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When I hear that two years after the Haiti earthquake over 500000 are still living in tents then what a waste of money is space exploration.Millions spent on spurious useless quests that return what?Fucking astronomers full of their self importance pontificating about some black hole,gravitational pull in Uranus etc etc...what a load of cock.Let's sort out planet Earth and worry about the cosmos when there's world peace.Patrick Moore national treasure but who give's a shit and apart from teflon saucepans can't think of much else the millions spent has delivered apart from jobs for the boys?

David Bowie's Space Oddity ?

A rather unfortunate post by mrmcfister.

Space is the new goldrush. Example: an "S-type" asteroid is composed of iron, magnesium, cobalt, platinum and a variety of other metals. There are thousands of these in close proximity to Earth and an average S-type asteroid would be worth more than ?15,000,000,000,000 if it was brought to Earth or to Earth orbit. About 10% of these asteroids are easier to get to than the moon.

The technologies needed to bring asteroids to Earth will also enable us to deflect at least some of the impact threat objects. As things stand, it's only a matter of time until something crashes into us and kills us all - we will go the same way as the dinosaurs. Space exploration may be useless to mrmcfister, but it should nevertheless save mankind from an impact extinction.

I think there's enough money for both the Haitians and space exploration. It's not an 'either or' call.

What is it with this country? Moaning about high-speed rail and now moaning about space exploration. Whether we have high-speed rail or not, other countries will. Whether we explore space or not, other countries will. How are we supposed to compete in the future if we stand still and let everyone else modernize and overtake us?

As Garry Kasparov would say, "You cannot win at chess without developing your pieces."

Perhaps mrmcfister would like to cast a critical eye over the U.S. military budget, which this year is 64 times the size of the U.S. space budget. Or the UK defence budget perhaps, which this year is 175 times the size of the UK space budget

In any event, space exploration is set to largely pass into private hands in the future, as the fact that space exploration is soon going to involve space exploitation means that there are profits to be had, making government expenditure unnecessary.

If we down an asteroid the price of platinum would fall...earth has survived long enough without being hit and how does exploring the outer solar systems stop asteroids hitting earth?And Sam I think none of us should be in a race!And as for defence spending well what a pig trough that is!

mrmcfister going into space will become much cheaper with the use of space elevators. These are becoming more realistic with the passing of time. You capture an asteroid or use a space station and tether it to the earth. Then run lifts up and down the tether taking payloads or people into space. Reduces the cost by 98%. The problem is still the tether material which needs to be super strong and light. the Japs are ahead in this field and have developed carbon nanotubes. Nanotubes are as much as 100 times stronger than steel, yet weigh only a fifth as much.

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Space exploration benefit humanity, Haitians dont.

Asteroid platinum would indeed be likely to disrupt the market price of platinum on Earth, meaning that bringing an asteroid here could not be justified by the platinum content alone. The market potential of all asteroid resources combined is however believed to be sufficiently good to justify asteroid mining.

Earth has survived long enough? Errr.... An impact event does not destroy the Earth, only living things that inhabit the Earth. Example: 65 million years ago an impact event caused a mass extinction, including the dinosaurs, but it did not destroy the Earth itself. The Earth will always survive asteroid impacts.

101 % agree !