This is another weird week for space news, where it felt like human space exploration was going to steal every headline. We saw the successful return to Earth of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, the successful launch of Polaris Dawn and what appears, at the time of this recording on the morning of Sep 12, the successful space walk of non-NASA astronauts. As we look at all these headlines, it’s important to remember that today’s spending on human space flight is motivated by both a modern Lunar Space Race, and the desire of billionaires to colonize Mars. These adventures in human exploration build...