I would agree, except....

Humans are nomadic. Even if it is little more than a side show (aka, better than Apollo but nothing serious), it might be needed from a cultural morale purpose.

Or maybe just for bread and circuses purposes.

I read one study years ago that showed the return on investment from the space program up through Apollo was huge, much more than any other type of government spending, and paid for itself many times over just in tax revenue from new and spin-off industry and technology. I think we have been foolish not to make more investments of public tax money in fundamental and long term science and physics research and education.

Jeff

Space funding was one of the things offered up on the altar of the benighted Vietnam war, police action. The programs were allowed to wind down once the infrastructure and technology to land on the moon was formalized. The last few Apollo missions were lackluster, blunted in enthusiasm and overshadowed by the understanding, backed by layoffs and budget cuts, that there were no major goals left on the agenda announced by Kennedy and no political will or vision to establish more.

Vietnam was financed by printing money. Which inevitably led to inflation, recession, stagnation and deflation. Iraq has been financed by taking out loans from the rest of the world. This may be better. We owe the rest of the world about three trillion dollars. So much in fact that they can't afford to call it in for fear of triggering our collapse. Which would trigger theirs. The answer, so far, has been a great collective, world wide, whistling in unison past the graveyard.

Vietnam was also largely the reason why if you buy anything electronic it is produced in Asia. Japan was dumping TVs in the US and making good their losses by keeping US TVs out of Japan while overpricing Japanese made TVs. The US electronics producers were about to take the Japanese to the world court. It was a case that was about impossible for us to lose.

Of course there was another case advancing through the UN. That was a call for US withdrawal from Vietnam on the basis that the war was illegal. The opponents to the Vietnam war were going to win that one. The US couldn't must the votes to stop it.

What happened was that a deal was made. The US government would block the case against the Japanese electronics industry and the Japanese would vote our way so we could continue with our fun and games in SE Asia. It is a case of 'be careful what you ask for' and a stand for political expediency over principle.

Had we lost the UN vote we might have gotten out of Vietnam a few years earlier. We wouldn't have had to print so much money to finance the war. there would have been less of a chance we would have run away inflation. More available cash would have meant a better chance NASA wouldn't have its budget cut. And the US electronics industry would have won their case, kept Japanese consumer electronics out of the US and killed the newborn Japanese electronics industry in its cradle.

Of course most Americans don't really understand what Vietnam cost us. That it would hobble our economy for a decade and we still are paying a price now.

The moon landings and our trips into space were real and tangible evidence that we were the good guys striving in a huge and challenging national goal. A goal no other nation could accomplish. We went out unarmed in the name of mankind and openly published what we saw. When the astronauts were in trouble the world prayed for them. The moon landings were watched world-wide. One of the first events to be seen live across the globe.

Even if there were no financial benefit; even if there were no practical benefit for doing such things; I still think having a large national goal to focus our peaceful and benevolent energies on would would be reason enough to justify the expense.

I'd agree that the initial push into space and the moon did accomplish great things insofaras getting the physics of the previous 200 years engineered into modern society. There was a lot of great ideas floating around that had little chance of developing until such need as what the space program initially compelled us to produce. Those days are for the most part done. There are still a few novel physics concepts to iron out that almost uniquely require a platform such as space exploration, but there will be no big leaps and bounds like what we saw going from the early 50s to the 70s.

I believe the far bigger cost for this country in the Vietnam conflict/war/police action was the loss of a lot of good men for purely political reasons, in the end failing miserably to meet our objectives.

As for the here and now, I believe there is an abundance of much more suitable peaceful and benevolant objectives upon which we can focus our energies as a national goal that have nothing to do with space exploration, and for which continued investment in space exploration at this time would seriously detract from.

Sorry guys I am replying to the original question

Do I believe in ghosts ? not really. But I was once spooked by something very strange. I had agreed with someone to have a meeting every Tuesday evening. Well, first Tuesday I received a phone call from DD1 to come get her from a relative house. She was with mom and other kids in their grandparents house far away and she decided to cut the visit and come back with a relative who dropped her in another relative house 15 miles away, and I had to go and bring her home.

That was no more than an inconvenience and I offered my apology for missing the meeting. OK, next Tuesday evening, mom arrived by train with kids and LOTS of baggagge and called me to come and pick them up. Frustrating but it was no more than a coincidence.

To make short story shorter, this "inconvenience" repeated itself six times, every time with a different story.

Yes, I was spooked and cancelled the scheduled meeting that never took place.

We have computers. We can even speculate in some detail about how existing in one might work. This isn't completely falsifiable, but there are hard edges to the enquiry and it leads onto new ideas. It's fun and intellectually stimulating.

Where-as the "mind of god" thing is also not falsifiable and tends to lead nowhere and discourages inquiry. It's not so much fun, and mostly leads to people trying to kill each other over who has the better imaginary friend.

That would be evolution.

Yes, that's the crucial factor. Especially if you accept the speed of light restriction (and if you don't, you aren't really doing science any more).

In addition, there's a big difference between life and intelligent life. Life appeared on this planet as soon as conditions made it possible, but life capable of, eg, building a radio telescope for communication only appear very recently, and we have no guarantee it will not go extinct within a thousand years of achieving that. So the chances of getting two species, within 200 light years of each other, both capable of communicating/travelling across that gap, and both appearing at the same time, may be vanishingly small.

I want to hang with you...