Originally posted by humy
Knowing long term effects of zero gravity on people will not be important for a long time assuming the governments aren't stupid enough to waste billions of dollars sending loads of people in space long term when, right now, we need as much money spend on problems here on Earth such as world poverty.
Prove to me that the key discovery to curing cancer, or alzheimer's, or arthritis, won't be
discovered by people trying to solve the problem of how people can survive long term in space.
It's often been the case that the right collection of specialities and people came together to
solve a problem, only because they were brought together to try to solve some other problem.
Because you don't know where the breakthrough will come from you often don't know in advance
which specialities will be needed, and dedicated efforts to solve the particular problem failed
because nobody realised that the missing breakthrough would come from some other seemingly
unrelated field.
This is why the new medical research lab being built in the UK in partnership with the Royal Institution
is putting such heavy design emphasis on making sure that people from different disciplines are
mixed up together to promote and facilitate collaboration.
We need blue sky research, Just as much as directed research. We need hard problems to solve
to explore new ideas and push back boundaries. We need science to inspire.
We need a space program, and a manned one and we need it now.
And it has done nothing to make people poorer... In fact the opposite is true.
We have way way more than enough resources to solve poverty worldwide while massively increasing
science and space research.
It's not an either / or situation. In fact, you are not going to solve poverty WITHOUT science and
inspiration.
Also, until you can prove to me that the decades (minimum) it would take with even a massive diplomatic
effort to solve all the problems on this planet wont use up all the time we have before an asteroid comes
to wipe us out... I don't know how you can claim that we do have the time to wait.
And lastly. It might well take a generation, or more, to solve these problems to your satisfaction.
During which time those alive now will no longer be eligible for space travel.
How do you tell them that they cannot fulfil their dreams, and inspire others to do the same?