I like the direction you're thinking - I've wondered lately if there isn't actually some chance for politicians to get us off of perpetual war-based economies a

I like the direction you're thinking - I've wondered lately if there isn't actually some chance for politicians to get us off of perpetual war-based economies and on to space exploration economies. Maybe naive. One problem I see is the added waste of a global governmental effort. Look at ITER - it sounds nice in theory to have several countries work toward a lofty goal like fusion. But in actuality, each country wants it's own piece so it's built all over the world, assembled in France, is way over budget and the end goal is to do prove the concept by 2025, not build an actual commercial fusion power plant. Similar criticisms are made of ISS. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing if those 5 countries were in a friendly "space race" with their 1% GDP each. Instead of one big program you could run 5 parallel programs that compete. It got us to the moon after all. Obviously there is a place for international cooperation and openness especially in science, but I do wonder if there need to be more base motivations to really get things moving.