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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

The point is that if you can convince people to demand a budget cuts for the military, they will almost surely demand to allocate the funds to more pressing needs than space exploration. Most people would sooner want that money spend on things that could improve their lives in a tangible and immediate way than spend it on something that does not benefit them directly in any way.

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Sure, it doesn't need to be all or nothing.

The point is to grab perspective about how achievable these goals are, using money that's being wasted in such large supply right now on tools to kill people.

If we found strong evidence of life existing on another exoplanet (due to finding oxygen in the emission spectrum of an exoplanet's atmosphere), it would be a game changer. A story of the year, and influence the outcome of the rest of our century.

It would compel, very likely spending on space probes and exploration to go way back up to levels seen in the 1960's or even higher. That was a time when we had both robust spending on space exploration and social programs...

I guess we need to discover life on another planet, to convince the military to start spending its budget on space related technology.

Since money is what motivates the military-industrial complex, we only need to decide that all future telescopes will be built by armaments manufacturers, because after all the aliens could be planning a preemptive strike. Then all sorts of senators, lobbyists, etc. will be trying constantly to increase telescope spending.

What you're describing is actually a brilliant approach for increasing NASA budgets. Simply put, make astronomy a matter of national security. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitization_(international_...

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