Comment by markusbrutus

Its high time that humanity moved past the notion that sending meatbags into space is a good idea. Pampering to Star Trek fans has squandered trillions of dollars pursuing the "meatbags in space" chimera and all they have to show for is a crammed toilet in LEO (soon to be decommissioned since all the "bubbles in space" experiments than 10 year-olds can conceive have been carried out) and the abominable space shuttle. Had robotic exploration being pursued instead we would have had thriving Lunar and perhaps asteroid belt mining by now. What's more, at this point it would have made economic sense and it would create wealth rather than destroy it. Some grandiose ideas are fun but they get you nowhere, and leave you worse off as they represent a gigantic misallocation of capital. The Pyramids for instance, did not propel humanity in an era of skyscraper building.