We have no lack of spending opportunities for "progress"; there are dozens of promising research fields, and the ressources we can realistically invest are limited.
Most historical progress was driven and motivated by incremental gains; exploration as an end in itself was not even enough to get Columbus funded, and big space projects are much more ressource intensive than that.
> Space is where the next wave of innovation and opportunity lies.
That's just, like, your opinion. I consider this extremely unlikely; to me, the most promising fields short and mid-term are AI and synthetic biology. Space exploration does not even come close-- even if we magically gained the capability to build large scale, self-sufficient cities on Mars and populated them with millions of people (which is extremely unlikely to happen in the next decades)-- what does that do for us? What progress do we gain? If you want to build habitats in unlivable, hostile environments, you can just as well do this in Antarctica, some desert or the deep sea, and I'd consider that likewise mostly an exercise in futility.
edit: To make my position a bit clearer: I think its fine to invest "reasonably" in space exploration; the current moon project I'd consider mostly a waste, but still somehwat justifiable. But spending twice or more of what NASA currently costs on Moon or Mars base projects would be a non justifiable waste in my eyes.
Most historical progress was driven and motivated by incremental gains; exploration as an end in itself was not even enough to get Columbus funded, and big space projects are much more ressource intensive than that.
> Space is where the next wave of innovation and opportunity lies.
That's just, like, your opinion. I consider this extremely unlikely; to me, the most promising fields short and mid-term are AI and synthetic biology. Space exploration does not even come close-- even if we magically gained the capability to build large scale, self-sufficient cities on Mars and populated them with millions of people (which is extremely unlikely to happen in the next decades)-- what does that do for us? What progress do we gain? If you want to build habitats in unlivable, hostile environments, you can just as well do this in Antarctica, some desert or the deep sea, and I'd consider that likewise mostly an exercise in futility.
edit: To make my position a bit clearer: I think its fine to invest "reasonably" in space exploration; the current moon project I'd consider mostly a waste, but still somehwat justifiable. But spending twice or more of what NASA currently costs on Moon or Mars base projects would be a non justifiable waste in my eyes.