I think you overestimate the effect that would have on the kind of people that most need that sort of humility.

Look at what happened with William Shatner and Jeff Bezos when they came back from space. Shatner started to say something about what an impactful experience it was, but Bezos cut him off and was like “Woo! Partay!” and switched his attention to a magnum of champagne.

Yeah, that (and Carl Sagan) was what made me think of the idea.

"If everybody could do that once, it would completely change the face of global politics, religion, education, everything".

You could have the same effect with LSD/Psilocybin for quite a bit less $$$$.

That would only work for countries with a space programme.

I would also say give them a year of free vacations in various places. Say a maximum security prison in general population, any type of dark camps, hospitals, mental institutions and care homes.

Give them the rest and recreation they need in these wonderful places.

"Houston, this is Golden One. I'm looking down on the big, beautiful, blue world. They love me down there. They all love me. I'm the greatest astronaut ever in the history of mankind. No one has ever orbited like this before."

Yeah, you may be right.

You don't have to be an optimist. You have to try.

Trying and seeing what happens is also science, after all.

The point with the last bit was that they should be put in an unsafe craft.

There are actually a lot of really interesting discoveries on that list. I haven't thought deeply about whether it represents value for money, but I would say that that is anything but "a joke of a list."

Absolutely! Think of the many new ways to display advertising that are being neglected while we foolishly launch people and things into space.

Google's R&D budget is like $60B. Make of that what you will.

It's unlikely computing would have developed as quickly as it did without the Cold War. IBM's Sage and MIT's TX0 were both Cold War projects - one for a national early warning system, the other as an R&D platform for flight simulators.

Most US investment in associated tech - including the Internet - came through DARPA.

Not pointing this out because I support war, but to underline that the US doesn't have a culture of aggressive government investment in non-military R&D.

NASA and the NSF both get pocket money in budget terms. And at its height Apollo was a Cold War PR battle with the USSR that happened to funnel a lot of of money to defence contractors.

The original moon landings were not primarily motivated by science.

I believe you are making the same argument: the GP prefers space race over war for large technological development at less or no human suffering.

What opportunity is being lost out on because of space exploration?

Now do the opportunity cost of AI model virtue signalling to investors for several years

You are serious? Up until this point I thought you're writing in jest, because all the things you mention are actually good ideas - including especially funding manned space flight from entertainment budget, because:

1) It's better aligned with mission profile (inspirational, emotional, but not strictly necessary;

2) There's much more of it to go than NASA gets;

3) It would be a better use of that money than what it's currently used for.

Firstly how is this related to opportunity costs. Secondly, no one said that to create digital computer you should start a war. It's just that war is already present, regardless of you invent digital computers or space travel.

I have no idea about the 0.5% increase in drop goal distance, but tongue-in-cheek, I would say only 0.5% as many attempted drop goals - given the Fijian team's emphasis on a ball-in-hand style of play instead of kicking the ball away.

On a slightly related note, I always found the games played in Pretoria in South Africa fascinating. It's 1350 m above sea level, so kicks all go 10% to 15% further (my estimate) which makes quite a difference when there are players kicking penalties from over halfway even at sea level.