At least the contaminants are packaged up neatly in big glass blobs rather than released into the atmosphere for all of us to breath.

No. It took millions of cavemen thousands of years to reach the point where they could do that. A tribe putting together an expedition to follow a herd north would be just as costly on the tribe, and the consequences far more dire than it was for the US. I could probably argue it was a larger undertaking for them than Apollo was the US.

It won't.

But you claim that our nutty space religion ideas will bankrupt the world, yet all we want and more could be paid for many times over by the military budget of the United States.

We can still die at a moments notice.

I never proposed it as a solution for overpopulation. I never proposed a mass migration. Why do people keep assuming that?

Primitive humans would probably disagree.

They had to invent the technology to kill animals for food and to acquire pelts for warm themselves in cold climates. They had to learn to control fire. They had to learn language. It simply could not be done without the knowledge you and I take for granted. You're belittling what a huge undertaking all that was. Yes, we can look back from where we are now and say it was easy. But for them, it meant death, therefore it was impossible.

It's the same thing today. We're lacking the knowledge to go in live in a new habitat. But our ancestors 5, 10, or 100 thousand years from now will look back and say it was easy.

And I bet a hundred thousand years ago, there was anti-space-nutter type guy trolling the tribal council saying it was crazy to chase the herds north. It would be certain death. Let's stay here where we can eat leaves and bugs year round.

Yes. Stealing *tons* of resources from Earth to expand human habitat to space is fine by me. It's a drop of water compared to the *billions of tons* of resources and energy we put into killing each other. You guys keep trying to play this up like we're throwing away our future in order to finance space research...that is not so. It is nothing compared to our other (less worthy) expenses.

Wrong. Clearly the space chair-lift comes before the Escalator.

Bullshit. Nature has already solved this problem for us. We instinctively kill each other. This will NEVER change. Even if we have one world government, there will always be violent factions.

I'm not talking about evacuating the existing population, that's impossible until something like a space elevator comes along. I never billed this as a cure for overpopulation. Stop putting words in my mouth.

The same argument could have been used for staying in Africa.

What specifically are you referring to? Capitalists have historically shown absolutely no qualms about replacing human labor with mechanical labor.

What I see is a vast expensive infrastructure designed to kill other people and take their stuff. That's not going away. It's not ever going away. It's as much a part of our nature as sex. And it accomplishes absolutely nothing for us as a whole. Why not build stuff on other planets so we don't have to waste so much money trying to take it from other people. We can either sit around destroying and stealing from each other on this planet for the next several thousand years or however long it takes to kill ourselves off completely, or we can do that AND start looking for other rocks to live on, or other ways to live without large rocks. It's a worthy goal. You know.... building stuff instead? It is a worthy goal. It may be a matter of survival one day. Most of the people on here are more interested in building stuff...why aren't you? Why are you so obstinately against us? Are you really so worked up about that fraction of a percent of the federal budget that goes to NASA? You'd rather spend all that money on war machines then?

How is this any different than being on Earth? There are huge costs to society here on Earth. Yes, parts of the Earth will sustain us for the foreseeable future without us expending any energy. But that's never been enough for us. We humans are always moving into new habitats. We develop new technologies to help us do it. When we left Africa we developed tools to help us hunt and kill animals for the skins so we could survive in colder climates. We developed agriculture and husbandry for the same reasons. All of our technological advancements have allowed us to continue to grow into new formerly uninhabitable environments. Space is no different. Mechanical failures kill us all the time. We're all going to die. Why not die doing what we're clearly supposed to do...going forth and multiplying. Multiplying on Earth can only continue for so long.

I think you just revealed yourself as the luddite that you are, Anti-space-nutter guy.

We're not talking about a small to medium city. I'm simply advocating R&D in space based robot industry. That is a worthwhile endeavor. And there's no reason you can't research that, AND lower the toxic side effects of industry. But the problem with lowering the toxic side effects of industry is that the entire manufacturing industry is against you. Whereas, with the R&D I'm proposing there is virtually no opposition except for a few extreme liberals who believe we shouldn't be launching rockets as long as there are hungry people somewhere on this planet.

Yes, and in order to make your argument sound more plausible you're argument has changed from industry in general, to mining; and from no pollution to low pollution. What exactly is unrealistic about an autonomous robot on an asteroid. We've already done this. It's far more plausible than attempting to perform useful work without toxic byproducts...considering that nature wasn't even able to accomplish this natural selection.

It's R&D, it costs a lot of money. It's not meant to replace efficient industries yet.

There are always toxic side effects to industry. What you're proposing can't be done.