Gasoline/diesel prices hit record highs

Originally Posted by Shonos

Space is such a nice, big source of resources. It's just waiting to be used up and no one seems to be looking into it.

A potential solution is up there and we are again dragging our feet. People ask what the point of space exploration is? How about the materials needed to let you live the way you do day in and out?

It saddens me too, because the way I see it.. by the time we have the knowledge and technology to get up there and mine the resources we need there wont be any materials left on earth to build the equipment to get up there.

I could also be exaggerating the problem and overly critical, but oh well. I know going up into space and mining some asteroid is easier said than done, but why does there seem to be no push for it?

Easier said than done is putting it extremely mildly. Space is not a 'nice, big source of resources'; it is an environment incredibly unfriendly to all carbon-based life, where even the slightest error can mean death and billions of dollars lost. The costs and logistics of even getting a few people up to the Moon are outrageous. Transporting materials into space currently costs many thousands of dollars per kilogram. To make any kind of space mining operations economically viable would almost certainly take many generations (I'm discounting the potential effect of approaching technological singularity and such, because who really knows what that would entail), and who exactly would be willing to make such a long term, enormous, incredibly risky investment?

I do believe there is some potential for space exploration and colonisation in the future, but humanity is not yet at a stage where it could be considered a realistic option at all. The costs outweigh the benefits a million times over. Also, space isn't some sort of emergency back-up variant, like 'Oh shit, we fucked up the Earth, where's the next closest planet?'. I believe that until we solve our problems on Earth (to a reasonable degree), there's no hope in colonising the space.

As for your concern that eventually there won't be any materials left on Earth to get to space, I doubt that. What materials are you talking about, exactly? Rocket fuel, maybe, but realistically speaking, the rocket propellants in use today are simply way too heavy and expensive to get anywhere at a reasonable pace, so whatever ships would be used in colonisation or mining operations almost certainly wouldn't run on conventional fuel anyway.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

Space Exploration would be the best thing ever >=( Buuuuuut people lack foresight, and politicians are no different. We'd need another space race of sorts (sup china), but I don't know if we'd get that going. NASA's funding is abysmal. It doesn't even account for even close to 1% of the fiscal policy, which is disgusting given what it has provided for us technologically.

What has it provided for us technologically? Most of the NASA spinoffs seem to be either very narrowly used, or just part of natural technological progress that would have occured with or without NASA.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

And saying any of those inventions/discoveries would happen eventually anyway just calls into question the entirety of basic government-funded scientific research.

Well, no, that's not what I meant, but perhaps that government funding would be more efficiently used to specifically focus on such inventions (research), rather than getting them as a potential side effect of space programmes. I mean, not that I think NASA shouldn't have a larger budget, but it's also not hard to see why most people don't view space exploration as a priority right now.

How ya doing, buddy?