Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn’t we do those things directly, without going there?
It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.
I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that’s why we poors support it, but that doesn’t “pay the bills.” What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?
The best way I can say it is it’s kind of like exercise. Going to the Moon makes about as much sense as " pick up heavy object, put down heavy object." The Moon itself doesn’t really accomplish a lot in the moment, but the practice of engineering all the little things that it takes to get to the Moon, and learning about the universe along the way, is kind of like exercise for society coming together to solve hard problems.
Now you’re correct that there’s a lot of hard problems right here on earth for us to try and solve, and that’s valid. But I also need you to think about just how little funding actually goes to NASA. Or Space X for that matter. It’s actually a lot less difficult (and expensive) to get to the Moon than say, teach all our children to read properly.
The skills we build and the things we learn along the way however can be turned around and repurposed for lots of other hard problems down the road that are a lot closer to home. It sure as hell beats the other kind of “exercise” we’ve historically done to advance our skills which mainly consists of killing each other by the millions.
Does that make sense?