Tangible benefits of space exploration?

[Tuckerfan]

@Lumpy

Any foreseeable large-scale human presence in space is going to depend on permanent settlers living in closed-cycle habitats, whether sitting on a planet’s surface or floating free as space colonies in high orbit. Launch costs will make a “ship everything in and rotate people regularly” approach unaffordable So why hasn’t something as elementary as a human-algae recycled atmosphere been demonstrated yet?

I posted a link sometime back in MPSIMS about an Aussie who did just that in a shipping container at the bottom of a lake.

[BrainGlutton]

Jim Burke of the International Space University in France urges the creation of a “Lunar Ark” to preserve human civilization in the event a large asteroid or comet strikes Earth.

[Tuckerfan]

Spaceward Games announced as part of the effort to get the space elevator off the ground. (Heh.)

Brief essay by one of the members of the Mars rovers team on the importance of manned spaceflight.