Pale Blue Dot, Revisited

[Reynard]

Indeed. But I'd rather be able to drink affordable coffee in the next 10 years than have a space probe that suggests a human-like life form once resembled me to an apathetic alien.


That's a small percentage. But a large amount of money.


GDP falls into the category of things in which Carl Sagan suggested people have misguided confidence.

Without policies that actually move that money to activities that are truly worthwhile long term, all you are doing is eliminating the only eternal legacy we can ever have. In the real world at least, real things exist in a real way that speaks to our presence. Imagining that somehow magically politicians will take money from space exploration and put it into fixing the climate crisis just feeds into the current state of doing absolutely nothing.

How about instead taking the hundreds of billions of dollars away from the insatiable War Machine and actually feeding, housing and educating people?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Indeed. But I'd rather be able to drink affordable coffee in the next 10 years than have a space probe that suggests a human-like life form once resembled me to an apathetic alien.


That's a small percentage. But a large amount of money.


GDP falls into the category of things in which Carl Sagan suggested people have misguided confidence.

Way to miss the point, which was that this is a small part of the larger economy and is affordable, given that it yields a fair bit of valuable science. Space based instrumentation is very valuable in monitoring the environment as a particular instant.
I would add, spending on space is small even in the context of the US federal budget and does not even dominate the US science budget. US fossil fuel subsidies on the scale of the space spend for instance. To go any deeper is to get into politics. Even cutting the civilian space budget might not make a huge difference since the Department of defence would surely increase their spending to ensure that satellite launch and development capability remains within the economy.

 

[Umbran]

What if, instead of reminding the Void of us, that space exploration money were spent on sustainable living and agriculture? Or mental health support for those with "fervent . . . hatred?"

That space exploration money isn't big money, on the scale of things.
The US Department of Agriculture has a budget of $386 billion dollars.
NASA has a budget this year of $25 billion dollars.

If the DoA isn't already well and truly on the way to supporting sustainable living and agriculture, giving them a mere 6% increase ain't gonna help. Are you telling me that they are already well and truly on that road? No? Then, leave that money where it is, thank you very much.

Also, guess what, much of the work we can do in sustainable living and agriculture requires a whole lot of earth science and weather science imaging. Guess who does that? NASA, the space exploration people. When NASA explores Mars, the primary output is understanding of? Planetary sciences. Guess what we need to do that sustainable living thing? Planetary sciences! We need to understand how planets work, if we are to save our own, you know.

NASA returns more to the economy than it takes in tax dollars. NASA ultimately more than pays for itself.

Killing the space exploration money would do more harm than good.

 

[ilgatto]

Some food for thought while you argue mercilessly with people on the internet over games....
(...)
"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds."
(...)

-Carl Sagan

 

[GMMichael]

K, folks. @UngainlyTitan isn't the only one whose point is being missed. When @Reynard says "we could all die at any time, and all we'll leave behind is our space junk," I have to think, "why leave anything behind? If there's no future, why spend money on it?" In the present, we can all use some cleaner food, air, and water. Those are needs that everyone can agree on*, and immediately. How many people are waiting on a deeper understanding of black holes, or where all that dark matter is hiding?

But as I said earlier, "discussion board." So feel free to conflate my targeted responses with a general "the space program is worthless." And forgive me for being unable to continue down such a rabbit hole.

By the way, @ilgatto , I'll attempt to one-up you here...

*To the extent that everyone can agree on seemingly obvious things.

 

[Reynard]

K, folks. @UngainlyTitan isn't the only one whose point is being missed. When @Reynard says "we could all die at any time, and all we'll leave behind is our space junk," I have to think, "why leave anything behind? If there's no future, why spend money on it?" In the present, we can all use some cleaner food, air, and water. Those are needs that everyone can agree on*, and immediately. How many people are waiting on a deeper understanding of black holes, or where all that dark matter is hiding?

But as I said earlier, "discussion board." So feel free to conflate my targeted responses with a general "the space program is worthless." And forgive me for being unable to continue down such a rabbit hole.

By the way, @ilgatto , I'll attempt to one-up you here...

*To the extent that everyone can agree on seemingly obvious things.

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake isn't just a net good, it is an inherent aspect of humanity that we couldn't stop if we wanted to. it is literally why we are here having this conversation in this format.

The idea that we should spend the resources used to expand human knowledge on food for the hungry, rather than the resources we use to kill and destroy and oppress one another, is just baffling to me. Resources are limited. Use them for good (in the philosophical sense). Knowledge is a good. War is not.

 

[ilgatto]

By the way, @ilgatto , I'll attempt to one-up you here...

Heartbreaking.

And he was shot by his own father.

 

[Umbran]

K, folks. @UngainlyTitan isn't the only one whose point is being missed. When @Reynard says "we could all die at any time, and all we'll leave behind is our space junk," I have to think, "why leave anything behind? If there's no future, why spend money on it?" In the present, we can all use some cleaner food, air, and water. Those are needs that everyone can agree on*, and immediately. How many people are waiting on a deeper understanding of black holes, or where all that dark matter is hiding?

And you seem to be missing my points:

1) As a very practical matter, we do not spend enough on space exploration for that to be a good funding source for what you want to do. Our science budget is small. All of NASA is a whopping three-tenths of a percent of the federal budget. If you want big bucks for big problems, you won't get them out of the space exploration budget. You can take all that money, and not move the needle on the problems you are concerned about.

2) The technologies developed to do the science work are constantly being spun off into the rest of the world, everything from fabrics worn by firefighters to image processing that is ultimately used to gauge the impacts of drought on agriculture. This is how the Space Program pays for itself and more. Killing funding would be killing those advances.

3) You are currently reading on a screen that is driven by electronics that rely on scientific knowledge that, decades and a century ago, had no known practical purpose. We are slowly coming into the realm of quantum computing, that, again, is based on work that had no practical purpose at the time. We cannot predict what will eventually come from current research, but if you don't do the current research, the advances of the coming decades and century will not happen. Eliminating pure science research limits what tools you will have to apply to problems of the future.

 

[briggart]

K, folks. @UngainlyTitan isn't the only one whose point is being missed. When @Reynard says "we could all die at any time, and all we'll leave behind is our space junk," I have to think, "why leave anything behind? If there's no future, why spend money on it?" In the present, we can all use some cleaner food, air, and water. Those are needs that everyone can agree on*, and immediately. How many people are waiting on a deeper understanding of black holes, or where all that dark matter is hiding?

But as I said earlier, "discussion board." So feel free to conflate my targeted responses with a general "the space program is worthless." And forgive me for being unable to continue down such a rabbit hole.

By the way, @ilgatto , I'll attempt to one-up you here...

*To the extent that everyone can agree on seemingly obvious things.

Oh, we know very well where all that dark matter is hiding, we just don't know what it is

My biased 2 cents.

The science portion of NASA budget is about 8B$; of those, around 2.5B are for Earth Sciences, typically centred on monitoring Earth atmosphere, oceans, climate,... from space. To me, this is money that directly relates to providing clean food, air, water. For context, the budget for Planetary Science and Astrophysics is about 3.2B and 1.5B, respectively.

Also, while it's easy to point to examples of specific technologies that were developed for the space program or the like, and now are in everyday use, I think that we should not forget the involved people themselves. These kind of efforts tend to attract highly motivated people who are driven to excel by feeling part of a larger than life endeavour*. But not all of them will stay in the space project forever, many will move to other things, bringing their expertise with them, which is another way resources invested into this sort of projects then transfer into the society at large.

*People are driven to excel by various incentives. I'm not implying there is something magical in the space program, it's more of a different strokes for different folks thing.