It comes out to like $100/taxpayer. I think that's worth it for the "fun" aspect alone. Let alone all of the actual benefits of it. I do think the private sector will innovate more because of the billionaire guys like Richard Branson that throw wads of cash into the industry.
Tiffany is right. Under the leadership of the current president, NASA is a total waste of money. Mission make a Muslim feel good today, has got to be the number one dumbest idea of tax payer waste ever cooked up by Obama or any one else. Note: just because Obama is still being reined in by congress now, is no reason to believe it will happen if he is re-elected. The Link
Tiffany started thinking about how to pay for college when she was a senior. A thousand years from now the only reason anybody will remember this country existed will be the space program.
HookEm, as much as I looove Obama, your point is really one of political disagreements. I don't disagree with you on how Obama has managed NASA...the building relations with the Muslim world, letting the Shuttle go to New York City and Los Angeles...100% politics. Obama does support a manned mission to mars, and has made that a NASA priority, but even his actions here are driven by politics. He killed Constellation, which was approved with a bipartisan support from Congress and was already several years into its timeline, so that he could start his own personal Mars project. That way, when an American first steps on Mars, it'll be an Obama legacy, not a Bush legacy. That egomania has left the US with a manned vehicle gap which will be around for a long time. Conserallation flights would have started up within the next few years. That said, behind all the politics and at the bottom of it, I think Obama, like any president, sees NASA as a worthwhile and relatively inexpensive government prorgram that often sees a lot of bipartisan support. Commercial companies ferrying payloads to the ISS with NASA focused on the big picture exploration and research is the way to go as Bush I think would agree with also. The article is really beyond the petty politics of different administrations. It's about the fundamental philosophy of how we perceive ourselves.
Space exploration is very important, and we'd be foolish to eliminate it. The positive economic, military, medical, and scientific benefits associated with it have been enormous and easily traceable. In our current budget crisis, I might not be expanding it as fast as I otherwise would, but I wouldn't get rid of it by any means. It is frightening that there are large numbers of Americans willing to just throw it away.
I understand that NASA's main job is science and thats where their money needs to be spent. But, a little PR wouldn't hurt. They need to do a better job of explaining to the average American why their missions are important to all of us. "It's interesting" isn't going to cut it with most Americans who have little to no scientific knowledge.
The best astronaut in the last 25 years is a robot. I was fascinated by actions robots have been doing on Mars. Astronauts in space stations or orbits were a waste of time. They were expected to do exactly what were planned or from mission control so why bother to have them there in the fist place? When we can arm them with laser guns and expect a shootout with aliens then wake me up
my bad, thought you were knocking on astronauts there for a second. yes, they do need to publicize a bit more
The space program is wonderful. However, when we are 14 trillion in debt and have a million other problems, I think the space program, and all those engineers and scientists, could be put to better use until we get our house in order. Put it on hold for a while. Lets fix our **** here. We arent going to visit the next solar system anytime soon, and not until we figure out out to go faster than the speed of light on many orders of magnitude. Do we scrap NASA? No. But we need to scale back and solve our financial/economic problems first.
Depending on which form of mass extinction you buy in to, various scientific articles estimate all life will die off anwhere from 660 million (CO2 levels drop below what is needed for Photosynthesis to sustain our oxygen levels) to 1.1 billion years from now (Sun's luminosity increases to where all the oceans evaporate). Assuming we don't get blasted by an asteroid, comet, or a close supernova any earlier than that... So unfortunately, folks should accept that everything in between is just filler time until we move on from this rock.
With the exponential growth of computing power and human knowledge over the past 200 years, the idea of figuring out how to achieve faster than light or near lightspeed travel within a few generations isn't crazy to me. Think about it...right after the end of the Civil War, when we still used horses as our primary means of transporation, who would have thought we'd freaking put a man on the moon 100 years later? We were a country that had to have a farrier replace and nail shoes onto our horses so we can go to work. The idea of traveling Mach 30 through the heavens to land on the Moon in 3 days (traveling from Houston to Austin back in the 1860s probably took 3 days) would have sounded just as ridiculous. Do you think the Wright Brothers after flying their glorified fabric covered powered glider would have thought in 100 years we would have put a 3,000lbs scifi wheeled robot on Mars or sent probes to the outer planets and outside our solar system? 100 years...
Gaining new knowledge is critical for national security and economic power. If we stop pushing the frontiers of knowledge, then we will be relegated to second-rate status within a generation or two. It's already happening with the Europe's Large Hadron Collider and the Russian & Chinese space programs. NASA is just one front on a huge battlefield, but making scientific progress isn't a luxury; it's imperative for the continuation of the America we aspire to be.
While there are some interesting points in this thread, I want to go back to the original post. Why in the world do I care what Carol Beckles thinks? She is clearly not the brightest star in the universe. I don't think any Republican or Democrat should care either. The overall topic is fine but discussing her is dumb.
I have no problem spending on space. I do have a problem borrowing the money to spend for space. If we raise the taxes to do it, I'm all for it.
Even going at the speed of light is not sufficient or practical. It will take 50 years at that speed to get to our closest neighboring stars, and then thats another 50 to get back.... So 100 years round trip. We need to get to at least 4 or 5 times the speed of light to just barely reach the closest stars. Forget about other galaxies or even the other side of our galaxy.
