Money into space

The argument that space development has had a net cost or the world's poor would be better off if we had given that money as "aid" to their governments (Letters, 23 July) is completely wrong.

Space development has been a massive boost to humanity, and nobody more so than the world's poor. Improved weather forecasting alone has saved millions of lives over the past 40 years in the Third World and beyond.

The potential of space beyond that is, literally, infinite.

What we should be doing, rather than putting money into sclerotic government bureaucracies, is putting money into an X-Prize Foundation, which would offer prizes, like the $10 million X-Prize that produced the first free-market astronaut and kickstarted Virgin Galactic.

NEIL CRAIG

Woodlands Road

Glasgow