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Comment by yellowapple | Hacker News Reader

Slash it in half, give the slashed half to NASA.

Then we can have ourselves a Pluto colony.

Meanwhile people are still dying for lack of access to healthcare, infrastructure is failing, education is remaining poor...

I agree with the slash the defense budget part, but NASA doesn't need 300B/y (and would have a hard time spending it even). They need ~30B/y (i.e. double their existing outlay) to do SLS and continue existing operations, and it needs to be in a lockbox of some kind such that future political swings require a huge amount of horsepower to disrupt it (like a congressional super majority vote).

Yes, they just need steady funding and a process that ensures that the money is spent on worthwhile stuff. After plans have been vetted then the politicians can come in and distribute the money to their districts.

Money spent on NASA has provided significant breakthroughs in science that includes the internet, MRIs, ear thermometers, automatic insulin pumps, implantable heart defibrillators, fiber optics, light emitting diodes for brain cancer surgery, programmable cataracts, long distance telescopes, solar energy, artificial limbs, memory foam, shoe insoles, smoke detectors, water filters, enriched food, and tons of software.

Smoke alarms alone have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

"NASA did not invent the smoke detector. NASA's connection to the modern smoke detector is that it made one with adjustable sensitivity as part of the Skylab project. The device was made commercially available by Honeywell. The consumer could use it to avoid "nuisance" alarms while cooking. Like the quartz clock, this device is no longer available. "

https://www.nasa.gov/offices/ipp/home/mythbuster/myth_barcod...

edit: actually pretty much none of the things you listed were invented by NASA, several predate its existence.

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