Columbus was hoping to find a shorter sea route to East Asia. He stumbled on the New World — a completely unexpected, unforeseen, and unforeseeable discovery. Initially his voyage was considered a failure and a waste. Subsequent voyages to the New World were gambles, as there was little reason to think the New World had any economic value at all. Only after much time had passed did the discovery of the New World reap many unforeseen and unforeseeable rewards for the Old World.
The benefits of pushing and exploring frontiers cannot be known in advance, just as the benefits of basic scientific research cannot be known. This makes cost-benefit and risk-reward analyses useless, which was my point.
But we do know that societies and cultures that have done these things have reaped great rewards. If the US does not do it, other nations will. There is good reason to believe they will benefit from unforeseen and unforeseeable rewards, and we will not.
Yielding space exploration to other nations is an indication the US is no longer a nation on the rise and most likely a nation in decline. Considering we are not broke and still the richest nation on the planet, considering the costs of space exploration relative to the nation’s GDP and the entire federal budget, it is an entirely voluntary decline. It is an issue of national priorities. It is an indication we would rather spend more money on things like the EPA, food stamps, and wealth redistribution rather than spend a relative pittance on pushing the frontier and exploring space. China is making a different decision.
