What good is space?

One of the big arguments for publicly funded space exploration is that it leads to all kinds of technological advances that are used in other areas.

I'm sorry, but that just is not borne out by the evidence. If the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on space have returned benefits to the tune of millions or even billions, that doesn't exactly seem a good investment. Similarly, the argument that all kinds of riches await us in space seems not to have worked out either. There has yet to be developed a blockbuster money-making enterprise that requires human space travel. Economics just won't make the case for space exploration.

Someday, maybe commercial space travel will be self-sustaining and realistic. In a tiny way, it's already starting. OK, great. But do we really need government-sponsored programs to provide a "boost"? Maybe, assuming we care that they succeed. But why should we care? Do we expect it to make our lives so much better that it's worth all those tax dollars?

If we really wanted to do something for the country or the world, there are many better ways we could be spending those hundreds of billions of dollars. For example, real education reform, reintegrating the inner cities into the mainstream economy and culture, developing and implementing effective ways to impact child abuse and neglect, creating cross-country mass transit systems that actually work...

Now, there is a more effective point about space travel. To argue for space exploration in the name of pure science makes much more sense. There is nowhere else but space to do a lot of the science that gets done there. But let's be clear: again, the cost-benefit ratio would seem to accrue from unmanned missions - think Hubble and the Mars missions of the past 20 years.

Manned spaceflight, as near as I can tell, has been mostly make-work. Build a space station - and do exactly what on it that you couldn't do on a two-week mission? Build a fleet of space shuttles, which can't launch reliably, and send people into orbit to do what? Even if there are a small number of long-term experiments that need a human right there every second, are they worth hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars?

To argue convincingly for the value of manned spaceflight from a fiscal or scientific perspective is very difficult, to say the least. If people are going to go into space, let's be honest - the main reason we want to do it is because it's cool! OK. I won't argue with that. I agree. I might be willing to spend an extra $100 on my income taxes for that. Just don't try and jerk me around with rationalizations.