Why I dont like astronautics.

[woopidoo2]

I saw this discussion on television many months ago, and I still agree with what they said there.

 

They had a few critics that told they're statements.

 

 

 

The main point of the discussion: Astronautics need to stop.

 

 

 

Sources I found searching the internet:

 

 

 

(...)The nation's space agency plans to use the Orion crew exploration vehicle to replace the space shuttle fleet, take astronauts to the moon and perhaps to Mars. Unlike Apollo and earlier spacecraft perched atop rockets, it will be reusable. NASA estimated the cost at $7.5 billion through 2019 for likely eight separate spaceships.

 

 

 

(...)The last time NASA awarded a manned spaceship contract to Lockheed Martin of Bethesda, Md., was in 1996 for a spaceplane that was supposed to replace the space shuttle. NASA spent $912 million and the ship, called X-33, never got built because of technical problems.

 

 

 

(...)This is hardly the first time NASA has made a big deal over a next-generation spaceship. Since the 1980s, NASA has spent about $4.8 billion on shuttle follow-up ships that never were built, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the independent auditing arm of Congress.

 

 

 

And I could go on and on and on, only in these 3 quotes the total costs are $13.212.000.000 dollars -.-

 

 

 

Why are we sending shuttles, costing many 100s of millions to the moon, when there are millions of people that are dying, and live in extreme poverty?

 

 

 

Isnt this whole ''Space'' happening ridiculous, is it really that important how the surface of some sort of a ''special planet'' looks, when we cant even take care of poor people?

 

 

 

With all those billions of dollars we can easily send food to all countries that need it, arrange safe drinking water, and build a future for the poorest.

 

 

 

I could be overreacting, but thats my statement.

 

 

 

Post away, try twisting my point of view.

[Anesthesia]

With that sort of attitude how will we ever learn anything about anything?

[woopidoo2]

With that sort of attitude how will we ever learn anything about anything?

Ok, your right but I think we know enough.

 

 

 

If we want to know more then we allready know, everything will get more expensive, due to the long journeys we would have to take to explore more planets.

 

 

 

(not quite sure if I needed to say the last part :anxious: )

[Punc]

We should first try and solve the problems on our planet before we go and examine other planes.

 

That been said, exploring the universe can help in understanding our own planet and thus help to solve the problems here.

[ford_rule]

If someone goes and draws a line and says, ok we have learnt enough, then all that we have learnt up until that point would be useless. We are nothing without our striving for knowledge. It is human nature to explore and discover, and to be honest why should the American Government look after other countries, its not their responsibility. There is plenty of organisations out there, if you are so motivated about feeding the poor, how about you start sending money over to these countries, which i might add America is already doing. I think NASA and ESA are two of the best things going in this world, the money and setbacks are nothing compared to the discoveries made daily by NASA and other space agencies worldwide.

[deloriagod]

Humans seem to be on a never ending quest for knowledge. If we don't send people into space we'll always be sitting here on Earth wondering what's out there beyond what we've discovered. I see how we could be spending those billions of dollars on something that would actually help us, but maybe one day we'll find something useful in space.. :-k

[apinagez]

With that sort of attitude how will we ever learn anything about anything?

 

 

 

We'll never know enough about everything, though.

 

 

 

It's a hard choice: immediatist life saving or researching?, however, it's unlikely that the US would spend the NASA money on feeding the poor...

[Death_By_Pod]

The $7.5 billion is for more then just physically building 8 spaceships, have you ever heard of the term "spin off technologies?" NASA's goal might be going to the moon, however in doing so they develop technologies which can be used in other areas. The most common example is Teflon; it was used as a coating for the space shuttle, but as you know we use them to coat other things (such as frying pans).

 

 

 

http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html has a short list of examples. http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/ is the official site, where you can find more examples. To say that we are spending the money on spaceships alone is sheer ignorance. A lot of our technology was created for purposes other then what we used them for. For example computers were created to break codes and calculate missile trajectories and the internet was invented to network radar sites together.

 

 

 

The Department of defence alone got $440 Billion dollars, making NASA's budget tiny in comparison or how about the department of homeland security getting $43 billion. Sure the Department of Defence provides research grants as well, however they are less effective at producing spin off technologies compared to NASA. YouÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢re crying about $13 billion dollars when a large chunk of the budget is used for military spending, what usefulness do we get from waving big guns, expensive ships and planes around?

[Anesthesia]

We'll never know enough about everything, though.

 

 

 

You're right. Why should we bother trying to find out where other sentient life exists. Sorry but I don't subscribe to 'if we can't know everything why bother to try and learn anything' as philosophy.

 

 

 

That just doesn't make sense. Not being able to know everything is not a reason not to learn things.

[Guest XplsvBam]

Research is VERY important. Take cancer research for example.

 

 

 

Besides NASA has designed some very important things. Ball-point pens, everyone uses those. Personally there are probably 200+ ball-point pens in my house.

 

 

 

NASA FTW!

[malo2]

if youre really so worried about money then why dont you protest agains recycling?

[ThurinEthir]

Well, another problem happening on Earth is overpopulation. Countries like China are extremely populated, and need to create laws to stop it. Sooner or later, we will run out of space on Earth. So one reason they send people to the moon and Mars, to see if we could live there. The answer is very likely no right now, but by getting information from those places, other scientists can come up with technology that could make it possible.

[woopidoo2]

if youre really so worried about money then why dont you protest agains recycling?

I am not worried about money, Im worried about the way it is used.

[Nadril]

I'd much rather the research, honestly.

 

 

 

Anyways, we send plenty of help to those in "extreme poverty", but honestly money just isn't going to help that. You need to actualy teach people in poverty to work and how to make their own crops/whatever. We have enough money in that already.

