Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Mark Fergerson wrote:

What you absolutely refuse to accept is that for the exploring
organism to continue to survive, there must be a return on the effort
invested in the exploration _greater than the investment_. Exploration
occurs to acquire resources. If an organism expends more resources than
it gets back in any situation including exploration, the organism dies.

At our current level of technology, any conceivable effort expended in
human-presence space exploration simply won't return more than the
investment [...]

Also, it's not at all clear why something that's important for
unintelligent organisms is also something that should drive government
or other societal goals. It's a mixing of unrelated categories.
And as I've pointed out before, just because there's an instinct or
drive for something, that doesn't mean government should promote
it.

Should government actively promote sex, for example, in all its
various unusual permutations? People certainly have a strong
sex drive, stronger than a putative exploration drive. Wouldn't
that mean the budget for the National Sex Administration should be
correspondingly larger than that of NASA?

Well, the national average expenditure per capita probably is. The
difference being, the government doesn't have to take money from
citizens to invest in sex. We do that without regulation. National
health provision... opinions vary. Outer space? Most of Joe Public
would rather put the money towards a burger. But sex - ah, now you're
talking.

(I am, of course, including spinoff industries such as fine
restaurants, motels, chocolate...)