>money spent on the Mars orbiter was just an exercise in national pride When start-ups compete against big corporations, do they try to follow corporate crap a

>money spent on the Mars orbiter was just an exercise in national pride When start-ups compete against big corporations, do they try to follow corporate crap and other slow things? The advantage of being second is that you can learn from those ahead of you. Although I agree that at least basic sanitation is more important than this, but this is not the case in general. In general, we need to invest in next generation technologies and advancements. Only then can we create income sources which dwarf all coming from the advancements of rest of the world.