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"Going to Mars is a waste of money"...
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29-10-2012 6:57pm#1
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These are the same arguments used by the military to try and justify their own obscene amounts of funding ( nuclear power, computers , internet etc)
The vast majority of scientific developments do not occur via happenstance spinoffs - they occur through targeted investment and development in the fields where the problems exist. These same areas are starved of research investment because they lack the cachet of space travel or the fear mongering of the global arms business. By this logic a program designed to catapult penguins would be equally meritorious as it also allows the potential of technological development - tracking systems, biological monitoring devices, insulation , non invasive anatomical profiling, shielding etc
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mickmackey1 wrote: »If the tens of billions ̶w̶a̶s̶t̶e̶d̶ spent on the space station had instead been used for a fleet of giant telescopes we would now know if there is life on nearby planets...
Wasted? The experiments that are on going on board the space station allow for us to plan towards the future and enhance the safety of our astronauts.
All of this is necessary ground work for the future of our species. It's all well and good saying that we need to turn our resources around to make sure we don't ruin our planet, but people need to wake up to the fact that there are forces outside of our planet which we cannot control. We can only prepare for them. All this work being put into human space exploration now will allow for us to build up our technology to a level when we can safely leave this planet and colonise elsewhere. Leaving this planet will have to be done sometime in our species future and when that time comes we won't be able to do it without these baby steps we are taking now.
Not sure what year this budget is from but it portrays the percentages spent nicely.
I really hate the comparison of space exploration spending to the military spending. The money spent within the world's military's out weighs that spent on space exploration by a very large factor. Why not concentrate your disapproval towards the military instead of a cause which will ultimately benefit our species right now and in the long run.0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 30759
mickmackey1 wrote: »A fleet of telescopes employing interferometry would be able to detect oxygen in the atmospheres of nearby planets, a sure giveaway of life. I personally find this more fascinating than anything happening on the SS; I'm not dissing the project completely, its just the scale of the expense bugs me.
You might be interested in the Kepler Mission if you haven't already heard of it.
It's already found over 2000 goldilocks zone orbiting planets afaik.0 -
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You might be interested in the Kepler Mission if you haven't already heard of it.
It's already found over 2000 goldilocks zone orbiting planets afaik.
We will surely find out that earthlike planets are a dime-a-dozen. Which makes it more surprising that we see no signs of higher intelligence out there...0 -
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You didn't suggest that climate change would wipe us out, but you were defending a dumb post that suggested that climate change or some other catastrophe (as I said) put us in such imminent danger we had to act immediately on manned space exploration.
No one said the danger is imminent. We said it was inevitable. Also I never said "act immediately on manned space exploration". I'm defending space exploration as it is now. Without it there would be no manned space exploration in the future.You say that it doesn't matter if it's 10, 10000 or 10000000 years. What nonsense. Of course it matters. The only inevitable catastrophe we know for sure is that in several BILLION years our sun will cause the death of Earth. By your logic we should start manned exploration now to deal with it. Much more sense in my opinion would be to wait for another few hundred million years before we start worrying about it.
See, timescales matter.
I'm saying that it will happen it doesn't matter when. We will still need to be prepared for it or else we will be wiped out. Well yeah it would make sense to wait a few hundred million years if all you have to worry about is the death of our sun, but the chances of an asteroid strike is extremely high when you add in the few hundred million years.Not as much of a certainty, but a reasonable level of probability, is that sometime over the next million years humanity may be threatened by a large comet/asteroid strike. You take your 100 billion and spend it on a Mars mission and I'll take it and spend it on firstly detecting possible threats, and we'll see which one of us improves the survivability of the species (hint, see what budget the manned mission funds would come from).
I see we agree with the certainty of an asteroid strike. What you aren't realising is that I'm not saying all money should be thrown at manned exploration. Everything is working up to that. Of course we would need ways to detect asteroids but what good would that money have done if it never detected a threat? Would that money have been wasted? It's the same scenario, only leaving this planet and colonising elsewhere guarantees the safety of our species from such an event.Your belief that manned space exploration is essential for survival of the species seems based on colonisation of space. If so, when would you expect independent colonies to have been established? Tens of years, hundreds of years? And what event are you protecting against? What is its probability of happening in any reasonable timeframe? Most such events are so improbable that survivable probability is unaffected by whether we start now or next century. If manned exploration of space is so crucial now, it was equally crucial 100 years ago.
I do realise this but next century someone like you would be saying the exact same thing to someone like me. Why start now when we aren't in any immediate danger? And so the cycle will roll on.You say that money spent on space exploration is in no way wasted. But despite my, and others, previous prompting you are not looking at this in terms of cost-beneft or opportunity costs, which means your posts are descending into simple fanboyism. In terms of scientific return on investment, the ISS has been a terrible waste of money. Compare that to the recent report which says the few billion invested in the human genome project has given close to a trillion dollars of economic benefit.
So lets take space exploration as a whole. Think of all the communication satellites currently making our discussion possible. Think of the GPS satellites which allow you to find your way to the other side of the world with an accuracy of a few meters or less. Think of the radar imaging satellites which played a vital role in helping scientists determine the intensity, path and devastation of the recent hurricane sandy. You can only imagine how worse the damage may have been without this knowledge. None of these would have been made possible if people like you said space exploration was a waste of money.
As for the ISS, its hard to say because it can take years before an economy reaps the benefits from it's research. I can imagine though that it Isn't cost effective at the moment.
But what I can say, is that having it is an extremely important PR tool for encouraging children into science and engineering disciplines. This surely is beneficial to society, albeit not a very immediate or obvious benefit.I agree with you about baby steps. But my baby steps involve robotic exploration, not tens or hundreds of immediate billions on manned exploration. Properly analysed as cost vs benefit, not a political 'Mars, bitches' (look it up).
