Like a phoenix, or possibly the plague...

I'm back!

I can here you thinking: "But Eric, you just announced you were stopping 2 days ago!" However, there's reasons why I'm back:
a) Because I've finally snapped out of my introspection (read: whiny mid-winter depression and mopeyness)
b) I've found my muse again. (She was in my sock drawer)

So on to the actual topic of this post:

Humanity needs Space. The kind with stars and stuff in it. The exploration of space (and I mean human exploration! Robots just won't cut it) is maybe the best way of keeping us from pulling ourselves apart.
Economically, space is handy. Zero gee means cheaper manufacture for many products, as well as a ready source of damned-near pure minerals, if we can beat the delta-v required to pull them in. (Delta-v is change in velocity. It's the best measure of how much something would cost in space). Economics, however, is hardly the best argument for why we have to go.

The Real drive outward should be that thing that has always brought out the best in humanity: Our drive to create, build, cooperate, discover, and explorer. ie: curiosity. I don't care what the 'return on investment' is, at least not in dollar values. Every human, everywhere benefits, at least potentially, from what we can find out there. More than that, it gives us a new challenge as a species: Take the harshest conditions we can find, and make them livable. A generation of people who grow up in space, knowing the real meaning of "live within your means" could break the current inertia regarding environmental and poverty problems. People of radically different backgrounds living together in close quarters could spark new 'micro-cultures', with who-knows-what effect on the rest of humanity. A renaissance in zero-gee art and boundary-less architecture could result. The fact is, we won't know unless we try. All of the major benefits of space travel are likely unknowable at this point, and won't be recognized until well after the fact.

I know we have problems still on earth, but humanity doesn't gain by turning away from a frontier to focus on problems at home. A new age of exploration may be what is needed to move on past these current struggles. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but my money's on it saving us.