If something comes up that is completely freaky, it's spiritual-looking to the scientist, the first explanation is not going to be that it's God, because the history of that has failed. It would have to be, like, the hundredth explanation.

The first colony on Mars is not going to be built by a private company. How are you going to make money? You're not.

If you look at the history of unexplained phenomena that was first explained by spiritual, mystical forces, the track record is not very good for the mystical, magical explanations to survive against more quote "mundane" physical explanations.

They [scientists of centuries past] call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.

For centuries, magicians have intuitively taken advantage of the inner workings of our brains.

When provoked, the itsy-bitsy invertebrates known as tardigrades can suspend their metabolism. In that state, they can survive temperatures of... 73 K for days on end, making them hardy enough to endure being stranded on Neptune. So the next time you need space travelers with the right stuff, you might want to choose yeast and tardigrades, and leave your astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts at home.

Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival.