Only the most pathetic hacks would argue that we are the worse for having invested that money to push the bounds of exploration.

At a point, there are 6 billion people on the earth, and there will always be _some_ problems unsolved, whether that is because a few countries are trying to collapse, or because we have found new first-world problems to agonize about in the US.

It's a question of whether we will spend 10x the cost to solve the last 10% of those problems, or spend that money moving forward as a civilization.

Had we put the same resources into solving other more earthbound problems would we be better off? Maybe we could have developed a better, standard, safer nuclear power plant design and could have left coal and oil behind 30 years ago. And we would not be discussing climate change or at least not the idea that it was man-made.

You might, for example, instead point out that even extravagant space budget proposals are a drop in the bucket compared to military spending.

Once you resolve the issue of poor political leadership, the problem basically solve itself as money and investment engender a positive feedback loop that take care of itself.

The Apollo program was part of the space race against the SU. See my comment about conflicts motivating people to invest in this stuff.

You could (more or less) translate the fascination of the moon landing into an excuse for less reliable housing and so on in the 60s. You can't do so today.

Of course, you do realize that statement could also read: "When we ran the Apollo program, the world had less reliable housing, less clean water, less reliable food, worse healthcare, and more physical conflicts."

Neither of these statements are particularly good at answering the question: How much do we gain by investing money in space exploration versus something else?

There's more than enough money for both. It's a lack of political will that holds us back.

It's been nearly 100 years since anyone struggled with that in the West. Nobody's expecting Eritrea to put a satellite in orbit.

Worth pointing out that Ghana just did.

If we waited until we "solve all our problems here at home," as the GP suggests, we'd still be calling to each other from neighboring trees in a jungle somewhere.

You have go to be joking.

Almost every fourth person in the EU still experiences at least one of the three forms of poverty or social exclusion. Monetary poverty is the most widespread form of poverty, affecting 17.3 % of EU residents in 2015. Severe material deprivation and very low work intensity follow, affecting 8.1 % of the EU residents and 10.6 % of EU citizens aged 0 to 59, respectively.

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...

Today advanced robotic bionic prosthetics are experimental prototypes. In 100 years, people will be arguing that access to bionic limbs should be a universal human right.

The privilege is palpable. That's almost insulting.

Indian here, lot of people in metro cities dont have clean water. Most middle class and rich people use water filter to clean the water in their house. Forget the villages.

"ISLAMABAD: Eighty-four per cent of the population does not have access to safe drinking water in a country where commercial banks posted windfall profits exceeding Rs475 billion in three years, the Senate was told on Tuesday.

Quoting a study, Provision of Safe Drinking Water, conducted by the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), Minister for Science and Technology Rana Tanvir Hussain said only 72pc of water supply schemes were found to be functional, and 84pc of those had supplied water that was not fit for consumption."

This article was published March this year. Maybe the report in question was alarmist, I don't know.

In case dawn.com isn't a reputable source, here's a number of other articles covering it:

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/03/09/safe-drinking-wa...

http://nationalcourier.pk/editorial/pcrwr-report-eye-opener/

This one has a slightly different focus, and also links to reports claiming the same agency has found contaminations in bottled water too:

http://pakobserver.net/arsenic-detected-above-permissible-li...

http://pakobserver.net/pcrwr-declares-11-mineral-water-brand...

Here is the agency's actual report on Punjab province, with a quote below:

http://pcrwr.gov.pk/images/document/Water%20Quality/Water%20...

"The outcome of the survey conducted in the domains of 21 districts of the Punjab province, has revealed that water supply schemes are providing piped water supply for drinking purposes to meet household needs and for other multiple uses to an enumerated population of 19.017 million persons on 2408 surveyed water schemes. The survey has however, summed up that the performance of these schemes in terms of providing water in an adequate quantity and of safe quality, is extremely poor. This inability and inefficiency may be scaled from the fact that 35 percent of the schemes are presently not functioning. As a result, nearly 61 percent of the total enumerated population remains unserved by the water supply schemes. More alarming situation is that 88 percent of the functional schemes are providing unsafe drinking water to the consumers. It is also notable that, on province basis, the average water charges per scheme figure out to Rs. 64 per month. "

"For Pakistan’s majority, the main source of drinking water is groundwater. The most common instrument for extracting groundwater in rural areas are the hand pump and the motor pump. Hand pumps and motor pumps together provide 61 percent of households with drinking water; in rural areas this percentage rises up to 70. "

http://nation.com.pk/blogs/13-Jun-2015/provision-of-safe-dri...

"In 2015, 91% of the population had access to an "improved" water supply.[15][16] This was 94% of the population in urban areas and 90% of the population in rural areas."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...

E.g. if you have a well or running water, and no alternative, you use it, because no water is far worse than bad water. And most of the time chances are it'll be ok.

That makes it easy to conclude that it's probably safe even when there are flaws in the supply that can quickly render it unsafe or that makes it unsafe for sustained consumption.

E.g. arsenic leaking into the supply won't kill you from a drink here and there - arsenic is difficult to kill with, because too high concentrations makes you puke it up - but sustained ingestion of smaller doses may have severe and lasting health effect and may ultimately kill you.

(Arsenic is "interesting" in that a lot of arsenic contaminated water from pumped wells in developing countries is a result of inadequate testing in the rush of upgrading water sources from surface sources prone to bacterial contamination - as such, a lot of those pumped sources may in fact still represent an improvement, but in some cases also still represents a severe health risk)

Overall there's a great deal of progress in securing basic safe water supply. We're just not there yet. Even many developed countries regularly run into water supply issues.