No one wants to die, and no one wants to die poor. These are the two fundamental truths that transcend culture, they transcend politics, they transcend economic cycles. So, once you recognize that a healthy moving frontier in space stimulates the kind of mindset that fosters innovations in science and technology, then you'll realize that of course we need to go in space because that's just the kind of society you'll want to live in.
While war is always the easiest solution to anybody's funding problem, you don't want war to be the modern day driver of space -- even though that's what got us to the moon, in spite of our memory cleansing that into "We're Americans, we're explorers, we're discoverers, that's why we went to the moon." So going forward, the economic argument is a strong one, but it's not a simple "A goes to B". It's not "We need more innovation, so let's fund innovation companies."
My favorite quote, I think it was Antoine Saint-Exupery who said, "If you want to teach someone to sail, you don't train them how to build a boat. You compel them to long for the open seas." That longing drives our urge to innovate, and space exploration has the power to do that, especially when it's a moving frontier because all traditional sciences are there. And so you'll get the best students, they'll have a place to land, and you'll change the attitude that our culture has to the role of science, engineering, technology, and math on our future.
To make any future that we dreamt up real requires creative scientists, engineers, and technologists to make it happen. If people are not within your midst who dream about tomorrow -- with the capacity to bring tomorrow into the present -- then the country might as well just recede back into the cave because that's where we're headed.
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