I'll use the same soapbox, it seems to be warmed up.
1. Going to space is a good idea, if for no other reason than it fires the human imagination. It gives us hope for something more. And if we're ever going to spread out enough to avoid an ELE (like a big mother rock), we need to get moving on the project.
2. Not all technology from the prior work has been lost. Some has, some has not. But the vast body of science is still there. And the capability to go to space is no longer just solely vested in NASA. There are other people learning about it, including small frys like John Carmack. This is a good trend, since the commoditization and commercialization of space is vital to our global long term prospects, I figure.
3. When pointing out the flaws in the ISS, NASA had better step in and take some of the blame. The thing had been grossly critised by plenty of the science intelligentsia before politcial hacks got at it, and NASA right along there. And as far as wasting money goes, NASA has pissed away a few dollars in its time too. The idea that NASA has either the only or best or most cost effective way of getting to space is dubious.
4. Unmanned probes are nice, but if I see a man walk on Mars, it is a much more powerful symbol than seeing an escape from my Lego Mindstorm kit do the same. Yes, lots of good science can be done more cheaply this way. But it lacks symbolic value, which gives political and popular impetus and support. So that's why it has to be done, not to mention the potential strategic ramifications.
5. As to international preparation: Canada has already said it will be sending its own probes to Mars regardless of what the US does. But you can bet if you guy shave any intiative going, we'll be in there trying to help out. We've done a fair bit to aide the shuttle and ISS programs and contributed a fair bit to climate science and other areas or space-related science. Maybe you don't need the whole world, just a coalition of the willing, if you take my drift.
6. Space is an interesting economic problem. It has a huge buy-in cost, and it is projected, at some point, to have huge returns. But they buy in is *VAST* and the environment truly hostile. And the benefits..... we've seen some potent trickle-down, but it is contestible that the same money spent on terrestrial research for non-military or non-space means may have produced as many (or more) worthy breakthroughs. Not necessarily the same, but perhaps as profound. But uncertainty is a fact of life and space might well have a lot of payoffs... if for no other reason than it offers us a change to go somewhere, to see our world from the outside (which is a good perspective), and a challenge to the intellect and the spirit and to human ingenuity. There shouldn't be much man can't manage - why climb the mountain? Because it is there.
7. Poverty exists the world over. More than half the world's population hasn't made a phone call. in that light, the investment is ludicrious. Except. Except that the money we don't spend on space wouldn't be used to cure this problem. It would go into pork barrelling, buying more bombs for people from other places, buying more prevalent police presence and abridging more liberties and rights, hiring more lawyers and judges, or doling more out to the marginal members of society in some cases to no good end. So given that the problems of the world won't be solved anyway (realistically), then we might ask if the money devoted to space can at least be considered a semi-benign use of it? I'd have to say so.
8. As to the US 'saving the world'... let's just say that sometimes the world needs saving from the USA. No one likes the top dog, rightly or wrongly (the Romans could have attested to that) and to stay top dog, you do things that make you unpleasant and unliked (the Romans could speak to that too, as could the British and French and other Imperial powers). Half the time, it is US efforts to 'save the world' on their own terms that gets everyone up in arms. I'm not going to make any reference to current particular events and the feeble attempts to retroactively justify them or to somehow explain the failed PR strategies involved, save to say I mostly support US actions (if not their diplomatic conduct) and so could in no way be called anti-US. But when I hear one of my southern neighbours get up on the 'saving the world' theme, I can't help but wince. It's the attitude that makes people want to either wince and turn away or get P.O.'d and smack the speaker with a stick, depending. If the USA made as great an attempt to tolerate and understand (and be educated about!) the rest of the world as they have to about the USA (out of simple self interest, if for no other reason), then such comments might come off sounding rather different or might not occur... being phrased in stead some other way.
I'd like to conclude by hoping I've offended no-one. It was not my intention. At the very least, the campaign to conquer space is a spur to the imagination and spirit of humanity, something which can be a rallying point for those who would like something other than the strife of this world to focus on, and like it or not, the gateway to the stars starts on the Moon, then Mars, then further out.
And really, how can anyone on this board who plays Traveller really not want to go out there, as a human, and see what there is to see and see if we have any company, even if all we find are Samurai Cats, Piratical Dogs, and a creature that looks like it should be in a big seafood gumbo?
