Open space mission total waste of money

Aberdeen American News ^ | Jan. 25, 2004 | Donna Marmorstein

[Travis McGee]

We do not disagree.

[Travis McGee]

BRAVO!

[Aracelis]

The following is a small terrestrial example of your obsession with quick financial returns. Of course you realize what this means, don't you? The formation of yet another government-funded research entity that will yield products that you consider to be of questionable financial merit. Isn't it grand that we've left the development of new antibiotics in the hands of private industry! < /sarcasm>

Lack of Antibiotic Research Raises Concerns.

Well, at least you'll have something new to complain about.

[Bobby777]

are you familiar with the conditions on those planets? ... Like Jupiter?

[Bobby777]

Thank you. I was astonished at that response, especially with regards to conditions on / above (atmosphere) Jupiter, and of course, even just the hazardous approach for Saturn is foreboding. Venus, I thought might be too hot for a manned landing. And it is manned landings I was speaking of (as you probably knew).

[RadioAstronomer]

And it is manned landings I was speaking of (as you probably knew).

Indeed I was. :-)

I left Venus out of the picture on purpose. I think it would be an incredible engineering challenge to land there, but I wont say it's impossible. :-)

[hopespringseternal]

The exploration of space since the Russians put up Sputnik is all about the militarization of space, plain and simple. If they'd at least come clean and say that without all the romantacising to enchant the taxpaying public, I'd be a bit less skeptical.

And the taxpaying public would promptly yawn and forget about it, ignoring any national security concerns. By the time the public is worried about national security it is too late.

And as far as cost/benefit, every civilization needs some mechanism for such pie-in-the-sky speculation. You don't bet the farm on it, but if you don't address it in some way your competitor will and if it pays off he will eat your lunch.

Speculation pays off in ways that simply cannot be seen by a cost/benefit analysis. All the noise about colonies, etc. is just applying the analogy of Columbus to space exploration. Reality may be nothing like that, but experience teaches us to expect great things from great endeavours.

Besides which, NASA is not going away and this money will be spent regardless. The question is not whether or not to spend the money, but how to spend it.

[RightWhale]

It's $7 trillion and that is public debt. Private debt is another $7 trillion. Some bookkeepers have yet another $40 trillion they trot out from time to time to scare the children. So we owe from $14 trillion to $54 trillion, but as Roosevelt said: so what, we owe it to ourselves. The whole planet is worth maybe $35 trillion, so that is why we have to have Mars and the moon--collateral.

[jwalburg]

Didn't Stephen Ambrose run into trouble for plagiarism or something lately? That book sounds interesting, but the fact that John Kerry listed it as the last book he was reading makes me hesitate.

[Kirkwood]

Yeah, but when you are pulling that much info together I think you are bound to make a mistake like that. I blame his staff for not keeping closer track of what he wrote and what was written by another author in the citation source.

The book is quite good, whether or not Kerry has read it. It is more scholarly than his Band of Brothers, D-Day, etc writing which were more a compilations of first person narratives. If you think all history is dry, you will want to pass. If you are interested in the minds of Jefferson, Lewis, and Clark, or how the US as we know it came into existence, then you will want to read it.