And - importantly - the money spent does not magically disappear. It moves, jobs are created, people are fed and ultimately some of it ends up in the public coffers again..
That argument would also serve nicely in a campaign to recommit the complete "space" budget to folk dance festivals.
Yes, I'm sure we could invent an Asteroid Dance to keep the Death Asteroid away.
PS, it would be much much more expensive if the government did the work it's self.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20170008895.pdf
SpaceX is saving the government big dollars.
1) The word is "itself". Not
it is self.
2) SpaceX is standing on the shoulders of the DECADES OF WORK ALREADY DONE BY THE GOVERNMENT.
![Face Palm :palm:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/facepalm.gif)
Interesting how much vitriol against space. It seems to be a pocketbook issue. Even if those who are against are correct and it is a complete waste of money, the money wasted is going more to engineers and technicians than most of the other complete wastes of money that can be identified. Eliminating space funding is likely to result in less money in technical folks pockets.
So go ahead, rail against one of the few Dilbert benefiting boondoggles around. It won't make you richer.
There is no vitriol against space. Space is a vacuum, it is inert. I am upset at the cloud-shovelling nerds with their space pseudo-religion earnestly charting out the future of humanity in the galaxy. Guys, Star Trek was fiction. It's just you, me, the Periodic Table of the Elements and the four forces. There are no dilithium crystals, no duranium, no tungsten verteride carbon matrix, no structural integrity fields, no warp drive, no transporters, no replicators, no aliens that look like us, no artificial gravity, no Vulcans, no habitable planets just days away in a magical spaceship that doesn't exist.
By all means, send all the A-type test pilots in diapers to play guitar badly in the ISS and grow tomato seeds in free fall and call it vitally important science. I chuckle.
Keep sending up satellites that point back at Earth because that's were everyone lives.
But when you start thinking that Mars is just a hop and a skip away and how simple it all could be if we just listened to you because you read sci-fi, that's where I draw the line.
Space is huge. Space is dead. Space is hostile. We are here. We are not going anywhere with kerosene and carbon fiber no matter how good our computers get. Sure sure, some military test pilots bounced on the Moon for a few days after the most powerful nation in history worked at it for an entire decade. So what? They came back after a week.
It's over. The future is here and it ain't in space. If it was as simple as the Space Nutters keep telling us then why didn't it happen when everyone and everything was working towards space 50 years ago? Human curiosity didn't change, did it? They had rich people back then too, right? So why didn't it happen? The same generation that built the Concorde, mind you.