What I said was that “exploration without commerce is pointless”. Money is just one of the means of expressing a trade in value (and a convenient one at that). In a barter situation there is no money exchanged, yet each party has derived satisfaction. So commerce is about trade and finding value. Consequently, to answer your rather silly question of “If the Devil offered you a million dollars a year in exchange for permanent illiteracy, would you take it?” the answer is clearly no. Permanent illiteracy has what is for me a negative infinite value, and consequently the pathetic sum of $1Mn, or even $1Bn (oh the good works I could do with that), is paltry in comparison. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to read the contracts I was signing and the money would be gone in a flash. What a goofy question!

Knowledge is good. Applied knowledge is better, because it works to benefit people in some way, making the world a better and more prosperous place. It’s interesting to know that there is a planet around a star 150 ly away. It’s important to know what’s going on in the local neighborhood and keep an eye on near Earth objects. Both represent an increase in knowledge, but which has the more immediate and relevant value?

Current NASA human spaceflight is not exploration by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t explore my own house after I have lived in it for years. Exploration implies visiting somewhere you haven’t been.

Existing and planned human spaceflight at NASA is exploration without either science or commerce. So in this case, your distinction is moot.

Even so, why do you argue that the only point of knowledge is to make money? If the Devil offered you a million dollars a year in exchange for permanent illiteracy, would you take it?

Buzz, you rock!

I’d just like to move beyond the point where we’re space-visiting and get to where we’re space-faring.

-MM

Second, although science and tourism are not the only conceivable kinds of exploration, human spaceflight at NASA really has degenerated to space tourism. I do not object to space tourism on its own terms: bankrolled by zillionaires in the private sector. But the NASA version is a farce. It is space tourism at colossal public expense, for the benefit of a select royal class of astronauts.

Shouldn’t this be:
Exploration without science is engineering.

This organization seems to have a contemptuous attitude to space tourism, and engineers too.