You are right on about the cost-benefit ratio of manned vs unmanned space. I’m all for space industry and colonization, but I’ve reached the conclusion that the manned program, at least, is really little more than a PR show, at best.

At it’s very best, it helps keep the value of our exports up, and provides business to various high tech / aerospace contractors.

This benefit shouldn’t be automatically dismissed: China, for example, has significant problems with it’s growing economy, and with poverty, but is choosing to go ahead with a significant manned space effort now, for economic and national security reasons. (1.)

However. I don’t think this is the best argument to support our tech sector. NASA needs the political capital that comes from manned spaceflight – nothing grabs eyeballs like folks floating around in spacesuits.

BUT actually *having* affordable manned access to space, costs big time in research. We’ve spent as much on the Shuttle as on Apollo by this point, but the money was all spread out. We’ve blown those funds on operating a magnificent and hideously pricy medium-lift launch vehicle that takes 20,000 people to rebuild after every flight.

We didn’t actually put those funds into the mundane problem of affordably, safely putting people and other cargo into orbit. In a narrow political sense it was "cheaper" to stay with the Shuttle.

We got into this fix because there’s been no political will to do better, and in the absence of that, Congress was more than happy to vote funds for big NASA facilities in their districts, and for International Space Station hardware to be contracted and subcontracted to their constituents as well.

And because Big Aerospace – BoeNorLock – likes their cost-plus contracts. I think their Washington lobbyists are partial to them, too.

Anyway. I’m sure you see my point here. Manned space "exploration" really isn’t, which is why it doesn’t seem to measure up. Like trying to compare apples to rutabagas, basically.

As for what is a satisfactory employment of men and women in space.. how does

1. Energy independence and net energy exporter status for the U.S.

2. Harvesting of platinum group metals on a trillion-dollar scale

3. Development of industrial infrastructure containing highly toxic or radioactive processes, away from Earth’s biosphere

Etc. You may not agree that any of these are best served by going into space, but it’s been argued by folks far wiser than I. For a quick view try source (2.) but I actually recommend the very well-argued book by space colonization grandfather Dr. Gerard O’Neill. (3.)

In any event, we’d need people to go out there, in order to bring those products / services back to Earth. I do not endorse or agree with the notion of "abandoning Earth for space." That’s a last-ditch, loser option, in my books.

The bottom line is, space is a very tough environment, still very difficult to get to. It’s almost, not quite, impossible to escape Earth’s gravity with chemical engines, I read once.

But at the same time, it’s not impossible. It takes as much fuel to fly a kilogram of mass from LA to Sydney as it does to get that kilo to orbit, and airline operations are, what, five or six times fuel costs?

Why then do we expect space travel to be the exclusive domain of governments?

Imagine you’re living in the year 1935. You know there are certain benefits of flying, say, at 40,000 feet. You reason there’s much less air turbulance up there, less fuel consumption, and perhaps you could take advantage of 200 MPH jet streams (which were known in the 1930s)

Fat lot of good it’ll do you. No plane could fly that high. And besides, you’d need a pressurized cabin, folks won’t put on diving suits to take an intercontinental trip!

Kind of like how we have our astronauts put on their pressure suits when we send them into orbit.

Fortunately, we had the NACA – the National Advisory Committee on Astronautics. They underwrote the commercial aerospace research we use today to fly.

They were also the predecessor to NASA. Guess which one I’d pick to research space transport today?

It is an extravagant waste of money and people.

I am divided. For excitement, nothing can replace humans actually walking on the planets. However, I believe that the technological advances in robotics and communications are quickly overtaking the technology for life support systems, which would need much more advancement to get men to Mars and beyond.

People need to step back and think where it is going. Anyone can at this point go on the interenet and find hundreds of close up photos of Mars. And its free to anyone.

I believe the technology will get so good that in decades to come anyone with a TV will be able to feel that they are on Mars or the moon, or wherever.

That means that when the media becomes so realistic that we feel we are actually in the show, it will be like we are all going into space, rather than the few lucky ones.

Incidentally, those who deny the Apollo moon landings because they know nothing about them, have no idea the amount of time and money spent on life support. Just the space suit was a billion dollar effort, 5 year effort to get it right.

And of course these idiots who deny the moon landings would know nothing about that.