You seem to have completely latched on to the cost of manned exploration as a way to nullify my opinions without me actually talking about doing deep space manned exploration RIGHT now. At this stage I'd like to remind you that the initial topic came from Baumgartners opinion on Mars exploration. He didn't specify manned and neither am I. My baby steps do too include robotic space exploration for the immediate future, but eventually we will need the ability of manned exploration and that doesn't come without the robotic work beforehand.
In my past posts I mentioned some of the benefits of having humans in place of robots to do these missions, or indeed alongside robots. I in no way think we are ready right now. At least not ready to do it in a cost effective manner
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I am in favour of manned missions over robotic when possible. I never stated when they should begin.No, you're not simply defending space exploration as it is now - reading your posts it is reasonable to take that (1) you are in favour of a manned mission to Mars soon,
I stated the benefits manned missions have over robotic missions on Mars using one example to do so. I never stated they were overly preferable at this time.(2) you think a manned mission is preferable to unmanned ones,
In a sense yes I do. Because I see any sort of human space exploration as a preparation for this. Laying the groundwork as it were, but this is what I said; "All this work being put into human space exploration now will allow for us to build up our technology to a level when we can safely leave this planet and colonise elsewhere. Leaving this planet will have to be done sometime in our species future and when that time comes we won't be able to do it without these baby steps we are taking now."(3) you think we need to prepare now for the colonisation of I'm not sure where in order to provide for survival of the species(4) you think it is almost impossible to waste money in space exploration and (5) you think it doesn't matter if the extinction threat is in 10 years or 10 million years.
I think this is where our train of thought is differing. You see benefit in dollar signs only, where as I'm considering the benefit of our species as well. In the time scales we are talking about what is money worth?You think I am against space exploration when I said nothing of the sort. I'm against spending hundreds of billions of dollars on projects with almost no return (eg the cost of the ISS is $150 billion). Projects such as space shuttle, ISS, Mars manned missions.
It seemed to me that you were against space exploration as a whole. Apologies if I misunderstood you, but it seems you have misunderstood me also. Also see above for my thoughts on benefit.Ok, you want to defend the species by spending trillions of dollars building some utterly unsupportable colony (where? moon? mars? spaceship?) for a tiny number of people. I'll spend a tiny fraction of that protecting Earth from that one threat, and building a few huge underground bunkers that will support thousands of people for tens of years to ride out all but the most calamitous impacts.
Do I? I don't remember saying that? The ability to colonise elsewhere is the ultimate goal not the immediate one. What I did say was that being able to colonise elsewhere would equate to the survival of our species regardless of what happens on earth.
While you spent all that money on the few hundred underground bunkers, the technology that would have been created over the hundreds of years of this r&d into colonisation in space, assuming that it was possible and we can succesfully do it, will have given us substantial knowledge into shaping an environment into being habitable for us and by extension, will allow us to repair the earth should anything happen to it.Because (a) I don't believe we are technologically ready to commence any such endeavour so therefore it will cost far too much,
I agree.and (b) I don't believe colonisation is feasible in any timeframe that will depend on whether we send a manned mission to Mars in coming decades and
Well it would depend on us sending a manned mission to Mars. In the next coming decades no, obviously that wouldn't make a huge impact on colonisation of the future, but it would be a large step towards it.(c) thinking that colonisation is the way to go is just wrong anyway.
Instead we can do much more useful and beneficial things for much less money.
Care to expand on why it is the wrong way to go? Remember I'm not talking about us having the ability to create a colony on Mars in 20 years.But there is your strawman argument again. I'm for space exploration, just not the hugely expensive manned variety where most of the money is spent keeping the astronauts alive and too little on doing 'science'.
...but the majority of manned missions are based on the science of manned missions? The very fact that they are in space is doing science. Not a minute is wasted by scientists analysing how the astronauts are doing up there.Also, how was 'space exploration' necessary for those satellite systems you mentioned? If we had never sent a man into space what would have stopped us having GPS, weather satellites etc? Satellites were in space before men.
Well space exploration was obviously necessary for the satellite systems mentioned, but I presume that here you meant manned space exploration which again this goes back to my assumption that you thought all space exploration was a waste of money. So sorry about that.I bet 'Star Trek' is a far better tool at 0.001% of the cost.
Are you kidding me? A fictitious show against a real life Space station you can see with the naked eye?
Never watched Star Trek btw
You sure give a different impression:
Baumgartner: "I mean, you cannot send people there because it is just too far away. That little knowledge we get from Mars I don't think it does make sense"
You: "Really don't agree with this" ... "Manned missions can be made possible, obviously more expensive but if done correctly can increase the amount done by robotic scientific missions ten fold." ..."There's only so much robots can do on Mars considering we are still controlling them. By basically cutting out the middle man and putting humans there procedures can get completed quicker. Not to mention the advantages of having a human there." .. "I'm talking about the baby steps that we are planning. Sending humans to Mars is only one of those steps among many others"
Well when you read it like that after you copied and pasted my quotes together to look like I'm only replying to Baumgartner. Good job on miss representing me.
My original post was in response to Baumgartners opinion on going to Mars in general. He was against doing anything with Mars. I was responding to this. I do realise my quote makes it seem like I was closing in on human exploration but I never stated it. I was hoping everyone would read the whole article and I picked that quote as the most interesting.
The first time I mentioned human space exploration was in response to Chuck Stone. I then expanded on it when you asked me a question and gave my opinion on the inevitability of the demise of our species to which I, and many others, recognise the goal of eventual colonisation of other planets as a way to free our species from earth to ensure our survival.0 -
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