If you could, would you part with 20M USD to fly to the moon?
What would one benefit from this, apart from viewing the earth from such a great distance, most of us have seen pictures from the various shuttles through the years and why would one spend such an extravagant
amount in the first place? Surely there are better things to squander money on? Global environmental affairs is a good place to start!
Spanky

spanky, rich people get to be rich by not wasting their money on public works. when they get so rich that personal expenditure doesn't erode their fortune in any visible way, they start making monuments to their magnificence. some of them, anyway.

that's why there's a lot of 'carnegie' librarys in the usa, and the 'gates foundation' will visible all over the world.

not an ideal situation, but it's not an ideal world.

Spanky, scale back your question to the life of us mortals.

Ever spent money that could have been used for other purposes to see something that you'd already seen a photo of? Ever paid money to have an experience that you had read about but which you wanted for yourself? Ever taken time out for a recreational pursuit whne you could have been working to make money to help global issues or just a needy person?

If the answer is yes to any of these then we have already worked out the ethics, now we are just haggling over the price.

Most of us make the same kind of choices, it's just the rich get to make them on a bigger scale.

I've not checked prices recently but my recollections of space tourism prices are (I think there are in US dollars)
- Sub Orbital flight - 100km up about $280K. No commercial flights yet but Virgin Galactic are taking bookings and should be flying in the near future.
- A week or so at the space station $20M. Several people have done this. I think that one guy went to the old russian station as a paying passenger many years ago as well.
- Around the moon and back (not sure how many orbits) - $100M. Not been done yet but there was an attempt a while ago to put a trip together.
- Land on the moon (I've not seen any proposals for that yet).

My travel indulgences have been more earth bound but do include visits to places I can see in photo's and on Getaway. A weekend away with the tent to a favourite camping spot could probably keep a third world kid fed, educated and vacinated for a long time.

R0bert

If you see moon trips only in terms of thrills for the financial favoured, you miss the big picture.You need to see them in terms of the filter down , multiplier effect, they will have on the human psyche. The generations of impressionables our new intimacy with space will inspire; who will dream our futures .

If you think you can glean it all from pictures -you’re already too old.
If you dream of infrastructure renewals in earthy cities rather than a terraformed Mars (& Venus), with canals carrying cool clear waters to the equator, under cumulus skies -you’re already too old.
If you dream of milky cappuccinos at bed time rather than milky ways -you’re already too old.
You might as well just shshshshuffle off, now.

Imagine:
If all the money ,time & personnel pumped into Iraq by all sides, had been pumped into the space program.
If the wantabe aspirations of the young inspired by Australian Idol could be redirect to science.
If the fervour displayed by pilgrims at St Peters Square, Mecca or Varanasi was redirected to research.

Psst!…I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon!