere. 2) New jobs, taxes, etc. Again there are “schools of thought” (or rather ideological movements) that dislike the idea of economic growth and ignore its positive impact on people’s standards of living. (Agains it’s not an excuse for unsustainability, of course). 3) As applied to transportation, direct increase of productivity (e.g., you are happier because you were able to visit your friends over a weekend). 4) (Probably one of the underrated aspects). Inspiration. More people would go on to become engineers, scientists, etc. Less people will become disappointed in civilization, technological progress and join weird political and ideological movements, etc.

Of course. Any tourism is a waste! Let's forbid people to move outside of their village! And by the way, capitalist stores like: https://tinyurl.com/live-store are a waste too, imagine the CO2 to produce all that paint and ink, and to do the marketing, when all you need is one bottle of milk and one biscuit and one kipper. https://tinyurl.com/bland-store

Also, gizmodo.com is a waste. We could do as well with facebook. We don't need hundreds of web sites, just one centralized and well censored web site is enough.