The space program was certainly good for the US economy in certain places. Houston, my home town, benefited. But it was temporary. A lot of scientists and engineers lost their jobs. It could have been sustainable rather than a short-lived phenomenon if they had taken a serious approach instead of just a stunt to put some guys on the moon.
There were certainly then, and have been since, many commercial applications come out of the space program. I'm not completely knocking it. But as far as doing something permanent, we missed a bet and an even bigger boost to the economy over a longer term by doing a stunt instead of serious planning and making it a permanent fixture of a real space-based economy.
Hell, I remember watching Neil Armstrong step onto the moon in '69. I was almost 6 years old. It is one of my most vivid childhood memories. The TV was in black and white...but I was right there with him.
A trip to Mars right now is another stunt, in my opinion. It's certainly feasible and not too expensive overall if done by private enterprise. Personally, I think we should wait until we establish a base of support at least around the Earth, and preferably with support from the moon or a small asteroid or two parked around the moon. It would make it cheaper and easier to get there, as well as give us the ability to establish and supply something more permanent on Mars.
But there's not much of an economic reason to go there yet. Build up a space industry that makes a trip like that cheap and suddenly it makes it a lot easier to swallow a scientific mission to Mars.
The idea to mine asteroids is an excellent one. The article is a bit overly unfair on the cost and possible return on such a venture, pointing out the costs of high-priced scientific missions that brought back small amounts of samples from the moon and asteroids, making the price per gram look extraordinarily high for something that wasn't sought after for profit.
Of course that's true as far as it goes. But it didn't quite talk too much about the benefits and the fact that even the first venture would bring back more valuable metals than we produce in a year on Earth, not a few grams of samples, not tying the two different thoughts together to make it look more reasonable. It will still take a long time to pay off the investment, but it will create a new age, and they will be there first.
We could completely replace the mining and refinement of raw materials on Earth, and the production of a completely new species of technology by manufacturing in micro gravity environments.
The article barely mentioned that the idea of the project is to build an infrastructure, at least partially, out of the raw materials they collect. They can package enough to drop back to earth, to be retrieved in the ocean and sold to help cover additional costs of building infrastructure. Yeah, it will probably depress prices of certain items to an extent. But I think even in the short term it would stimulate others as prices to manufacture really cool stuff becomes real cheap because those raw materials have become so cheap.
Space is the next step, and it's coming. Private enterprise is now seriously looking at doing these things. A number of countries have serious space programs and other companies around the world too. There was the industrial revolution, the information revolution, now here comes the next one.
If I had Bill Gate's money, we'd already be there
