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598 Comments
- BigManOnCampus, on 04/22/2008, -20/+357The logic is so simple, it is unassailable.
As much as anyone may love the earth, investing too heavily in its upkeep to the point of neglecting the endeavor of moving beyond earth is a huge mistake. It's a bit like having only one car which is a classic car that you put all your time into keeping clean and well-preserved. Someday something will happen to that car, and then all that time you spent on only one car will feel really stupid as you walk everywhere you go.
Putting all our effort into "saving" this planet is a wasted effort. Ultimately this planet is doomed. Hopefully that wont be for another 3-4 billion years or so, but it is doomed nonetheless. Humanity's only chance of real survival is becoming spacefaring. - bbqsalad, on 04/22/2008, -8/+228Imagine if we spent the money we have spent on this war on space exploration....
- eyepatch100, on 04/22/2008, -10/+133One of these days, Alice, straight to the Moon.
- inactive, on 04/22/2008, -3/+124gulf war = permanent base on the mooon
war on terror = base on mars - inactive, on 04/22/2008, -28/+138Barack Obama's early education and K-12 plan package costs about $18 billion per year. He will maintain fiscal responsibility and prevent an increase in the deficit by offsetting cuts and revenue sources in other parts of the government. The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years.
USA Today quoted Obama's perspective on the space program.
"We're not going to have the engineers and the scientists to continue space exploration if we don't have kids who are able to read, write and compute."
By the same logic, we should also suspend medical research grants and close down the National Institute of Health because we're not going to have physicians and biologists if we don't have kids who are able to read, write and compute. Yes? - kweee, on 04/22/2008, -6/+100Someone just needs to convince W that there's oil and/or terrorists on Mars and we'll have colonies there in 6 weeks.
- mountvale, on 04/22/2008, -5/+75Absolutely - our future is in space, regardless of how much CO2 we stop producing.
- BryanG412, on 04/22/2008, -4/+72Space Boots: $450
Vacation to Moon: $250,000
Moon Souvenir: $1,200
A picture of Hawking experiencing zero gravity...Priceless
- mountvale, on 04/22/2008, -4/+69Considering space is our future, it's about time the world paid attention to how relatively little is spent on space research.
- wush, on 04/22/2008, -2/+59Imagine if we spent the money we have spent on this war on nachos....
- listrophy, on 04/22/2008, -1/+51I am an aerospace engineer. I do (some) work for NASA. I also do (some) work for the private space industry. Here is my view:
Cutting funding to NASA at this point is reckless and unintelligent, even if only for a year... much less 5. I'm 25 years old. Am I supposed to just throw all of my skills into a growing, but still incredibly small, private space industry and assume there will be work for me? No. The Boeings and LM-Aeros of the world will snatch up my job and leave me to designing HVAC systems and car underbodies. Five years down the road, do you think I'll have any love whatsoever when NASA comes crawling back to me and all the others like me? It's the same thing that's happening to NASA-funded scientists right now.
You can't just tell a huge population of very smart engineers, "Put your lives on hold for five years while we train your replacements." Who will be left to impart on-the-job knowledge to these children? Certainly not me. I'll be trying to get my foot in the door at ESA, JAXA, Thales, Ariane, or any other number of non-US entities.
By the way, none of this is at all NASA's fault. They're doing the best with the cash they're given... it just tends to be nowhere near enough. - threemagic, on 04/22/2008, -3/+42Stephen Hawking, himself, couldn't make you understand the algorithm.
- sodade, on 04/22/2008, -7/+39Yeah - please sign me up for the "no-religious ***** allowed" colony.
- Vostok, on 04/22/2008, -4/+36We're in the age of space exploration similar to Europe just before the colonial age. A lot of people ask 'why go there when I can stay here?' To me the answer has always been rather simple, because no one has done it before and I want to be remembered for doing it.
- ANT1138, on 04/22/2008, -7/+35Stephen Hawking for President.
