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SpaceX, Rocketplane Kistler Win NASA Competition
An anonymous reader writes "Two emerging space companies have won a NASA competition to provide low cost commercial transport to the International Space Station. SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, is developing its two-stage reusable Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, but it is making changes after the loss of Falcon 1 during its maiden launch. Rocketplane Kistler's K-1 is a two-stage reusable launch vehicle that has been in development for over a decade. Both companies represent a departure from business as usual at NASA. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are the largest companies in the aerospace industry and win most NASA contracts."
Invest in the the people who already exist on the planet, you will get a much better return!
While this is true, I question how much good external investment can really do.
I think there's something very wrong when the number one way to improve a significant fraction of the world's population (my take, one third to half of the global population) is to get them an airline ticket and a work visa somewhere in the developed world. At one time, the developed world started with pretty much the same primitive culture that everyone had. But they turned that into the advanced societies that are leading the way in human endeavors like space development.
The Gates Foundation targets low lying fruit like treatable but widespread diseases and parasites because in part you don't need a functioning society to fix the problem. Education and some basic infrastructure (like water wells) can be accomplished in such an environment. But ultimately, you need a system of reasonable laws, fairly applied and a democratic process for selecting the local governments, the lawmakers, and the heads of state. I think that more than anything else is what seperates the developed world from everyone else.
Once you have this basic structure, the society can heal itself and invest in its citizens and infrastructure. But without it, you are limited to how you can invest in citizens of this society.
Here's where I'm going with this. Chosing between space development/exploitation and human investment is a false dilemma. Any society where you can measurably improve someone's life and value has social and legal infrastructure that will naturally encourage investment in those people. The places that still hurt are places external sources have limited effect on.
Space development is important for several reasons. First, it allows access to a vast amount of resources. There is far more mass, energy, and space in the Solar System than there is on Earth. Much of the technology developed in space will have tremendous value on Earth. For example, I think the science of arcologies will be greatly advanced by space settlements. Space settlements will have to recycle resources at a level of efficiency unimaginable on Earth.