[HCIdivision17]

And it's a shame, because there really isn't a reason not to do both. After all, we are spending millions on both.

I really love the story about Norman Borlaug [0], because it shows how these great advances can be from enormous work from unexpected places. His research and testing - over decades - saved so many lives (he earned the title "The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives", and it may not be an exaggeration).

I vaguely recall the econ nobel a few years ago studied how people starved with food rotting in enormous piles just a few dozen miles away. It's utterly heartbreaking, and the worst is that it was largely bad policy that did it. We already overproduce food enough, but we can't get it where it needs to be.

Now, though, imagine that we find a way to mine asteroids for rare earth minerals. Imagine we can have clean power without the horrific pollution as industrial infrastructure ramps up. How could that change the world, leading to logistics networks that could fix distribution issues?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

EDIT: terminology, and I'd like to disclaim about the strife problem: space can't really fix. But food and money can't either.