On Friday, Russell Prechtl and George Whitesides respond to Steven Weinberg’s dissing of spaceflight in pursuit of science.

To sum up: Space settlement for species preservation, spinoffs, human spirit and human nature.

What are these worth? Depending on how long before the extinction event it could be anywhere from all of Earth’s discounted GDP to nearly nothing for species preservation assurance. If an extinction event is 1 in 26 million per year we can take our chances and still have an expectation of 99.99999% of our GDP next year. Spinoffs is weak. Human spirit is hard to quantify. How is ISS doing more for human spirit than Skylab or Mir? Human nature is more of a restatement of the human spirit argument that it is human nature to seek to raise the human spirit. But how? It’s not enough when someone says “ISS is worthless” to say “but if we don’t learn to live in space we’ll die!” We can learn to live in space with or without the ISS; what’s the difference?

I’m planning to take Steven Weinberg to lunch and see what he says to these arguments later this week. Let me know if there’s anything else I should ask him.