Dr. Ben Bova is President Emeritus of the National Space Society, past president of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, former editor of Omni magazine, former editor of Analog Science Fiction magazine (succeeding the late, great John Campbell), and his science-fiction novel Titan just won the 2006 Campbell Award. This is a guy who’s qualified to talk about space exploration, and he can sum up justification for manned spaceflight in just two words: Human survival. Here’s his two minutes of reasoning on why NASA is worth the money — and why it still isn’t enough.

FYI, Dr. Bova will also be at the same sci-fi convention as me, here in Louisville during the second weekend of August. Feel free to show up.

Video found via SFSignal.