Space is the coolest thing

A while ago, I was discussing human achievement with a group of friends. I brought up space travel, in my mind, space travel is probably one of the greatest things mankind has done so far. Basically everyone else responded by asking "Where’s the point?" huh.

Well, I know a lot of people are just dumb as heck so I put it off. Until I slowly realized basically everyone has this exact same outlook "Where’s the point". This was, to say the least, slightly disheartening. I love space, its my passion. What the hell is wrong with you backwards bastards? Ok, let me start by squaring away that one issue that keeps arising "Where is the point". Little do you know but NASA is basically responsible, in some way, for almost every single device you will use today. Starting with the most obvious, your keyboard, Mouse and even your computer itself are all the result of research and development by NASA. If you make a phone call today, or browse the web on your phone or use a GPS to find the shops near you, NASA is to thank for that. Oh well someone would have made those eventually, No, no they wouldn't have and even if they did, at least ONE of the following important discoveries and technologies would have slipped past their dumb earth brains;

• Pacemakers

• Bar Codes

• Smoke detectors

• Almost everything in an ambulance

• Cordless electronic tools

• Memory cloth

• Fuckin' baby food

• Water purification

• Solar Energy

• Cancer detection

Most of the devices up there have probably saved thousands of lives in the time its taken me to write this. And that’s just a small smattering of the 30,000 or so by products of the space race. Man they must have spent tons of cash on that right? Wrong you moron. They spent less than 1% of the national budget of the US on developing all that shit. That’s less than 1 cent for every dollar an American makes.

Its probably one of the best industries too, all that tech creates jobs and income and taxes for people and the government. It’s estimated that for every $1 spent on NASA, the US gets $7 back in the form of new jobs and taxes from those jobs. I mean screw taxes but that’s one hell of a return.

And just for you guys out there that don't get motivated by silly shit like "World shattering inventions" and "Devices that save millions of lives" or "taxes" what about the fact that exploration is the single greatest thing humanity does that separates us from animals? Since the dawn of time we've had brave, stupid or just hungry and lost people finding new, incredible land then fucking it up forever. For me, that’s what space is about. For less money than you will spend today on the cost of the electricity to heat up your hot pockets, humanity is going into the dark, scary world outside of the safety of our planet in the name of exploration and finding out cool shit.

Now that we have THAT out of the way, lets talk about all the cool stuff you get out of space travel.

The big one is asteroid mining. Boring sounding I know but asteroid mining is, literally, something that could save the entire planet and introduce a new golden age of humanity. Ok maybe that’s a bit much but follow me here.

You know how in space movies everyone always has whatever they want? I mean apart from like, Mad Max or anything else set in GRIMDARK, resources in these places are infinite, enough to build space stations the size of moons, to send craft all over the universe, establish worlds and build fantastic machines. Guess what? We already have that shit a couple of miles above your head. Above you are approximately 450 big rocks full of gold, iron, copper and whatever other raw materials you can imagine. By rocks I mean one of the closer ones is 2.5km in circumference and is made of gold.

I shouldn't really have to say any more "Massive rock made of gold" is probably enough for most anyone, but I'm insane, crazy and drunk with power so I'll go on. As well as being a gangster rapper's dream, the solid gold asteroid also holds massive amounts of other, useful stuff like tin and iron, which can be used to build MORE space stuff. Yes you earth people can have some of it too, seeing how its much easier and cheaper to drop stuff to earth than bring it up to space.

This builds into the next stage, colonization of space. Naaah nems, that shit is futurewacky stuff. Costs trillions and we dont have the tech.....oh we DO have the tech? and you can build it completely with space materials? Welp I guess I'll shut my big strawman-mouth then. woop-doop-de-woop.

In closing. Space is so kickass all the shit I just talked about for a page or so is stuff within an hours flight away from Earth. I didn't even touch on the stuff that’s just plain "cool" that naysayers would say "has no applicable benefits for mankind". If there’s one thing you should take away from this, its that we live in a time where, if they wanted to, we could have everything I just described within a decade of work. The tech is there, the profits are all up there, all we need is someone with the cash and the personality to get it going.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. - Carl Sagan

-Nems

P.S. just in case you were also thinking that cash has to be mountains of the stuff? I estimated that the whole project would cost less than $60 Billion. That sounds like a lot until you realize that the money you’d make back, and the jobs it would provide outdo that number tenfold.