This is leaking methane

Results of space exploration in everyday life: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/

Return on investment: https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3721375-how-much-does-nasa-return-to-the-american-economy/

I must have an overactive imagination because I can think of plenty of problems that unregulated space industry could cause.

Industry requires infrastructure and support, when speaking space terms everything is way more expensive so cost cutting will be rampant on all systems. Centralized space communication hub? No, we’re gonna be bombarded with signals since maintaining the equipment on ground is cheaper (astrology sciences would suffer). Way to many objects in an orbital plane? Not their problem till eventually it becomes a catastrophic event as our own planet can become (Kessler Syndrome). More mass requires more fuel? Dump all the junk at every opportunity clogging space lanes (micro meteors and radiation will no longer be the main safety concern for travel).

I could go on and on, think about the current state of shipping and logistics. We already have events where ships were forced to sit for weeks outside of docks waiting to be unloaded (source). The space faring ships will only increase in size. What do you do with the useless containers they ship the contents back to earth with? The cost would be too high for re-usability getting it back into space. What about the workers who are at an unregulated site and their conditions?

I agree it’s a conundrum of how do we advance when advancement causes destruction. It’s something I’ve wrestled with when considering the Fermi paradox. Either you live harmoniously with the planet and die when it’s environment changes, or you use that sucker up and get out of dodge before the next mass extinction takes you and nearly all of the living creatures out. I’m hoping in the future we meet some neighbors that can show a middle ground works well to persuade out current trajectory.

Didn’t we originally think the same (“you’re protecting nothing”) when it came to the ocean, the Rain Forests, lakes, streams, the Arctic, etc? Until we learned otherwise. By that time, the profit motive was too entrenched to ever allow things to change.

By way of example, what if the moon were mined to such an extreme that it changed its orbit? Wouldn’t that impact it or the earth itself? What if the moon were no longer there at all because that suited a future trillionaire’s aim to add another billion to their bank account?

My oil stocks say keep it here. I won’t be alive to find out what happens. /s

We really need to hold corporations accountable for solar radiation. Our star spits out so much radiation that it can cause a significant increase in skin cancers. This is a proven fact that we’ve known for a long time, yet no one does anything about it. Why? Well, why don’t you look at who the sun really benefits. Corporations, that’s who. Many of our inventions were created to protect us from the sun, reduce its effects or power the things that do. They profit off our misery while neglecting to solve the base issue: that the sun is a dirty fusion ball that threatens our well-being. Take a stand against dirty solar and let’s hold big agriculture, big solar, big a/c and big beach accountable for their role in climate change and proliferation of skin cancers! We can do this together, but only if we stand together and force them to switch to clean solar energy today!

Edit: don’t even get me started on that ring of trash around Saturn. Seriously, stop allowing corpos to profit off the pollution of our stellar environment.

Edit 2: yo, this was supposed to be a joke about how I think complaining about pollution on the Moon or whatever is silly. Maybe it’s not a good one, but yeah.

Yeah, the moon doesn’t have an ecosystem.

It’s important to note that we know for sure that the moon has no ecosystem, because every ecosystem is based on plants/solar irradiation as a source for energy, and therefore it would have to be on the surface.

There’s no “hidden” ecosystems or underground oceans with life in them.

I never said anything specific to an eco system

True. Doing that wouldn’t be easy right now.

However, it doesn’t necessarily need to get back to Earth. If we have power up in space, it gets much easier to run mining operations on asteroids, the moon etc. As soon as we have both power and minerals, we can also start putting factories in orbit instead of on Earth, reducing energy need down here.

The stuff those factories produce can be dropped down to Earth, OR we use that stuff in space to build even more infrastructure. In fact, at this point it becomes feasible to build really nice space stations that people can go live on if they want. Eventually, we’d even have the production capacity to build O’Neill Cylinders.

Now we can just continue building and mining in space, while developing or preserving Earth as we like.

Yeah, but prior to spacex coming along, NASA had done nothing major for ages. We can blame the system or the politicking, but possibly the one good thing Elon did with his fortune was revive the space industry.

Be that as it may, my main point would be that basic orbital and interplanetary infrastructure is an incredibly worthwhile investment since it will allow us to start tapping into energy collection, as well as mining, of a different order of magnitude than we currently have access to on earth :)