The amount we spend on space flight is trivial in the grand scheme, and it involves the creation of very useful technologies for this world too. The US govern

The amount we spend on space flight is trivial in the grand scheme, and it involves the creation of very useful technologies for this world too. The US government devotes 1/2 of 1% of its budget to NASA. And less than half of NASAs budget is for manned space exploration. Out of that tiny budget they are building the SLS, which is a huge pork turkey that’s sucked up close to $20B in funding (including capsule) and is years away from launching anything. Elon Musk is about to launch the first Falcon Heavy, which will cost less than $100M per flight, and carry basically the same amount of payload as the SLS ever will to orbit. He’s the good guy here, providing spaceflight with reusable launch vehicles that cost a fraction of any that came before. A Falcon Heavy can put 30,000 lbs into Mars orbit. If VASIMR ever works, they could put an 140,000 lb VASIMR space vehicle in orbit and let it do the 90 day trips. All at a tiny fraction the cost of tye moon program.