As a once avid Sci-fi fan (until I became old enough to know better), I was fascinated by the idea of conquering space, but when I began to calculate the drain of money and human resources the Space and arms race was having on countries unable to feed, house and keep healthy their people, it struck me as an utter waste - it is most certainly the case with India, but it also applies to 'wealthy' countries like Britain and the U.S. where the wealth lies in fewer and fewer hands while the conditions of the 'have less' deteriorates at rates of knots
For all its faults and problems, I was a great admirer of The Soviet Union's achievement in turning a massive, ungainly Empire, much of which was semi-feudal, into a modern State, set on a path of equality of opportunity for all.
That dream was betrayed by its leaders getting involved in what was little more than a one-upmanship space race
It came out pretty well as a front runner in that, but what a waste on what hes proved little more than filling space with unnecessary garbage
   
The arms race, while pretending to be 'defensive', was a mixture of profiteering and extremely dangerous sabre-rattling, for which it was necessary to devise THIS WAKE UP CALL - we still havent heeded its call yet
The profiteering element for me was typified when Israel tried to encourage largely impoverished and wholely oppresed Aparthied South Africa to develop its own nuclear weapons
That failed because the South African leaders didn't want risk them "falling into the hands of The Bleks"

Probably the only use space exploration can be used for now is sail off to find a new planet when we've finished fucking up this one (not much time left for that one)
Jim Carroll