Noteworthy News

[Brian37]

Spending on space supports highly skilled jobs, fuels technology advancements with practical applications, and creates business opportunities that feed back into the economy. This in turn grows the pool of public money that can be spent on solving the world's most pressing problems.

I get that but still not the point. It is a matter of priorities. I will always support things like unmanned space probes, which are far less complicated, less expensive and require just as much skill to make, but with far less risk to the probe. 

But right now, we need to focus on using those same talented people, to solve issues of cleaning up our oceans, inventing better and more affordable clean energy, and ending deforestation, famine, and education. 

Even when we do, and we will eventually get a human, or a few humans on Mars, it still would be impossible or take hundreds or or thousands of years to make efficient daily launches of mass numbers of humans to get to Mars to populate it. 

But even if I am being optimistic right now our species is far to tribal and exploitive to collectively make those things possible. We have a far better chance of a nuclear war than colonizing Mars right now.

[arewethereyet]

There have been many things that were invented/discovered through the space programs that we now use everyday.

It's not a bubble.

And it's not just Tang...insulin pumps, artificial limbs, wireless headsets, LASIK, and the list goes on. Google it.

[Silver]

Google it.

I have more important things to do.

[The Valkyrie]

There have been many things that were invented/discovered through the space programs that we now use everyday.

It's not a bubble.

And it's not just Tang...insulin pumps, artificial limbs, wireless headsets, LASIK, and the list goes on. Google it.

I remember hearing a story, true or not, I don't know, of NASA spending milluons to develop a pen that write in zero-G.

Meanwhile, the Russians used pencils.

[h4ym4n]

Yea, sharpening a pencil in zero gravity would be a hoot.

Not to mention the graphite dust particles short circuiting the electronics

[Fake Messiah]

There have been many things that were invented/discovered through the space programs that we now use everyday.

It's not a bubble.

And it's not just Tang...insulin pumps, artificial limbs, wireless headsets, LASIK, and the list goes on. Google it.

I remember hearing a story, true or not, I don't know, of NASA spending milluons to develop a pen that write in zero-G.

Meanwhile, the Russians used pencils.

I think that I heard that the pens didn't cost that much and that pencils are not that good because they conduct electricity.

[Fireball]

Having worked on spacecraft for a couple decades, graphite pencils have been found to be a total no-no. Notwithstanding the crud from erasers, graphite turns out to be a serious contaminant, no matter where it lands, even in the microscopic amounts from pencils.

[AFTT47]

I'm late to this conversation but I always get frustrated at the false dichotomy of spending money here on Earth or in space. We are spending money on human civilization - regardless of where that civilization is. Location is irrelevant.

A growing, technological civilization cannot be constrained to our home planet forever - at least not without making some tough choices. Earth is a finite space with finite resources. Obviously, we cannot continue to grow our civilization on it forever. That is common sense. We can stretch the time frame out with smart use of new technologies but in the end, we either expand into space or stagnate and wither.

There are multiple pathways to go into space. I personally don't see much point settling the surface of other planets except for niche purposes. But we can build artificial rotating habitats with a land area equal to over a billion planets. That starts with building a space-based infrastructure on the moon. The moon is relatively easily mined with relatively low cost to transporting the mined material to space. That is the next step and it won't be accomplished with robots alone.

The cost of Artemis is ridiculous because it is a government project. It was designed before SpaceX demonstrated the possibility and feasibility of making reusable rockets. Big governments operate very differently than the way a private company does. Artemis was bult by multiple contractors deliberately spread over multiple states to spread out the jobs over multiple jurisdictions to satisfy as many politicians and voters as possible. It was a massively inefficient mess by design. The SpaceX Starship isn't a thing yet but it will be and will bring costs down dramatically.

We are at the breakout point. We either expand into space and continue to grow or we decline.

[zebo-the-fat]

If the dinosaurs had a space program they might not have gone extinct

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Spending on space supports highly skilled jobs, fuels technology advancements with practical applications, and creates business opportunities that feed back into the economy. This in turn grows the pool of public money that can be spent on solving the world's most pressing problems.

No one is saying ‘don’t spend money on space’.

Boru