True, humanity has big problems. But those aren't caused by resources diverted to space exploration.
And more importantly: diverting those resources elsewhere would do little to solve those problems. History, politics, dictators, colonialism, economic inequality, greed, ethnic/religious conflict, etc etc. Nothing that eg. NASA or a bag of $$ would fix.
Particularly when considering how small the amount going towards space is, which in the US, Congress is all too eager to pare down even further. Funding would be better sourced from cuts to things like military spending, which is well known for being egregiously wasteful and inefficient with its problems with pork barrel projects, fractal spiral subcontracting, and how practically anything it asks for gets rubberstamped with little question.
fundings for it is low now, how about when we have thousands on the Moon/Mars? will Earth poverty be eradicated etc.?
the point the op raised is relevant from a historical perspective, as probably the firsts who will populate the moon and Mars will think they are living the future; meawhile people die of dehydration this night
also we barely can't grow lettuce at space and that's missions at millions of USD... i think a society which is well stablished and care for everyone's welfare is more likely to collaborate and build technology to get away from the solar system than our shit greed of today, despite the great amount of good and intelligent people who sometimes can't even do stuff because academia conflict etc.
Settlements on the Moon, Mars, or anywhere else beyond Earth’s orbit are going to be brutal for decades to come, no matter how much money gets poured into them. The first settlers are going to be spending every waking moment securing their existence and making it more sustainable. These places won’t be joyride destinations.
Perhaps it’s pessimistic, but I have little faith that even a single country will eradicate suffering within its own borders, let alone all countries coming together to cooperate and eliminate it globally. If we wait until all earthly problems are solved before going into space, we’ll simply never go to space. At some point something will happen that will stop launches entirely, we’ll lose our institutional knowledge of rocketry and spaceflight, and putting things in orbit (let alone people on the moon) will become an impossibility again.
won't be a joyride but won't be living close or in starvation and in an overly cold/hot house...
settlement on Mars/Moon is a multi-disciplinary act! figuring out efficient and safe geothermal or nuclear or whatever technology to improve Earth's life, definitely translates to future settlements... so why not do it here? it isn't about eradicating suffering, as it's part of the existence (probably) but it's about providing a decent life for everyone
The capacity to make Mars work, necessarily means we develop the capacity to drop an autonomous pod anywhere (on Earth or Mars) that can make fuel from the air and use local dirt to either fashion a complete shelter or at least place a protective layer over a lightweight one from 50 million miles away.
(I assume, but have no hard numbers, that it's also cheaper to send hydroponic systems to Mars than to ship food regularly: conditional on that, also to ship an autonomous food factory).
Going to Mars long term also requires the shipping cost to space is reduced so much that the cost to LEO is competitive with current airline rates, so when I say "drop an autonomous pod anywhere" I really do mean anywhere — Sudan, Malawi, Nepal, Everest, Antarctica, are all much easier than Olympus Mons.
> But those aren't caused by resources diverted to space exploration.
Going to space IS politics. It is, essentially, a vanity goal for a whole society. The resources diverted are, essentially, mindshare and political.
It is only fair then that people ask why we as a society look to space when we have so many problems here, just as it was fair to ask why so much attention was given to the race to the moon rather than, say, civil rights [1].
And more importantly: diverting those resources elsewhere would do little to solve those problems. History, politics, dictators, colonialism, economic inequality, greed, ethnic/religious conflict, etc etc. Nothing that eg. NASA or a bag of $$ would fix.