- SpaceMonkeyZero, on 04/22/2008, -0/+26If there's ever a government program I'm ok with sending my tax money to, NASA is one of the few.
- fluxion, on 04/22/2008, -2/+28i think we have the resources to do both: prolong our Earth's sustainability while colonizing new worlds. they shouldnt be viewed as alternatives to one another.
in fact, id say they were complementary. the investment in cheaper more efficient energy/technology will likely increase our successes in endeavors like getting to/colonizing mars/etc. the first colonist arent gonna have unlimited resources to work with - blackbeardtron, on 04/22/2008, -2/+24POW! Right in the kisser.
POW! Right in the kisser.
POW! Right in the kisser. - flashingcurser, on 04/22/2008, -5/+26Imagine leaving the money in the people's pockets who earned it.
- fluxion, on 04/22/2008, -3/+23war on drugs = lots of sweet drugs
- RogerStrong, on 04/22/2008, -1/+21You vastly underestimate the amount of money spent on those wars. Seriously.
- finalfantasyIII, on 04/22/2008, -3/+22This would advance us technologically. It would do for this century what machines did for the 19th century.
- RogerStrong, on 04/22/2008, -2/+21You won't stop religion with out savagely supressing it, and even then it's unlikely. You won't stop wars and hatred without stopping the causes - religion, hunger for power, the simple principle of "they have something we want", and soon (if not already) overpopulation.
In other words, off-world colonies are a far more credible insurance. - TheUngod, on 04/22/2008, -7/+25Huuuuuge difference! There is no immediate NEED for space exploration, while we do always need medical services.
- krewl, on 04/22/2008, -5/+22Easy for him to say, but not everybody rides around on a Lunar rover.
- sputnike, on 04/22/2008, -4/+20And if one astroid or other space anomaly hits the earth causing unlivable conditions? What then genious?
- geneticlone, on 04/22/2008, -3/+19As long as there are no taxes on Mars, I'm in.
- MacEnvy, on 04/22/2008, -1/+17That's not the point - the point is, someday the Maserati WILL fail, and you'll be damn thankful for the Festivas.
- techweenie1, on 04/22/2008, -5/+21"Humanity can afford to battle earthly problems like climate change and still have plenty of resources left over for colonising space, he said." Couldn't agree more...we really need to boast the space program. The people that say they should take care of the problems here on Earth, in an almost facist manner might I add, are out of step with mankind's natural instinct to roam and explore.
- inactive, on 04/22/2008, -3/+19It's about time to leave this rock!
- gwyrth, on 04/22/2008, -0/+15We've always had religion, wars and xenophobia. Yet here we all still are....more of us than ever before...
- bgrah449, on 04/22/2008, -4/+19Eh, I'm not so sure. I guess a better analogy would be, keep the classic car in the garage, pristine, with light use and frequent (needless, almost obsessive) cleaning, and find another "junker" planet you plan to abuse and replace after a few years.
- finalfantasyIII, on 04/22/2008, -1/+15"Where do they get off spouting this incoherent rubbish?"
Just because you can't understand him doesn't mean he's an idiot. That makes you the idiot. - blademanx, on 04/22/2008, -2/+16Do you really want Halliburton to be the first ones on Mars?
- bbqsalad, on 04/22/2008, -0/+13There will be taxes.. But there will also be chicks with 3 boobs... 3 BOOBS.
- Ashur420, on 04/22/2008, -1/+14I agree completely. I sent a message to the Obama campaign asking about this and the war on drugs. Say we stop the war on drugs and treat it as a health problem (as it should be) and funnel that cash to the space program. His and my dream of space colonies would come true.
- scoffey, on 04/22/2008, -0/+12enough queso to fill the world's oceans three times over
- ozanweb, on 04/22/2008, -0/+11And in the unlikely case you've clicked on the link for this Digg article, you will see that that picture is included in this article as well.
- jmeade9876, on 04/22/2008, -0/+11We already do. Over 3 times as much spent on education as space exploration this year.
