Yeah...I Dunno....this space stuff...

[ancianita]

86. I don't know about "we." I do realize there are innovators in both private and public sectors.

It does appear to be the first time a major "space" or "interplanetary" project has been sponsored by people with wealth greater than some nations' GDP's, and there will likely be a "we" in and among nations who would team up on such large scale endeavors. There have also been projects that haven't required the interest, knowledge or even civic support by populations -- for ten years the space station was one of them.

Projects do outgrow their creators, and the biggest can hardly be kept secret. And so if NASA needn't be relegated just to government, because it can make a profit, the same can be arguably claimed for the U.S. military or once-governmental services like NOAA or even the CDC.

I'm not sure how any of it can turn out for the benefit of everyone, or that it won't. You bring up the analogy about the Internet's growth, which "we" knew little of as it was happening. By the time kids grew up with it, universities made it computer science, and the rest of us got comfortable using and living with it, it had become a business sector, created NASDAQ and a global trade network, increasing the global GDP. But benefitting everyone?

"We" can do two things as once, but the benefits for "us" are not proportional to our costs. "We" can list plenty of examples of business ventures that on the front end, have received public subsidies, full well knowing that on the other end, the public will also pick up the cleanup costs of business "externalities." Such that, with little to no consent of the governed, government has become more finance tool than profit partner.

I hope the benefits outnumber the costs.