"No space development will ever be self-sufficient. Anything that goes into space will always be a burden to taxpayers as long as it is operational."

Communication satellites go into space and are not a burden to tax payers.

"Manned space platforms are particularly bad that way. Therefore we will never be able to afford anything on the scale you are talking about. I mean seriously, relocate *all* industry offworld? Are you kidding? Where would people work? Would we all be sitting at a computer operating space-based robots by remote control? Ridiculous."

And this is the guy who was talking about plans for starships. I'll tell you something which is *absolutely* true: We will NEVER send people to the stars unless there is industry offworld. Why? Even if we had a robust offworld industry it would be hideously expensive- without offworld industry it's unlikely we would have the wealth to spend on such a project even assuming we wanted to spend all of the world's collective wealth on such a project.