Astronomy

It's extremely infuriating/disappointing how little funding the US government gives NASA. I don't know very much about the current economic standing or budget cuts or whatever, but I still know a ridiculously larger amount of money is spent on military yet people think NASA gets too much
We've had so many technological advancements from studying things in space ON TOP of sending a human being off our planet to another body which is just self-explanatory in how f'ucking awesome that is.
We can't stay on this rock forever if we want to continue as a species. The only way I'd see the government funding space travel is to harvest resources from comets or whatever. (I'm not 100% familiar with terminology since everything I know about this field is essentially self-taught so my apologies if I'm using words wrong). From what I understand, we are actually really close to planning missions to do this

^bunch of thoughts I tried to organize from my phone.

Also, SpaceX and other private space companies will be the way to go for astrophysicists IMO
My current plan is to work for NASA or do some sort of physics for the government out of head school as my first real job, maybe be a professor for a bit (can literally research anything lol), and end up at a private space company.

I'll see where life takes me, though. I hope it ends up being to the far reaches of space, though :p physically and metaphorically.

This is why scientists never become politicians. We have crazy ideas that space travel and education should get funding
We are indeed very close to economically mining comets/asteroids. My favorite new horizon for space technology is energy production. We are getting VERY close to the point where creating solar satellite farms and beaming the energy to substation via microwave will be economical. It should be an incredibly productive and affordable way to produce renewable energy. Hopefully this is the type of thing private space corps will get interested in. I'm not overly interested in astrophysics because it's a fairly academic and largely theoretical. But if it meant I could create solar farms in space I'd be first in line to sign up!