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Comment by paulvs | Hacker News Reader

One Apollo astronaut when criticised by a commentator that the NASA moon budget would be better spent on other humanitarian causes such as feeding the poor in Africa, his response was along the lines of:

The money spent annually on cosmetics in the USA dwarfs the amount spent on the NASA space program. (Can't find reference on the net.)

In 2015, the global cosmetics market was $61B USD [1], that's a roughly the cost of one thousand trips to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) with a 5,500 Kg payload, or a grand total of 5.5 mega tons to GTO.

We have the resources to become a spacefaring race (at least to the neighbouring planets in the solar system), we simply need to prioritise what's really important.

[1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/259217/global-make-up-mar...

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This letter [0] from a NASA administrator in reply to a nun may not be what you were referring to, but it is related (and worth reading):

In 1970, a Zambia-based nun named Sister Mary Jucunda wrote to Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, then-associate director of science at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, in response to his ongoing research into a piloted mission to Mars. Specifically, she asked how he could suggest spending billions of dollars on such a project at a time when so many children were starving on Earth.

Stuhlinger soon sent the following letter of explanation to Sister Jucunda, along with a copy of "Earthrise," the iconic photograph of Earth taken in 1968 by astronaut William Anders, from the Moon (also embedded in the transcript). His thoughtful reply was later published by NASA, and titled, "Why Explore Space?"

[0] http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html

Wow NASA had over 1% of the budget. Now it's much less - .48% if I recall.

Great letter by the way.

Why is a comparison to the cosmetics industry meaningful?

Any way, it boils down to the fact that Americans thinks NASA gets far more money than it actually does. In 2007 polling found that the on average Americans thought NASA received one fourth of the federal budget; the actual proportion was 0.58% http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/11/21/na.... This works out to a few bucks per year per person. It's amazing what NASA does with so little.

Because the word "cosmetic" is the quintessential indicator of something superficial.

Interestingly the word cosmetic, ultimately, descends from the Greek word κόσμος (kosmos) from which the word cosmos comes directly.

Good catch:

kosmetikos "skilled in adornment or arrangement" kosmos "order"

http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=cosmetic&allowed_in_fra...

I wish there was a non-profit that just ran public education campaigns on these kinds of things... general ignorance is the biggest enemy of programs like NASA. Most people don't have a firm understanding of where the government spends its money, the various ways money is collected, and the value of these services.

General ignorance is the biggest enemy of any advance in policy, period.

As far as non-profits for public education, NPR comes pretty close to that.

Worth noting: surveys of Americans finds they think NPRs budget is 5% of the US annual budget.

Do they get ANY money from the federal government? I don't think they do.

NPR's finances are pretty open: http://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances . They get about 5% of their income directly from federal, state, and local governments, and 13% from colleges and universities (which an accountant could probably tease apart to government spending and private spending. I'm not going to try). So yeah, they get a bit of government money, but it's not much of their budget, much less the US budget.

I was referring to things like education ads in mainstream media, to counter misinformation and promote general public awareness... people that tune in to NPR aren't really the problematic demographic.

The phrase "we simply need to prioritise what's really important" should indicate that the poster believes there are things that are objectively more important than others, that peoples current priorities do not match that list, and that cosmetics should be lower.

The general public doesn't know who Abraham Lincoln was or who the colonists fought the Revolutionary War against; I doubt that having a well informed electorate is realistic at the present time.

How about the cost of the F35 (~1.5 trillion projected) which is double the entire NASA budget from 1958-2011 (526 billion).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

now that just pisses me off. What has or will the F35 deliver to all of humanity vs what NASA has done in its lifetime? If we shifted that money to NASA and other Space eXporation private companies, who knows where we'd be now.

You simply do not understand what cosmetics is about. As Many others in sub-replies to this one. One could say you do not understand human nature, DNA or anthropology. Cosmetics is not about something "unnecessary" it is about increasing your chances with reproduction.

And now tell me what more important thing that reproduction could be encoded in our genes? Second to reproduction is feeling well. For whatever strange reasons our history shaped society, people today have to live in it and they, of course tend to try to maximizes their happiness.

Some People feel better when they get attention (again DNA and anthropology). Of course YOU want to go to space. And by you I mean all in this thread who despise cosmetics in favour of space travel, simply. Because humans are not simple we have deep contradictions embedded in our DNA and society forged traditions.

Yes I agree with you all very much we should go to space BUT to be able to do so we first need to find consensus on each individual happiness weighted against the demands for happiness from other people, of the whole world. Its as simple as that. And I don't have to tell you that concepts like nations do not necessarily help in achieving that.

We are moving up the ladder(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale), towards a global society. In that we can not ignore a single persons mischief as we do today.

I hope you see see that its not about "superficial" cosmetics, but about us as humans. And how to be happy, all around the world. We can and should do it but it will look very different to what the world looks today. And of course our anthropology is fighting us here hard again. We want the result of change but not change what is necessary to do that, that is to change ourselves (To acknowledge other people, be more peaceful and thoughtful about resources, etc..)

So again what do you think about cosmetics?

