Sure. Tourism, too. Many of us have an exploration urge and instinct, and I can't say it's all rational.
> there's a thousand languishing research proposals that we should be looking into instead
But we're not. People are motivated by passion. I'm not convinced every engineer at SpaceX would be engineering without that mission in their head. I'm also certain the capital being pumped into SpaceX isn't fungible into other research.
Mars, Inc. made a good pitch. It got people excited and involved. I get the sour grapes. We all have pet projects we'd prefer be prioritized instead. But I don't see us fighting over a fixed-sized pie.
Sure. Tourism, too. Many of us have an exploration urge and instinct, and I can't say it's all rational.
> there's a thousand languishing research proposals that we should be looking into instead
But we're not. People are motivated by passion. I'm not convinced every engineer at SpaceX would be engineering without that mission in their head. I'm also certain the capital being pumped into SpaceX isn't fungible into other research.
Mars, Inc. made a good pitch. It got people excited and involved. I get the sour grapes. We all have pet projects we'd prefer be prioritized instead. But I don't see us fighting over a fixed-sized pie.