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Comment by gammarator | Hacker News Reader

You’ve got to normalize by dollars spent, though.

If your goal is to save money, just ignore the moon. This is not the west indies to be exploited, at least not yet. These are scientific missions, not economic missions.

The philosopher Randall Munroe once wrote:

  > The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space - each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.

Randall Munroe of xkcd? I like his work but I'm not sure I'd call him a philosopher...

I see Munroe's work as filling the same role in society as did Socrates in his time. Not only in commentary about current events, government, society, etc but also in expressing his viewpoints in a fashion accessible to society. Socrates paved the way to bring philosophy to the masses. Munroe uses a popular medium and comedy to the same effect.

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