Spaceports- Fair to Communities?

Let's imagine you are standing in the mayor's office, you say, "Your honor, what we need is somewhere for the spacecraft to land." His honor is looking at you - and you describe the Mayor's expression? Hmm, what a conversation to start, wouldn't you say? On other hand, if you were one of those folks who had been up there circling the earth in that ultra sophisticated, totally air tight, totally enclosed and artificially gravitated place; and you'd been about three hours getting down to this point, don't you reckon you'd be wanting to land? Why shouldn't the good folks in that little rural village be willing to give up a portion of their livelihood in order that you could do that? After all, doesn't every city need a spaceport?

If we start with the basic question, why space? Everyone gets a little defensive, after all, isn't that the only answer- to inject ourselves out of the gravity environment that we have here on earth, with air, and water and controlled heat and cold (to some extent) and food to eat, and other humans; what could make more sense than to escape such for an absolutely immeasurably small group, into an environment of no air, water or food or other humans, where we perish without very precise protection. This raises what it seems to my meager brain is a fundamental question- if you can't live there, why do you want to go there? Some will immediately defend the so called "programs" as being necessary because eventually we will overpopulate the earth's ability to maintain life. If this is so, because it can be contested against well known versions of life called "disciplines", why does the solution have to occur, "out there" when we have plenty of room in a covering of the earth we call the ocean, far less anti-human as an environ, why isn't exploration and population of the ocean given the high monetary value of NASA? Fig. 1 inserted shows the dramatic differences which can exist, this slide extracted from a research presentation by the Office of Management and Budget shows us that the difference is there, it is present, and whether we like it or not, money talks.

So you want to live in space, huh? You think the journey to another planet is necessary and that we will overpopulate earth, to the extent that we should divert massive amounts of existing current funds, which might be redistributed to other worthwhile needs, as opposed to the future potential to explore another planet for habitation? Which makes more sense, learning to properly take care of earth where billions live in controlled circumstances that are not pleasant for all sorts of reasons which are movable by reason of economics, or, diverting those very necessary funds now, to a future potential for ten or twelve people? If we were playing any other game than the future of earth, the answer would be so obvious that the gamble would be clearly seen for what it is. We can talk about taxation without representation in America, but when we globalize the effort we begin to see that there is a very good chance we've been sold a first class bill of goods by a very minute membership of the scientific world. Yup, we need a spaceport here!

Appendix A: See as Fig. 1

Fig. 1 http://www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/documents/2005SPCKeiKoizumi.pdf