What’s the point?

Megan McArdle asks why a generation grew up yearning to explore the solar system and gave up on that dream. I’m kind of sympathetic — I grew up reading Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke and some of the other pulpy sci-fi authors as well — but I’m also enough of a realist to understand why it hasn’t happened. Simply put, there’s no real point. The vague memories I have of a number of those novels was that space exploration was often driven by concerns about planetary overcrowding, mass starvation, dwindling resources, and other worries held by the Malthusian types who thought we were killing Earth with our greed and avarice.

I think it’s fair to say that those concerns were largely unfounded: more people live on Earth than ever before with a higher qualilty of life than has ever been experienced. We’ve also discovered that, even if we wanted to expand to other planets, they’re largely uninhabitable. Venus isn’t a rainforest hothouse as was posited in the original War of the Worlds. It would be impossible to set foot on the gas giants. Mars and the moon might be kind of habitable, but only at astronomical price.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that there’s no real point to colonizing other planets. Even if we found that they were sources of material wealth to strip-mine, a la the solid indie flick “Moon,” there’d be no reason to send a permanent settlement to the targeted planet. Exploration for exploration’s sake is all well and good, but exploration with a purpose is even better. Especially if the government is footing the bill.