>>12100900>Why did we ever stop being hunter gatherers?because we learned to manipulate earth and grow food effectively and consistently.
>Why sail across the Atlantic?It's probably genetic to explore certain things and find new resources.
Also depending on what you're talking about it's probably mostly gold.
>Metals, for one, asteroid mining will likely be one of the first interests that industry has in spaceand we've yet to even do that
Also we don't use enough metals to even require it to an industrial degree.
> If it's lucrative other things like floating habitats might be of interest>a useless money holepointless.
>Helium isn't all that abundant on Earth and can be readily obtained from the atmospheres of gas giants and their moons, which will likely be useful as an energy resourceusually when we lack something we find a replacement like in whale oil.
Also I don't see how a person needs to be in space for any of that.
Machines can easily do this gathering for us.
Also if you're talking about using helium for energy, again we don't use enough energy to require such a thing, also it's not cost effective yet.
And needing to get it from space would make it SUPER expensive.
>Perhaps to alleviate overcrowdinggenocide is a simple solution
or more ethical could be population control methods.
>Maybe just out of curiosity. Being able to construct massive ass telescopes and ships in space would be nice, perhaps we could actually build telescopes capable of directly observing extrasolar planets or testing previously untestable predictions in physics/astrophysics.sounds pointless
>Regardless, the first step is to reduce the barriers to getting to space.all that money, if you are concerned with humanity efforts, environmental conservation, or reproduce gathering can be better put here on earth for much cheaper.
Ocean mining, more mining, building hospitals and infrastructure in poor countries, underground habitation, ocean habitation, vertical farms,etc
