Show of Hands

Why should government feed anyone? No one feeds me.

Government shouldn't have to feed anyone, but we live in capitalism. Liberals like to propose welfare programs as a quick fix to poverty. Of course it won't work, but Republicans prefer to fund space exploration and walls over poor people.

One of the few times I disagree with you doctor. Welfare programs are designed to get people stable and back to work with training and job readiness. If we placed as much emphasis on the nit picking rich as we do the poor this nation would be better for it.

Maybe you missed the part where I'm a communist?

I did

But somehow you're suggesting I'm not criticizing the rich enough?

The royal we

Well.....first comes exploration, then comes resources....it there are any.

For what?

A different place to put our plastic...😁

#NotMyPlastic

👆🏼 #GetOffMyKelpFarm

#FreeTheBathyspheres

#DeepSeaWindowCleaningServiceForFree 😃

“For what?”

We need to find that pink alien city in The Abyss

OMG... I nearly spit out my coffee with that one! 🤣

😂

Manned missions are consistently much more expensive, especially in the American culture (low tolerance for loss of our ‘heroes’). Here’s the rub: most missions can be fully achieved by unmanned systems at a significantly lower cost. So you first have to answer the question, why do we NEED the people in space?...

...we’ve done it for National pride and we may do it again for the same reason, but there are no direct Defense or Intelligence purposes for these efforts. For science, the only scientific value of humans in space is to study humans in space. There could be collateral benefits of a big space effort in terms of changing the country’s devaluation on science and engineering careers, but with increasing debt we simply cannot afford a blank check Government-funded “moonshot” mission to Mars. It’s time to let the private sector take their shot at human space activities.

The end goal of space exploration is space colonization. I never saw it as a national pride kind of thing. Though I suppose that is a benefit.

Right now, the only two countries that can get people into space are China and Russia. I’d say our current SLS/Orion development is leaning more towards National pride at the moment. However, the private enterprise 😉 efforts are much more tuned into what you’re saying. Many are focused on starting with space tourism, but SpaceX has very ambitious goals to colonize Mars. ...we’ll see how well that turns out.

Nonsense. You are already a space case and you haven’t even been in outer space…that I’m aware of.

There's a lot about me that you don't know 😎

Nasa is SpaceX's biggest customer. They aren't competitors, they are business partners.

Like what?

www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?id=11358

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

The Soviet Union put the first satellite into space. If the United States had not responded, what would have happened? I, for one, would not want to know what the world would be like with Russia and China using satellites and the United States depending on them.

www.popsci.com/nasa-hires-satellite-repair-robot

I’ll admit I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but I think civilization would be just fine without memory foam mattresses, scratch resistant glasses, etc. Sure, they’re nice things to have, but the world would go on, just as it did before we had them.

From a national defense standpoint, I agree I don’t want soviet and Chinese satellites out there doing sketch crap against the US.

I’d argue the Mars missions are useless and a waste of money. There was a Netflix called 7 Days Out I believe, where we shot a rocket at Saturn ...also I think very useless and a poor steward of money. We have problems to fix here on earth which those funds could easily help. Finding bacteria on Mars has no benefit to earthlings

Mars is thought to have been a habitable planet at one point so going there and trying to figure out why it isn’t anymore could help us save earth from the same fate. Also space exploration is how we found out about the runaway green house effect. Venus is closer to the sun than earth by only a little bit in space terms but it can melt lead on its surface which it shouldn’t be able to but it can because it’s atmosphere has high amounts of methane, carbon dioxide and other green house gases which turns the planet into an oven. Also nasa is less than .5% of the budget and the knockoff things that come from nasa have paid for it over the years so I much rather give nasa money than buying our 12 aircraft carrier when the rest of the world only has like 10 combined.

I’m not a big proponent of travel to Mars either. I wasn’t very favorable toward space research until satellites became important to our way of life and defense and I learned about medical advances and other important innovations that came directly from space research.

And again, I’m agreeing with you guys on most of this, just getting your opinions.

The NASA budget is incredibly small, and use to be much higher in years past.

I think a lot of what they do is indeed very useful for advancing the scientific community. However some of it is stupid. If we colonize Mars, guess what? We’re taking the same problems with us there.

Shooting a rocket to Saturn on a 20 year mission and crashing it into the planet has literally zero benefit to anyone.

It’ll be interesting to see NASAs role shift with the rapid growth in the private sector.

That Saturn thing wasn’t sent to be crashed into it. It was to study the planet and when it’s mission was over they sent it crashing into Saturn because they didn’t want to risk contaminating Saturns moons that they think have life on them because of tidal forces keeping them warm and the methane lakes that might have methane based life. It wasn’t just sent to be crashed.

I know, I watched the Netflix doc on it. Very interesting, but couldn’t for the life of me understand why they did it other than to say they did it. If you spent 20 years on a VERY expensive project, and all you could say is we got a pixilated pic of Saturn’s moon, could you honestly say that was time and money well spent?

I also think the same thing about people who do CrossFit. I just think, “sheesh that is a LOT of work, and you don’t even play a sport.” Lots of wasted effort!

Well they were also studying the atmosphere and everything about the planet and the mission only cost about 3 billion over a 33 year mission 20 years to get there and 13 years for the mission. So like 97 million a year over its whole life. And the thing is for science you can’t really look at the cost and saying is it worth it because we don’t know if it’ll be worth it or not. Like Einstein’s theory of relativity no one knew what paying for that research would get them in the long run but it turns out it was worth every penny and then some. For space travel doing all the mission we’re currently doing is helping in some way of us being more experienced at space travel which will allow us to eventually be able to harness all the resources in our solar system which is estimated in the hundreds of trillions of dollars in materials alone. So we can’t really look at the cost and be like is it worth it because we don’t really know until after it’s done and in many ways it usually is worth it

That’s all valid and I agree with your point on Einstein. That’s actually well put.

So what do you guys want to talk about now?

Space bears

These private companies are even better at finding ways to get tax payer money. Almost all money comes from tax payers.

Right, not like there’s space on other planets for habitation, precious metals to be mined on asteroids, a limitless supply of gas or solar energy from planets or the sun respectively, or helium 3, an essential ingredient for fusion energy, on the moon.

There’s nothing out there. Let’s go back to firebombing villages in Afghanistan.

Finally someone gets it, thank you for sharing my exact thoughts

Phew, I thought we were about to argue about this! I’m glad we can agree.

You cannot move to another planet until you find a better engine to get the ship there. Right now the fastest ship will take 500,000 years to get there.

Monte. Yes, then we can be squatters there and dooky that and on and on😬

Even going the speed of light, the nearest star systems are 4.25 and 11.25 light years away. I don’t think we were meant to leave our solar system.

Warrior, you know you could be making that up and who's going to call you on it.