Do you believe that lofty projects such as exploring space are worthwhile?

Do you believe that lofty projects such as exploring space are worthwhile while problems such as poverty and hunger still plague the world?

Sorry to simplify my answer in such a way, but it works.

Resources are limited of course. What you give to one detracts from the other.

Well, I can only imagine three reasons (currently) to explore space.
1. Other life, of course
2. To find a new place, because we totally shit all over our planet just getting out of our pajamas
3. To learn knew things about space rocks and space wiggles


In the case of 1. "we find new life", one of three things happens, likely in order of probable outcomes.
1. The movie Avatar happens, though we may be on the receiving end, depending which species is more advanced, and there is no magic fucking spirit tree to save anybody
2. The other species sees that we still have poverty and hunger, and assumes we're incredibly irresponsible or immature for not having solved that first, therefore ignoring/conquering us for our own good.
3. The previous, only instead of telling us to fuck off, they actually help us fix our problems that we decided to ignore. This is the least likely, just like the Kindergarten version of Thanksgiving.

In the case of 2, "we find a new place", one of two things happens
1. All the rich people go to the new planet, and the poor people stay here to rot, the end.
2. We basically do the same thing over and over, getting "sorta" less sloppy each planet we go to. We probably rot, the end.

In the case of 3, we want to learn more about space rocks and space wigglies we have 2 outcomes
1. We realize something increeeeedibly important looking at these rocks, and it saves us all.
2. They're a bunch of fucking rocks and we blow a ton of money looking at them.

Resources are limited of course. What you give to one detracts from the other.

Resources are limited, but there are plenty of places to cut/acquire resources. You seem to be implying that if we fund one project, we must defund the other, which seems absurd. We could instead defund some third wasteful project (military expenditures, for example,) "fix" poverty/hunger (we could probably do this now without much relative cost, IMO) and put the remainder toward exploration/"lofty projects"

Your point is well taken.

That said, we could substitute world hunger with something else. Perhaps something like medical research which has more immediate tangible benefits. I guess what I'm asking is something like space exploration or development of the LHC is worth doing when there are other things that could be done that more obviously improve the state of the human race.

If we do not develop our space technology now, by the time we get around to it, there will be so much space garbage in orbit we'll be earthbound. As long as the price to get into space is so high, no one is going to invest the money needed to clean it up.

If I had to choose one or the other, I'd certainly go with the seemingly more practical projects (like fixing poverty/hunger, medical research, etc.) over space exploration, but I certainly don't think we should ignore our need to expand from Earth until it's too late to reasonably do anything. It's somewhat terrifying that all of life as we know it is currently on our little ball. We need a few more baskets to keep our eggs in, if we care at all about continuing life.

Yes.

Here's why: http://www.howstuffworks.com/innovat...ons.htm#page=1

there are other things that could be done that more obviously improve the state of the human race.

Especially when we DO get around to space, and we bump into some aliens or some shit.
Like, we show up in our spaceship, with our lasers, and when they look at our planet, half of us are still starving, unable to pay bills, and going "9/11! 9/11! The Mexcians did 9/11!!!" and then check out the dudes with all the cash, the first thing they're gonna notice is that we're out of our fucking mind. We don't need to be trying to go to the next level, we ain't even done with the CURRENT level.