 

 

 

 

 

Space travel is the one "frontier" we haven't explored much of yet. You can understand why we spend so much on it. Imagine back when they thought the earth was flat. They just didn't think "well, we won't know it all, lets just stop here!". Nope, they didn't. :wink:

 

 

 

We don't know what we can find out there.

[andyrules89]

if youre really so worried about money then why dont you protest agains recycling?

I am not worried about money, Im worried about the way it is used.

 

 

 

Yeah, its quite disturbing to see all that money pouring into developing something, and then have it fail due to technical problems. At the same time, you can't put a price on knowledge, and space exploration has brought us many new developments, not only in space, but also at home. There's nothing wrong with pouring the money into the research aspect, its just that the government isn't spending it wisely.

[deloriagod]

Well, another problem happening on Earth is overpopulation. Countries like China are extremely populated, and need to create laws to stop it. Sooner or later, we will run out of space on Earth. So one reason they send people to the moon and Mars, to see if we could live there. The answer is very likely no right now, but by getting information from those places, other scientists can come up with technology that could make it possible.

 

 

 

 

 

How can you enforce a law against having sex? Making a law against having sex would be a horrible waste of time. Besides, if people want kids it's their choice. If they can't afford the kids they want and they go ahead and conceive a baby anyways, then I think they should be forced to deal with that rather than be told they can't have sex because everyone around them has too many kids already.

[Bubsa]

To be honest mate, it's totally naive and impractical to think that if all that money was not used on the projects, it could help with 3rd world debt or something. They'd just find a new toy to play with.

 

 

 

So, why not space? It does give scientists, the greatest species of men, a lot of potential for discovery and breakthrough.

[Ragen]

Is NATO military based? If so I'd rather have them spending that money on designing and making spacecraft than weapons. America is a rich country, let them have their fun. The money could be better spent doing something like getting a decent free health system in America or giving them better schooling or increasing pensions. But I think to stop Space exploration would be killing the kitten and letting the cat get away (is that a saying?) as

 

The Department of defence alone got $440 Billion dollars

 

 

 

which is totally unnessecary. America is pretty poor in some places and that money would massively improve quality of life for those people living in ghettos.

 

If the money went over-seas then the aid it could bring to the people of Africa or the poorer asians is un-believable.

 

 

 

This is basically what Death_by_Pod said but I agreed with it so much, I thought I'd type it out in my own words. :)

[BlueLancer]

That just doesn't make sense. Not being able to know everything is not a reason not to learn things.

 

 

 

True, but it's very questionable to automatically assume "Look, if we spend this HUGE load of money on this new space shuttle to find out if there are numberless gold and other metal sites on Mars, we'll probably find what we're looking for".

 

 

 

I don't know your view 100%, but I'd much rather spend more money on solving problems on our own planet, and after the easiest and most obvious problems are solved (such as 'stupid' deaths of children to very easily curable diseases) continue with secondary expensive projects. When a human life depends on a medicine shot worth $0.40, I'd much rather spend at least a fraction of all those billions of dollars to give life to people rather than 'look for extraterrestrial one'

 

 

 

Somebody said that "America isn't obligated to do it". Well, I don't subscribe to primitive nation-thinking. That's just my view. Humans are humans and they deserve life no matter who it is that helps them.

 

 

 

 

 

Well, another problem happening on Earth is overpopulation. Countries like China are extremely populated, and need to create laws to stop it. Sooner or later, we will run out of space on Earth. So one reason they send people to the moon and Mars, to see if we could live there. The answer is very likely no right now, but by getting information from those places, other scientists can come up with technology that could make it possible.

 

 

 

 

 

How can you enforce a law against having sex? Making a law against having sex would be a horrible waste of time. Besides, if people want kids it's their choice. If they can't afford the kids they want and they go ahead and conceive a baby anyways, then I think they should be forced to deal with that rather than be told they can't have sex because everyone around them has too many kids already.

 

 

 

It can be enforced quite effectively; Have your local communist government make sure they spend lots of money on surprise-raids on every single village and town and you won't want to risk having the government take away your child.

 

 

 

But then again, tons and tons of people get away with it by bribery, and on the other hand, some chinese people (especially in the rural areas) would even kill their female child to make "space" for a male one for economical reasons. They think their male child could be financially more succesful and bring money to the family and help the farm with harvesting, etc. :wall: Sad world.

 

 

 

Making a law against having sex would be a horrible waste of time. Besides, if people want kids it's their choice.

 

 

 

In case you didn't know yet, the 1 child per family law has been in effect in the Republic of China for years now. While it sounds sad, it is an absolutely necessary step to at least partially prevent an 'explosion' in population numbers even though that has already happened.

 

 

 

In a few decades, Chinese citizens will very likely make up 1/3rd of the world's population. Now, already, there are over 1.3 billion chinese citizens (compare to USA: 300 million, entire Europe: 400 million, Japan: 220 million, entire African Peninsula: 500 million)

[apinagez]

We'll never know enough about everything, though.

 

 

 

You're right. Why should we bother trying to find out where other sentient life exists. Sorry but I don't subscribe to 'if we can't know everything why bother to try and learn anything' as philosophy.

 

 

 

That just doesn't make sense. Not being able to know everything is not a reason not to learn things.

 

 

 

I am fully favourable to science and research.

 

That thought has only worked as a trigger for my idea: we should invest in science because immediatist charity does nothing for the development of poor countries, it just creates dependence lassos. And even if it worked well, I doubt the NASA budged would be invested in feeding the poor.

[trapical]

NASA is a waste of goverment money? http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php ... Itemid=182

 

 

 

*walks away*