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Comment by berntb | Hacker News Reader

And toilet paper have a bigger impact than cars.

I did not mention "cool", I mentioned lower launch prices. That is more important.

The usual argument, since decades, is that with low launch costs, there will be new use cases and new markets -- the first private projects has been announced for mining and detecting "dinosaur killers", etc.

(I am not certain if I'm trolled here. Or if I was unclear in the GP?)

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And? What’s the use case? Cars have certainly done more to lift humanity up than spaceflight has (unlike toilet paper, which is neither cool nor has it done much to lift humanity up). I don’t see how that can change within the next few decades, even if everything Musk plans works out.

If everything he plans works out (and I hope it does) it will be very important and very cool – but cars are the much more pressing issue. Put another way: there is much more potential for doing good there.

I argued (a) electric cars would get popular without Musk anyway, like over a century ago (everyone and their dog in transportation is working on that) -- and (b) cheap launch costs is new and will change the world.

If you wanted to do a serious counter arguments, you'd have asked for sources, or something. You're a troll using a new account. Good bye.

I’m really saddened that you think I’m a troll. I’m honestly not. I’m trying to understand you. I just cannot see how spaceflight could be more important for humanity in the next, say, half-century than transportation. Cool, sure. (Maybe also scientifically valuable if the cost of payloads decreases – but those payloads are actually already most of the cost, so I don’t foresee much change there.) Important? Don’t think so.

I’m also not sure why making electric cars work in the market is any more obvious than slightly cheaper space launch vehicles.

For decades people said they can make electric cars work in the market. They couldn’t. Maybe Musk will.

For decades people said that space launch costs will decrease. They didn’t. Maybe Musk will.

The difference between those two isn’t so big and transportation has the bigger immediate impact on humanity. I mean, both SpaceX and Tesla have many competitors.

(I’m also not sure what sources can tell you here. Comparing two so completely different things is a bit of a fool’s errand, a single source will hardly be valuable. You would have to cleverly combine date to make this somehow work – and much of this is open to interpretation.)

"I just cannot see how spaceflight could be more important for humanity in the next, say, half-century than transportation."... 50 to 60 years is the difference between 1904 and 1956. Do you really think your models of what space "exploration is" in 2012 will be the same in 2062?? In 2062 probably no one will commute to work. All transportation may be purely for socializing personally and travel or adventure. 2062 is so far away that even futurists consider it beyond their comfort zone of dreaming up stuff. How are you so sure of Mankind's priorities in another 50 years?

Exactly. You can't predict it. I can't predict it. All we can do is speculate — which we do.

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