It's always easier to criticize. The problem is that space travel is very, very, very hard. In that regard the Cold War was the best thing that ever happened to

It's always easier to criticize. The problem is that space travel is very, very, very hard. In that regard the Cold War was the best thing that ever happened to space exploration: two super powers spending crazy amount of money and human effort to beat each other 'who's gonna do THAT first?'. I think it was awesome: the best kind of competition you can have, almost like a high school science contest on a giant scale. If you look around at other countries in the "space club" the situation is not much different. Launching 1gk of anything so high is so expensive that it makes very little economic sense. Private sector will never launch anything to Mars. Why would they? Private investors would never build a giant space station just to run a bunch of experiments on it. The main message this article is trying to send is a bit creepy one (IMO): "NASA, you should do some kick-ass research using our tax dollars, and we'll be trying to make money out of what you will come up with". The problem with it is that only small percentage of what can be done in space is profitable: satellites, high-altitude tourism... that's about it.