Quote Originally Posted by Calliope View Post
Personally, I would rank the elimination of pollution, habitat destruction, poverty and disease over space exploration. Until our lives on Earth are fair and harmonious, we have no business in overconfidently going where no man has gone before.
You seem to believe that we have to choose between one or the other. In fact, so many technological advances can be traced back to the space program that I'd argue that it's almost irresponsible not to continue to explore space.

In fact even just looking at your list of problems we need to overcome on Earth, many could be helped or solved by advancing into space. Elimination of pollution? We need cleaner fuels and better ways to store energy and recycle a great many materials. All things which may be required on long term space voyages. Habitat destruction? Colonization of other worlds to allow the human race to continue to expand and exploit resources gained from worlds, asteroids and moons with no life could help alleviate this. Poverty and disease? Poverty is really not something that will be solved faster if we stop investing in the exploration of space. We're not going to suddenly solve the problems inherent in present day political systems, international relations, and economics by taking money from space programs and throwing it at these. Particularly when the amount being spent on space exploration is a pittance compared to things like the US defense budget. Same goes for curing disease really. The biggest problem with disease in the world are preventable illnesses which crop up in third world countries that you don't see here. It's utterly pathetic that that's true, but we can blame pharmaceutical companies, the patent system, and god knows how many other factors for that being the case. As for more first world diseases like cancer, these are an issue, but you're not going to cure them by just throwing money at them. In fact, you might be less likely to cure them if you just throw money at them. We actually have things like MRI's these days because we went into space, not because we gave doctors research grants so they could cure us.

My point being, the idea that we have to choose between solving problems on Earth and going into space is a false dichotomy. Both sides can and have benefited from the other and that should be encouraged to continue, not the other way around.