Ok, with that established...
S. Ra refuses to address concerns about solving our problems here on Earth before taking those problems into space. The costs involved in space exploration are staggering. The costs involved in actual space travel and transport are far greater. Well into the tens of billions of dollars, easily. In addition, considering the number of probes that have been lost in recent years, we simply cannot afford to take such risks with human lives. Losing a ship and its crew would be an enormous loss to a country, and that is only considering the financial cost that such a loss would represent.
And what would this expenditure gain us? Ra argues that it would ennoble us as a species. While arguably a lofty goal, this is certainly a matter of opinion, and hardly something that could be proposed to the people funding such an endeavor. Certainly, space exploration has gained us technological advancements in the past, but the potential future advancements are of uncertain commercial value.
These funds can certainly go a long way towards solving real problems that we face. Is the pursuit of cures for diseases less ennobling than landing on the moon? What about the improvement of literacy rates, feeding the hungry, curbing the effects of pollution? Solving any of these problems would make us nobler as a species.
Ra also notes that space is our next frontier for exploration. He, and many other people arguing that point, ignores a vast frontier right here on Earth: The oceans. We live on less than one-quarter of our planet; three-quarters are underwater. If we can build space stations, then we can certainly build underwater stations. The benefit to this is that oceanic exploration and habitation would also result in advances in technology. In addition, we already know that our planet sustains life, and that there’s quite a lot of it down there. The oceans would sustain our exploratory needs for quite some time to come, and there is no question that the oceans cover vast amounts of mineral wealth.
If some tragedy does occur, it’s much easier to rescue someone here on Earth than if they were on their way to Mars. Certainly, it would be difficult (and expensive) to rescue an endangered undersea colony, but it would be far from impossible.
His talk of "ennobling" our species only underscores our arrogance. Can we, in good conscience, simply move ourselves to another world because we’ve used up our own? Shall the future of our race be to move from world to world, leaving polluted, barren, sterile worlds in our wake? This, above all else, is why we work for change now, instead of leaving our problems for future generations to solve.