Eric Hunting wrote:

What personally annoys me is the playing to the old argument of; "why should we go to space just to export our terrestrial madness?"

It never occurs to proponents of this notion that the act of going to space might be a necessary part of that process of growing up. That we might need the challenge of the space environment to ultimately learn the craft of sustainability because Mother Earth molly-coddles us with a too-benign environment that make its too easy to cheat.

Eric, The argument may be old, but so is politics, and that's what this is really about. You seem to think that there is something about how we organize production on Earth that we can learn somewhere off planet. The laws of physics are the same on both bodies so only minor refinements to current knowledge could possibly be gleaned. Are we supposed to cease all actions to promote social and ecological justice until the revelatory Martian knowledge is delivered to mankind care of Mr. Musk? The idea that the problem is not enough austerity imposed upon the wasteful Earthmen is absurd. Inequitable and unsustainable resource allocation is an ideological problem; it is not due to lack of scientific knowledge or resources. Some people think in authoritarian terms and no amount of physical deprivation or abundance will change their perceptions. They will simply impose their elitist solutions in other ways (e.g. intellectual property). -Karl