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Comment by jessriedel | Hacker News Reader

I was glad to hear that Juno has a nice visible-light camera even though the it's not useful to the scientific mission. I'd prefer if 5-10% of equipment cost for spacecraft was always spent on popular-level pictures/video/sound. Studying details of the magnetic field of Jupiter is a good excuse to send a probe, and I'm glad there are a handful of scientists who devote their life to understanding it deeply, but we should acknowledge that those details will not provide benefit to 99% of the folks paying for it. (These missions can't be justified by the rearch; much more valuable science can be done on Earth for less money.)

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I think it's important to realize that the budget is not 1:1 per person from taxes to spending. If hypothetically 50% of the population wants more drug research, 10% wants pure science, and 40% military R&D then using that breakdown for spending works. The real limitation is total spending and thus tax levels not how cash flows.

And as a reality check, Juno's total budget is on the order of $10^9 over six years. So roughly $200 million per year, or about one percent of Nasa's yearly budget, which itself is a bit over one percent of the US federal discretionary budget (about a 1/300th of the total budget).

Or to compare with something concrete, that's enough money to buy about six KC-46 tanker aircraft for the Air Force, or about half the cost of the B-2 that was destroyed by faulty maintenance in Guam eight years ago.

OK, but I don't really think that conflicts with anything in my comment? For any level of NASA spending, I suggest 5-10% for popular-level sound/video/etc. (If that would cause you to want 5-10% for NASA funding to keep total science spending constant, fine.) Whether 1% or 100% of the population supports NASA research, it's still true that 99% of supporters cannot understand the cutting-edge science, and will have negligible material benefit.

If you accept pure science as worthy of some % of the budget on it's own then it comes down to an efficiency argument. Creating some false color photos from various sensors is very cheap, adding yet another camera when we go to Jupiter regularly becomes kind of pointless.

PS: I for example think sending up astronauts is a pointless waste of resources better spent on other things which is a huge chunk of NASA's budget. I also support pure science even if I don't understand it. In wider context I think SS and the DoD should be significantly cut. Sure, I am a tiny minority but if I think 50% of the federal budget should go to pure science and I am happy to cut other programs that's part of the balancing act and well this ends up as ~1/30,000th the budget. Further, they did waste money sending a camera.

I do accept that pure science is worthy a percentage of the budget, but NASA science is particularly inefficient. That is, at the current amount of money that NASA spends, we would get more science for less money if we did more science on Earth.

Some of this is diminishing returns and NASA takes a small chunk of science funding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_policy_of_the_United_S... But, overall I agree and suspect NASA's budget has more to do with Science Fiction than utility.

I'd like to think the scientists appreciate seeing the photos as well. I like to imagine they're human beings that appreciate beauty and don't just sit there jacking off to spreadsheets all day. I really hope they don't roll their eyes when they're told a visible light camera will be included, saying "there goes stupid middle America again, wanting to actually see the planets".

Agreed, except to say that mathematical and scientific beauty are at least as important as aesthetic beauty. That doesn't diminish the value of aesthetic beauty, it just makes it sad that more people can't easily appreciate mathematical and scientific beauty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSZNsIFID28

There exists spreadsheets whose contents evoke a beauty that rivals The Met!

The visible light camera was intentionally not included in the original proposal for this mission. It was added later for PR purposes [0].

[0] http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Juno_Gets_A_Little_Bigger_...

Nice pictures are definitely important for NASA's public image and well worth the investment. Imagine the moon landing without pictures or recently Cassini without its fantastic Saturn pictures. Nobody would care for NASA.

In theory I know that a lot of other measurements are much more important than pictures but in the end they are what makes me excited about those missions.

I don't want picture because I think they are important for NASA's public image, I want pictures because they are awesome. If people took the idea seriously that NASA's primary purpose is science, then it would be hard to avoid the conclusion that space science has very low payoff for the cost compared to other forms of science.

Would anyone give up having sent humans to the moon since it would have been cheaper to just send robots?

Can't agree with you more there. If the public is going to pay for research like this it would be nice if they get something in return (even if it is only basic eye candy).

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