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Human spaceflight has always been, first and foremost, a political thing. The only thing that's changed since the mid 20th century is that the politicians can n
by mumblemumble 6y ago
Human spaceflight has always been, first and foremost, a political thing. The only thing that's changed since the mid 20th century is that the politicians can no longer agree on where to move the football and how for more than 4 consecutive years at a time.
- avmich 6y agoIt's worth mentioning, that manned spaceflight isn't only a political thing. Counterexamples include huge inspirational value - to the tune of a generation of scientists and engineers. Also there was a period when automatic satellites couldn't be used for even rather simple, by today's standards, tasks, like space telescope on e.g. Skylab. Also at some scale involving human presence into a space project (Apollo) turns out to be more beneficial, science-per-dollar-wise, than doing everything with robots only. And there are other reasons.