That sort of thing should be funded by rich people or corporations who see market value in doing it. Not paid for by taxes.
We have enough problems to solve here that will actually benefit people.
Amazing that you don't think space exploration will benefit people. What other problems would you rather focus instead? I bet most, if not all of them, are caused by poor wealth distribution, not lack of money.
It's probably due to the decades it takes for space research invention to spread into consumer products (and even then, people don't realize it). You can find the same kind of comments about theoretical physics being useless, for the same reason (but even worse).
The amount of research done for putting people in space that end up "actually benefiting people" in tremendous. The current research for extreme water purification for the ISS alone is worth it, given the renewed importance of clean water now and in the next century(ies).
I'm perfectly happy to live my life on Earth. If they suddenly colonise Mars, and it's fantastic, and it makes you live twice as long and have superpowers, I would still rather stay here. I'm simply not interested in it.
People often cite the technological advances - "velcro" etc but I don't think you're getting value for money if that's your aim, and again, I think it should be done in the private sector rather than forcing people who have absolutely no interest in space, to pay for it.
And here was I thinking "spend money on more web apps" was the nadir of human ambition on HN.
* Make another useless timewasting webapp
* Sell it for billions
* Solve world hunger, philanthropy, make the world all better againOnward, outward, forward...progress is scary stuff. Otherwise functional adults often have deep rooted terrors that cause them to want to withdraw into the known.
Would you still be able to live a happy fulfilled life if absolutely NO "progress" was made during it? I would.
1) The world changes, progress or no. Tomorrow is different than today. Someday, something will change and that tomorrow is the one that's going to make your steady state suck. And that will be just the first of many changing tomorrows. The harder you cling onto your desire to keep yourself and everybody else's world trapped in your comfort zone, the harder it will be to catch up to the accumulated tomorrows that have occurred.
2) Your life, whatever it is and I mean this without intention of offense, stinks for me. I don't want it, and the world that makes your life comfortable makes mine unbearable or at least unbelievably irritating in some aspect somewhere. For you to have your comfortable life forever means mine has to suck somewhere and sometime.
HN is about building things and changing the future...and if you're really clever, getting paid for it. If those things aren't of interest to you, and the world you've built around yourself is just fine and you can live in that world till you die, more power to you, but you're probably in the wrong discussion forum.
(you joined HN about two months ago, telling me that your assertion that your world is happy and completely fulfilled is obviously and trivially false, or you wouldn't have bothered joining up in the first place.
Something about your life is unfulfilled, social interaction, business, technical know-how, whatever, and you sought an improvement in your life out.
The difference between what you keep saying in your comments and what you actually do is probably going to mean some hard self-evaluation before you can resolve that fundamental cognitive dissonance and be a healthy minded contributor to a place like HN.)
I actually joined HN a few years ago, but decided to leave my old account. I would probably stop looking at when people joined as some measure of their worth if I were you.
As for your last statement. I like playing on computers. I love building fun things. But I would be equally happy if the internet didn't exist, and I was fulfilling that 'building' desire someplace else. I don't "need" it to be happy.
I correct myself. You're definitely in the wrong discussion forum.
I'm not sure the grandparent's comment was about finding someplace else for their government to spend a pile of money. We do not have to centrally plan this.
I would rather not force the public to fund scientific research.
I am happy to live now, just as happy as I would have been to live 100 years ago, or 1000 years ago.
My happiness is not tied to technological enhancement.