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Nicole Small

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What is the Future of Space Travel and Mining?

From many stock investor's points of view, the economy is taking another nose-dive; in fact, over the past week, Facebook has taken a faceplant in the market. The future seems bleak from this aspect, but where investing is concerned, I'm personally anticipating SpaceX going public. I'm no stock market guru, but I do have hope in the future of science. SpaceX could forge a path for other companies to crop up. It currently costs the government less money to outsource space missions to SpaceX than to send NASA. I think NASA would serve better as an educational institution to prepare students for related careers in space travel and even mining. Needless to say, this won't happen in my lifetime, but it doesn't mean it's not worth trying. I was just hoping to get some feedback from like-minded (or not) people. Do you think it's possible? Is this a poor idea? I'd appreciate your input.

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    David Hamilton 50+

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    Aug 20 2012: SpaceX is cool, but almost everything it does, it licensed from NASA. It's cheaper... because somone already wasted all the money on the million ways to do it that didn't work, and SpaceX doesn't have to. NASA is for pure research, and manned missions into space.

    There is not market for manned spaceflight outside of low earth orbit. Only billionaires could afford it. I think if human beings want to mine and colonize space, we need an international version of NASA, which aims specifically towards that purpose. And, I'm for it.
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      Nicole Small

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      Aug 20 2012: Cool. I agree. We could learn a lot from Star Trek.

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