It’s morning where I am, so I will reply.
I am not “anti-space program” Thomas Sowell once said in response to a similar argument in favor of some liberal entitlement program that when he was a young man with a family, he did not purchase an expensive set of encyclopedias, even though it was a good and desirable thing, because when he only had finite resources to support his family, he had to make choices.
So the opposition to something like a permanant moon base at the moment, doesn’t mean I don’t think it is a good idea in the abstract, or that I wouldn’t like future generations to pursue it, but right now we need to get out of the fiscal hole the stateists have put us in, and we have to pass on the encyclopedias right now and revisit the issue when 1/2 of the money we are spending each month isn’t boworrowed money.
I know there are other useful spinn off’s from the space program, I picked one to illustrate the point. You don’t pay engineers to design a moon base and spend the money to build it with the goal that the trillion dollars of R&D may produce a better mouse trap. It would be more efficient to spend far less money and just focus on the mouse trap if you really need a better one. Spin off technology is a fringe benefit from the space program, but nobody, with the possible exception of you, is advocating that we should fund the space program with billions if not trillions of dollars in the hope that someone will develop turkey pot pie in a tube, or a hear resistant tile. That is a grossly inefficient way to develop these products. We only tout them because we would have spent the money anyway. Can you imagine the outrage, if someone introduced a bill containing the equivilent of the NASA budget for the purpose of developing these spin off technologies. I don’t know which is more absurd, the notion that our space program can be justified on the basis of spin off tech, or that anyond really believes Moon base Newt can be built with private funds.
This is where that way of thinking loses the argument every time it's tried (and it's tried all the time).
Humans are not smart enough to know what we will discover or what is out there to discover -- but WE DO KNOW that by pushing the limits of our technology and science boundaries we DISCOVER new and useful things (we know from history), which entrepreneurs then embrace and develop and our lives become easier, richer and safer.
Entrepreneurs do not have the ability to finance large, unproven projects -- vibrant countries with educated workforces do. One half of one percent of the U.S. budget for something that produces positive returns and improves the human condition is a sad bit of coin to fixate on and bash.