Then you don't know the definition of "huge."

"Huge" is the amount of money we already spend trying to solve those problems.

The apt simile describing the effect of redirecting space funds towards these problems would be "spitting in the ocean."

Talk about assisting developing countries, where would those hurricane warning systems, and communications relays to help coordinate disaster response after earthquakes and tsunamis, be without advanced satellite tracking and sensor systems? How about this... algorithms developed for the Hubble Space Telescope improved image processing in mammography. Ask your female friends if more efficient and accurate breast exams matter to them.

How about the fact that, in order to feed astronauts, we invented preservation processes that were then applied to keep food from spoiling, allowing it to be delivered fresh to millions of people who couldn't have had it otherwise? People like food, if I recall correctly.

Heck, investing a little bit more in space could let us totally eliminate the threat of global warming. Make the switchover to 24-hour solar-generated power, you stop burning fossil fuels for electricity and transportation, there goes all that excess CO2. How's THAT for "sustainable?" (I believe the phrase is "boo-yah.")

Cheap clean energy? Naah, THAT would never revolutionize the world economy. Oh, and how about massively abundant raw materials? Mine a 1-km asteroid, collect $3 trillion in metals. Repeat, oh, 1000 times, before we even exhaust the supply of the closest asteroids.

Man, we got wayyyy off topic. My fault.

I just finished a paper on this exact topic, I hope I get an A

Wanted to make some clarifications. Calling nuclear power plants clean is kind of a dichotomy. In most practices, it's quite clean, but it has the potential to be the dirtiest power imaginable. By far the biggest potential safety threat to modern nuclear reactors is waste disposal. The problem with radioactive waste from reactors is that it's extremely dangerous exposed and the half-life is so long in practical terms it never goes away. So sure, you can have complete confidence in the waste's future 10 years from now, but 50? 100? 10,000? I guess it won't matter since we'll all be dead, but there's at least some potential risk, especially in regions that may be less stable. Nuclear energy isn't an end-all solution, but I'll take it over no energy production easily.

Breeder reactors would eliminate the vast majority of that waste. It's almost funny that the relative cheapness of Uranium kept them from being comercially viable, in the US. and a combination of that and politics caused the few that the US ever built to be shut down. If we'd been reprocessing that waste, we'd have a lot less of it left to worry about today.

France produces nearly eighty percent of its energy with nuclear power. Guess why it doesn't have as serious a nuclear waste problem as the United States? Integral fast reactor. France has had one for 20-odd years.

Nuclear Power: not so much that it's a unbelievably great source of energy (it is), but because it's one of the greatest metaphors, ever since the New York City skyline. A power plant is the living testament to man's harness over matter and how capable he is at shaping it to suit his life better in the most efficient way possible--and outside of it, on the streets and presumably haven't washed for days, are the environmentalists screaming for its destruction.

Nuclear power creates the most bang for your buck.

Wind - You need wind farms, entire hillsides covered by the turbines. It ruins landscapes, plain and simple.

Geothermal - You have, what, like 200 places on the globe it can be used. Volcanoes only.

Tidal - This would work, but at the expense of beach space. Plus you might screw up tidal ecosystems.

Hydroelectric - It works, except you destroy gigantic swaths of land. Bad.

Solar - You need a lot of space where it's sunny all the time. The coolest solar energy proposal I ever heard was to take the Los Angeles to Las Vegas stretch of highway and replace it with a solar cell road, but I haven't heard much about it since.

Nuclear just works.

Hmmm, I actually agree with your every word in the above statement.

Regards

Nuclear power is great but will soon be so much better, thanks to "Thoreum" (I hope I spelled that right) reactors using this can't go boom, Thoreum is abundant, and the wast from it only takes 100 years to become safe

Never heard of that before. But if that's true, then that could be a breakthru.

The spelling is Thorium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle

Regards

When space travel becomes cheap enough I imagine we'll just send the spent fuel to the sun or something.

That would be a huge waste, when we can reprocess it.