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> There is a lot of truth in the idea that doing something like colonizing mars could do more good for humanity than giving people enough money to eat for a day or a week.

How about doing neither and instead use the money to solve some of the problems the earth suffers from today? Colonizing Mars, seriously, wtf ...

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Reaching for a stretch goal has a way of solving a lot of problems on the side. The space race didn't cure polio, but it did give us smoke detectors, memory foam, improved water filtration, and many others that I can't list off the top of my head.

Here's a wikipedia article dedicated to them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

And here's the mandatory relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1232/

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