Andromeda awaits

The “9/11” and post 9/11 era... oh yeah. I’m sure at the time we were commissioning massive redundant, bloated, and ineffectual new intelligence and security agencies; buying any and every cool toy that anyone thought MIGHT help fight terrorists, and using federal funds to give armored vehicles and complete nuclear chemical biological hazmats gear and training to the local PD in the middle of nowhere population 1300- that our big priority for that money would be space and not the gold rush of politicians and organizations capitalizing on panic and fear to hire new staff and buy gadgets or pass their own long held wish lists thinly veiled as “anti terror.”

Obama coulda had a lot more drones- and perhaps we could have up armored out troops overseas among other things- and of course, our current president would be more than happy to take his chunk of that cash and use it to build his wall- a projected $23 billion dollar construction project that would require billions more in upkeep, electronics, and personnel over the next... forever. That’s IF we pretend the budget wouldn’t balloon by billions before it was done since they keep choosing contractors who outright steal the money or build wall that falls apart after a few years and would need built again- at greater cost to do it right.

And that’s also ignoring the formation of the “space force” and how if we had any money- they might get a pretty big chunk as currently they don’t even have their own uniforms and borrow them from other branches.

So the funding would have most likely been soaked up by other things that most people and politicians care about more. Space has had its minor booms but any serious push at space since the moon landings. It doesn’t generally make us money to go to space. When you spend $450 million on a single launch you always get people bit$hing about what that money could have done on earth. Politicians aren’t in the game of doing what’s smart for humanity centuries from now- they are in the business of keeping their jobs by making people happy.

Beyond that though- we have to acknowledge the differences of post war Europe and of Africa. Europe was decimated, but HAD been booming. Remnants of infrastructure and factories and such remained, and more importantly- having just been at a state of total war and mass production- there wasn’t exactly a shortage of skilled professionals and factory workers and people with technical knowledge and experience.

The post war world was in full consumer mode- We couldn’t produce fast enough to keep with demand. By a few decades later- production of most goods had exceeded demand- into the present day we produce far more consumer goods and necessities than are used. A great deal ends up as waste. That hurts efforts to stimulate any sort of economic growth.

And that’s an important segue. Most efforts in Africa have centered around basic infrastructure such as creating clean water, fighting disease, feeding people etc. but a good deal of this money has been spent in ways other than “reconstruction.” In Europe- we spent money to establish factories, provide equipment, train personnel and invest in business. We sent troops to ensure security and stability until such a time that the local governments could maintain internal security and external security in their own. We sat down with leaders and forged diplomatic ties to increase and keep this stability.

Tl:dr- Africa is not post war Europe. Aid rendered to Africa has not largely been like that given to post war Europe- and perhaps it would be more effective to do so, or perhaps it would ultimately hurt our own interests to. But even if we weren’t spending on foreign aid it’s daft to think of all the uses the government and politicians could find for that money- they’d choose to use it on space exploration. That’s without addressing philosophical and humanitarian concerns- humans have expanded across the globe through history looking for solutions to problems like over population and conflict- and instead of finding answers we have just brought our problems with us and increased their scale while adding new ones. So I believe space is important to our future- but I also believe that if we can’t take care of things on our planet and each other- what can we do in space besides spread our sickness?