Space travel is just a secondary incidental benefit to all of the technology's military applications.

The reason space research and exploration is such a fertile ground for new technologies is that it is an arena of human endeavor that is still very young and requires the combined efforts of many fields of expertise. Since it is so young, we continually find new problems and must, by necessity, create new solutions. The cooperation of many scientific fields allows for unanticipated application of these new solutions. A doctor would never have created the MRI, but a physicist may never have thought to use it to diagnose illness.

Further to what Gravel wrote: Are you familiar with DARPA?

Space exploration is not a new field. By that logic the Internet was invented yesterday. Just about the entire spectrum of technology we use that isn't the wheel and fire is younger than space research.

The Airforce just finished its one year test of its unmanned space drone. Death from space is now inevitable.

Space will never belong to civilians, we're the shit humans who don't love killing. Space is for war, Bill Nye is naive (funnier if you say it out loud), and now space pisses me off (used to be the only thing that didn't).

meme, what the fuck are you talking about "space travel is not a new field" - fucking space TRAVEL? Not just hanging out in low Earth orbit, but traveling, with humans on board, to somewhere outside of the Earth/Moon zone? That's pretty fucking new, in fact, so new we haven't done it yet. Can't get newer than that.

And in comparison to the timeline of our technological growth over the last 20,000 years or so, yes, the internet was practically invented a goddamned hour ago and the very first rocket to reach LEO was earlier this week. New shit.

Let me get this right. Low Earth Orbit isn't space. Got it. All those probes we sent to other planets and the two leaving the solar system isn't space exploration. Check. Because it took our stupid asses a million years to sharpen both sides of a rock, all advances must be this fucking slow. Check.

By your terms, I agree, we know nothing and have done nothing.

By the way, logical fallacy is only six seconds old then.

Gee, guys, I was just kidding.

Our bad.

*offers dandelion of peace*

Meme, what?
We've sent a handful of probes to other planets and moons, and a few outside our solar system, and shot a couple at asteroids and comets. We made a few trips to the moon (did a push-up, ate an egg) and have had a gaggle of astronauts hanging out in a complex tin can in LEO for a while.

That's it.

Not exactly a well worn saddle. We've been doing it for a while, but time isn't the issue - it's what we've done in that time. The answer? Not a lot. It's still a new subject, and there is still a lot of learn and a lot of obstacles to overcome.

We've been observing space with a vast array of instruments for a few hundred years, but observation is different than exploration. Exploration means gettin' out there and choppin' it up, and we just haven't done a lot of that - because it's a relatively new thing for us. We are still trying to figure out how to send living people to other planets without them getting fried in the radiation belts. It's something we're just now learning how to deal with. So, you know....it's kinda new for us. Get my point?

And new materials allow for new solutions to problems.

new.