It seems like every time we talk about NASA somebody calls it a waste, we should spend more on X, it's the REAL problem, etc. The fact is that NASA's budget, year after year, is around ONE HALF OF ONE PERCENT of the total US budget. A waste?
If anything, we should be spending more. Move forward as a species instead of spending ~20% of the budget killing people in Iraq. - SeriousMite, on 04/22/2008, -2/+13The way I look at it is it's like when you play a real-time-strategy game. At the start of the game it may always seem like you don't have the resources to spend on an expensive factory upgrade or a new weapon technology. Other more immediate problems may tempt you to keep spending everything on cheap footsoldiers which seem more important at the time, but as the game goes on, if you haven't invested in any upgrades, eventually you'll be screwed.
- CheeseburgerBro, on 04/22/2008, -0/+11Or spelling, evidently.
- designerutah, on 04/22/2008, -0/+11For all those claiming that money spent on space could be better spent elsewhere. Consider this to put it in perspective for 2007 expenditures. These figures are rough, from many places, and I don't guarantee they're accurate, but they give a good idea or relative expenditures:
1. NASA's budget was roughly $17 Billion
2. Social programs budgets (such as medicare, medicaide, etc.) were $1.581 Trillion
3. Defense spending was $652 Trillion
4. War on Drugs is roughly $56 Billion
5. War on Terror (over next 10 years) could be 2.4 Trillion, currently $350 Million for 2007
6. Video Games nearly $18 Billion
7. Alcohol $154 Billion (as shown above)
8. Wildlife related Activities $120 Billion
9. Gambling $300 Billion (or more, since it's hard to measure)
10. Bottled Water $15 Billion
11. Pets $41 Billion
12. Movies $10.6 Billion
13. $145 Billion on Electronics
So to those of you who cry that NASA's budget of $17 Billion is too high, or the money could be spent somewhere better, you need to get real. NASA's budget in the 60s was 5%. And we spent far less percentage of our budget on things like War, Social Programs (which does include education (but as a tiny fraction, supporting foreign aid is a much larger portion of this), and Entertainment. But look at all the advancements that the space race brought us, and you'll see the ROI was very high. Time to do it again. Education goes up when the need for educated people goes up. Same with money for research. If NASA were looking to buy high-tensile graphite cable capable of being used in micro-g environment, no air, and wide temperature extremes, funding for research in the private sector would increase because people investing would see profit. In other words, spend on NASA, and private investors will follow suit, and they'll pay a large portion of the research costs.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/898/1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/24/news/economy/cbo_t ... - mountvale, on 04/22/2008, -1/+11Travelling to and colonizing nearby moons and planets will trigger the research necessary to develop capabilities to reach farther planets.
The moon and Mars are only stepping stones. - RogerStrong, on 04/22/2008, -0/+10It costs less to send a willing, already educated person to your colony. And there's no shortage of willing, educated people who want to go.
- BigW, on 04/22/2008, -2/+12Ok. Wow, I just imagined my money being wasted.
Sorry, I'll imagine my money being spent to do more space exploration. At least in the last 50 years NASA has accomplished something, unlike most federal education spending. - houndeyex, on 04/22/2008, -1/+11I think Pluto's been through enough, what with losing planet status and all.
- earthforce1, on 04/23/2008, -1/+11Rettably, Obama is Kiilling the manned space program...
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2007/11/obama_wa ...
You can digg me down for being anti-Obama, but the truth is I somewhat liked the guy before I found this out. If you truly have contact or better yet influence within his campaign workers, ring them up en-masse and let them know this is a grave mistake - there is a lot of other places to find the money instead of killing Constellation, the only shuttle replacement. A 5 year delay means the US will have no manned launch platform after the shuttles are retired. And they are already overdue... - CheeseburgerBro, on 04/22/2008, -7/+16Maybe if you stopped waging international oil wars you'd have a little extra pocket change to kick around.
Think about it, yank. - inactive, on 04/22/2008, -0/+9Are you saying that he has never done anything to help science or are you insulting his disability? -Buried
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