> "However, there are serious problems on Earth in the U.S. that cannot be solved by developing manned spaceflight tech, and those concerns are going to overrid

> "However, there are serious problems on Earth in the U.S. that cannot be solved by developing manned spaceflight tech, and those concerns are going to override thoughts about manned spaceflight for most people most of the time." If you spent the entire US Federal budget fighting worldwide poverty, you'd end with less than $500 to spend on every person every year. We should not spread wealth and advantage thin trying to fill in every low point. Even the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation doesn't wait until everyone is vaccinated before putting money to other "higher level" activities such as research. Moreso, I am glad that there are charities which primarily concern themselves with providing large amounts of money to speculative research instead of spreading that money thin on lower level concrete but ultimately fleeting activities. All that cancer research money could be spend paying the hospital bills of people who are currently undergoing treatment, but I much prefer it being spent on research. Charities that focused on paying hospital bills would be great, but not at the expense of charities which focus on research. There is room for both, but we should not cut back on funding for high level research and advancement because there are still low-level concerns to be addressed. ---- Alternatively, more succinctly: If we had spent all that Apollo money on malaria instead, would we still be fighting malaria today? I think that is near certain. ---- Alternatively, more metaphorically: If you are tasked with tracing the outline of a Koch snowflake and tracing the outline of a square, would you hold off on tracing the square until the Koch snowflake was complete?