Why do we have to get this same question every time there is talk of funding space activities? Do you question government funding of sports? Of funding the arts? Of funding public Transport?

Have you heard of climate change? Guess where most of the data comes from in that research... Without satellites, our science would be set back terribly, earthquakes, weather, geology, defence even keeping an eye on farming and deforestation all rely on satellites.

So this is normally the point you concede satellites but insist that that is all we should do. There is huge potential to do far more good by tapping the potential of space. We can mine in space, move heavy dirty industries to space and even move farming and forestry there. That means we will not have to do these things down here and we can return much of the natural environment. Isn't that worth a few tens of billion dollars out of an 80 000 billion global economy.