Would you pay a tax to fund a space colony?
 

Ok so hypothetically your government realized that expanding into space is a smart idea and decides to build an O'Neil Cylinder over the next few decades. Would you mind them taking, lets say 3% of your income to make one?

Yes.

I don't think my $250 would make much of a difference.

Depends on what the colony is for.

The entire Nasa budget comes from 4/10th of one penny on the tax dollar.



With that funding you guys went to the moon and to mars.

Triple it. You'll have two space colonies and a winter garden in 10 years.

so what you are saying Bells is I vastly overestimated how much the tax would even be?
Literally colony for human habitation. Research and space traffic is likely the economic base. Because of the design you can do experiments and testing from anywhere between 0g and 1g, would also be an excellent way-station for space exploration. Be alot cheaper to resupply at the colony instead of loading everything onto the shuttle before lift off. If space travel becomes commercial it would be at worst a tourist trap and at best a vacation destination that rivals Vegas

Bottom-line is it would still be a civilian platform

Yeah, the tax would not have to be near 3%. For example the entire NASA budget in say, 2008 when it was still a public program, maxed out at about 18 billion dollars a year. It's now going to slowly decrease over time now that it is becoming privatized. Which is why I always laugh when I hear people (including my own father) complain about "how if they only cut that stupid space program and that foreign aid, they could get this debt under control" when the military budget is something like a trillion dollars a year and the Bush tax cuts are going to be 700 billion dollars over the next ten years...

And I'm basically same as Phil, let's say I make 10,000 dollars, my 300 dollars is not going to add up to much.

Eh, if it was for a mining colony, I'd say yeah...


But now, I would not pay anything additional.

Mine what? With no infrastructure like colonies its impractical to mine anything in space. I mean where are these miners and their families going to live? What are they going to do about food, water, recreation? You will get alot more people willing to start mining the Moon if there is a place to dock (and much safer then risking re-entry and earth launch every single time) only about a day away with supplies and entertainment venues.

Moonoil. They refine it into moongas for our mooncars.