OK I will attempt to do my best Vulcan Meditation imitation and resist becoming over-the-top emotional by saying (deep breath) that I am a bit surprised to see such narrow attitudes on this subject in a Science forum. Incidentally the Vulcan thing is an attempt at some cleansing humour as I resist the "trekkie" label rather adamantly.
On one hand we will likely go "out there" because it is in our nature to explore and despite the apparent fact that such creatures as alligators have enjoyed long lineage by staying put, exploration has worked rather well for humans.
When people speak of pragmatism in the same breath as space exploration especially in a derogatory or even merely dismissive way I have to wonder if either they were alive and relatively aware of the outside world circa 1965 or have actually thought through such conditions as population growth and human progress.
Arthur Clarke (rip) put together one of the better lists of collateral benefits of the Kennedy mandated Manned Moon Landings and was in sad fact better researched and more expansive than the one NASA currently sports online
Apollo's Contributions to America but anyone alive prior to that effort can hopefully imagine what an immensely different world this would be absent the cooperation and development not only between commercial companies, scientific laboratories, think tanks, government agencies but between all of them and more combined and crossing more political borders than any other single endeavor in human history including World War II.! That we would not be even discussing this here online due to the lack that would exist in electronic miniaturization and reduced power usage, just to name a very few, without the Appolo and preceding projects is of trivial concern compared to the gains in medicine, robotics, solar power.....well the list includes literally every branch of Science and examples are in everyone's cars and homes even in so-called third world countries.
"Of what use is a baby?" is not just a clever phrase. Renaissance and Reformation rode on the back of Exploration and such Enlightenment had not even begun to face the press of human population growth. Consider that as the population continues to grow, as it surely will, there are only so many possible conclusions or consequences and most of them (war, pestilence, famine, oppression, etc etc) are bad at least for all but a very lucky few (not considering the loss of human resources and all those effects on progress and legacy) with the one really worthwhile solution being new frontiers and the
effort it takes to get there.
It may be a difficult subject to approach with still so many people denying human affected climate change but it seems to me that considering NASA's budget was never more than 1.2% of the US budget, and is presently hovering around 0.5 % I think we have to seriously ask ourselves in what sort of future are we presently investing and how does that reflect real priorities?