Cosmetics is a cause that justifies itself, an escalation of "arms" that encourages others to race to the bottom in cosmetics spending, a race in which the richest are the fittest. There's no intuition for us to entertain the idea that a world without cosmetics is a world with less happiness or biological fitness, but this world would probably never happen.

Space travel, and with it, scientific understanding, space mining, and perhaps colonization, is an abstract thought that goes beyond thinking of local maxima, and that's what makes it deep, as opposed to the cosmetics arms race that is myopic in what it maximizes. That's what makes it shallow.

People naturally have many values, and these values often come in conflict. How we resolve these conflicts can demonstrate a direction toward broad vision and aforethought -- or shallow local maxima.

Anyways, I don't believe that the underlying point of cosmetics argument is about cosmetics. I think it's about the activity of moral posturing, as opposed to a sincere moral commitment toward moral results.

Yes exactly my point(people having conflicts) but to resolve them we can't simply "stop" doing cosmethics, we have to be concious about why we use so much of that ( human nature + history) and then think of alternatives.

If you like we need ome kind of migration or negoating strategy.

The problem is people do not live in a vacuum , we live in a attention economy. And people go straight for what they where thaught with ( tradions and values from social environment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

Love (cosmetics) is at a lower level ( which means it has a higher priority for most people) then Self-actualization or Self-transcendence (space). Do not forget where we came from, thousands of years there were concepts like cosmetics. But space is alien to most people they can not touch it, they can not percieve or concieve it.

Thats the problem we should tackle IMO.

Some would argue that going to space has much more to do with human survival than our current reproduction problem, which is actually an overpopulation problem rather than an underpopulation one.

> which is actually an overpopulation problem rather than an underpopulation one.

Serious question: what overpopulation problem is the human race currently facing? We have a distribution/underdevelopment problem, but not an overpopulation one as we have enough resources for not just 7 billion people, but multiples of that.

>So again what do you think about cosmetics?

There would certainly be no less reproduction, if cosmetics are given up. Also no general health loss, probably even improvements, with no more side effects. (and no more apes tortured to death by trying to remove the side effects)

From my point of view, cosmetics is about lying to each other, how we really look ... so you could argue, that it would be even better for the best genes to be choosen, if the real informations are not hidden and falsified with makeup etc

You might see cosmetics as an atempt to maximize the result of ones own reproduction potential.

About lying to each other, another contradiction. Of course everyone wants honesty, as long as it doesn't hurt oneself.

Yes, of course it is meant to maximize the potential of the individual ... but that doesnt mean it is useful from a objective view, meaning is it useful to humanity as a whole.

(The whole discussion is a theoretical "wouldn't it be nice if" ...)

For example we value clean skin ... maybe because people with clean skin are probably less likely to get skin cancer ... but with cosmetics people are just hiding their not perfect skin ... and maybe even improve their chances of skin cancer with side effects. So from a idealistic point of view, I think it would be better to accept that most of us don't have perfect clean skin, so what? Where is the point in spending so much effort in hiding it?

I don't think you can easily explain the use of cosmetics with things as fundamental as genetics. Not that it would be impossible to be sex specific, but the huge differences in use of cosmetics between sexes and also between societies and times strongly hints at social instead of genetic reasons.

Cosmetics are heavily used by women long past their reproductive age

Funny that some Apollo astronauts weren't fans of privatization of Space Exploration (and in turn, presumably, SpaceX).

Here's one of my favorite Elon Musk interviews (2012 CBS 60 minutes) that has a reference to the topic (at 11:40): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmyT9y568Bc

> Funny that some Apollo astronauts weren't fans of privatization of Space Exploration (and in turn, presumably, SpaceX).

Probably more under the logic of "there should be public funding for space exploration" than "there should not be private funding for space exploration."

SpaceX fan btw. I think they have since rebounded, and Musk has met them :)

Buzz Aldrin was invited to the CRS-8 launch I believe.

According to Buzz's book, "Mission To Mars", he has done a complete 180 to support private enterprise(I was not aware of his opposition to private exploration). He even said it is essential, IIRC.

They’re more opposed to Boeing and Lockheed privatizing Space Exploration than to SpaceX

SpaceX acts as if it was publicly funded, practically.

> (at 11:40): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmyT9y568Bc

Direct link to 11:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmyT9y568Bc#t=11m40s

Right, but cosmetics aren't paid for with tax payer money. Should probably spend less on the military if we want to expand NASA.

There's no reason (anymore) that space travel should only be funded with tax money.

There's also no reason it should be funded with so little tax money.

Hehe... surprised no one has pointed out your math error ;). 5500Kg*1000 is 5.5 Million Kilos, 5500 Tonnes not 5.5 mega tonnes.

Kilotonnes surely?

Why cosmetics? Why not pick on smoking, drinking, or even religion? Anyone can pick some thing they don't do/like and claim those wasted resources could be better spent on their dreams. Frankly, I'm betting that a great many people would rather have makeup than a men on Mars. Every time someone buys a fashion mag instead of mailing cash to NASA they make that choice.

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