Moon is part of Mars

[Anomalocaris]

Clever, but no.

Our moon didn’t form until long after the solar nebula collapsed.

Observation of other protoplanetary discs and computational modeling suggest the protoplanetary disk collapsed very quickly, in less than 10 million years, possibly as little as 3 million.   At the end of this any gas remaining in protoplanetary nebula that were not incorporated into jupiter and Saturn were blown away by T Tauri phase of the sun, and all the major planets currently in our inner solar system inside the orbit of Uranus, including the earth and mars, have accreted vast majority of their masses.  The nebula is gone, and only the planets, a collection of planetesimals, and a dense debris disc remains.

It was another 50 million years after that before one of the smaller remaining terrestrial planets collided with the earth in a glancing blow to form the moon.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I think the spin-off technology argument is spurious.

  
You'd be wrong.  It's a rare research programme that doesn't generate spinoff technology.

  

If the spun off technology was worth the cost of going to mars, then even more spun off technology can be realized for the same cost by doing the same R&D as before, but then dispensing with the cost of actually going to mars and devoting the funds freed up to do further R&D.   In that case the technology to investment ratio would be even more favorable.

Which is what I said - you start a let's-go-to-Mars programme, but you don't actually go to Mars.

Going to mars can only be soundly justified if going to mars is a sufficiently desirable goal in itself to justify the investment.

No argument.

The spin off technology argument was used to justify Apollo landing.  But the real justification for the cost was really a way to do more R&D for the defense department without any apparent and prohibitive increase in the defense budget.

So what?  The Apollo programme would have been a bargain at ten times the price.  I agree that the Apollo landing wasn't much more than a look-how-much-smarter-we-are-than-the-Russians PR stunt.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

I think the spin-off technology argument is spurious.

  
You'd be wrong.  It's a rare research programme that doesn't generate spinoff technology.

  

If the spun off technology was worth the cost of going to mars, then even more spun off technology can be realized for the same cost by doing the same R&D as before, but then dispensing with the cost of actually going to mars and devoting the funds freed up to do further R&D.   In that case the technology to investment ratio would be even more favorable.

Which is what I said - you start a let's-go-to-Mars programme, but you don't actually go to Mars.

Going to mars can only be soundly justified if going to mars is a sufficiently desirable goal in itself to justify the investment.

No argument.

The spin off technology argument was used to justify Apollo landing.  But the real justification for the cost was really a way to do more R&D for the defense department without any apparent and prohibitive increase in the defense budget.

So what?  The Apollo programme would have been a bargain at ten times the price.  I agree that the Apollo landing wasn't much more than a look-how-much-smarter-we-are-than-the-Russians PR stunt.

Boru

I didn’t say the research program would not generate spin off technologies.   I say going to mars is highly inefficient way to invest in the hopes of a spin off technological windfall.

Whether Apollo program is worth half its price, much less ten times its price, for the spin off technology it generated is debatable.   What made it look like a bargain was the perception that going to the moon by itself more than justified its price, so the spin off technology, or any other ancillary benefit, was pure bonus.   That perception of value of going to the moon if subjected to rigorous examination would likely lose most of It’s honest adherents.

Furthermore, investment in Apollo didn’t come in a vacuum.   At least some of the funding for Apollo came at the expense of funding for other science programs.   So any spin off technology benefit that did result from Apollo must also account for opportunity cost in technologies delayed or truncated by Apollo.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

  
You'd be wrong.  It's a rare research programme that doesn't generate spinoff technology.

  

Which is what I said - you start a let's-go-to-Mars programme, but you don't actually go to Mars.


No argument.


So what?  The Apollo programme would have been a bargain at ten times the price.  I agree that the Apollo landing wasn't much more than a look-how-much-smarter-we-are-than-the-Russians PR stunt.

Boru

I didn’t say the research program would not generate spin off technologies.   I say going to mars is highly inefficient way to invest in the hopes of a spin off technological windfall.

Whether Apollo program is worth half its price, much less ten times its price, for the spin off technology it generated is debatable.   What made it look like a bargain was the perception that going to the moon by itself more than justified its price, so the spin off technology, or any other ancillary benefit, was pure bonus.   That perception if subjected to rigorous examination would likely lose most of It’s adherents.

And I said it isn't necessary to actually go to Mars to generate the spinoffs.

The Apollo programme was a bargain, full stop.  USians spent more on cosmetics over the same period. The cost per day in then-dollars was about .05 for every person in the US - one could argue that the US got to the moon on a cup of coffee.  The resulting spinoff technologies in insulating materials, industrial monitoring systems, remote health sensors, microminiaturization, lubricants, anti-corrosion surfactants, flame retarding textiles, improved dialysis, athletic wear, medical devices, and too many more to mention - have generated far more economic activity than the money spent getting to the moon.  That being said, I don't disagree with you that it wasn't necessary to actually get to the moon for these benefits to accrue.

Scientific research is, by its very nature, serendipitous.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

“Full stop” has the effect opposite from adding credibility to the preceding statement.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Can't believe you caved...

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

Can't believe you caved...

Boru

can’t believe you still didn’t.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

one of the smaller remaining terrestrial planets

Thea

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Can't believe you caved...

Boru

can’t believe you still didn’t.

*shrug*  Nothing for me to cave about.  I gave you figures and - implicitly - the opportunity to dispute them.  You declined.

And, just for my own morbid curiosity, can you tell me which of the following statements is made less credible by the addition of 'full stop'?

-Gregory Peck won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Atticus Finch, full stop.

-The atomic number of aluminium is 13, full stop.

-Herman Melville died in 1891, full stop.

-Beef is meat from cattle, full stop.

-The Amazon River is in South America, full stop.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

can’t believe you still didn’t.

*shrug*  Nothing for me to cave about.  I gave you figures and - implicitly - the opportunity to dispute them.  You declined.

And, just for my own morbid curiosity, can you tell me which of the following statements is made less credible by the addition of 'full stop'?

-Gregory Peck won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Atticus Finch, full stop.

-The atomic number of aluminium is 13, full stop.

-Herman Melville died in 1891, full stop.

-Beef is meat from cattle, full stop.

-The Amazon River is in South America, full stop.

Boru

These examples you cite in your own defense are rhetorically fundamentally different from the statement you attempt to defend.    In the examples you cite, the statement itself is not indispute.   So while the "full stop"s that follow may exhibit a rather unpleasantly emphatic speaking style, it serves as rhetorical dead wood that plays no substantive part, and can thus be ignored.

In what you attempt to defend, the statement itself is the core of contention.   So the full stop plays the rhetorically discreditable role of attempting to browbeat the opposition side into agreement without first offering any reason why the original statement is in any way creditable.