IMO, "need" is a strong word here and if I thought that this is something we needed to do I would re-examine my priorities. We need to feed and house people, we need to stop the war machine, we need to slow consumerism to slow climate change.
Should we instead force the scientists working on this to abandon space research to "fix the ills of the world" so they do "something useful" instead?
I honestly don't know what people who keep complaining about scientific research, especially space exploration, want. It is not those billions spent to send a probe to Europa the cause or the solution to the world's problems. Hint: it is not money the cause nor the solution to the world's problems, nor are drive-by social media activists complaining about it.
In comparison, many other branches of science work on much leaner budgets, and sending stuff to space actually does look very wasteful from a "$ per paper" perspective. If you disregard the weapons development value, there is actually very little reason to do these big-money experiments that could instead support the research of hundreds or thousands of more frugal science experiments.
At the same time, there are lots of ways to do space research more cheaply, like launching small satellites. Most of the people who don't like this stuff are against the billion-dollar single missions rather than against astrophysics or against the concept of sending things to space. Many of them also are against the FCC project at CERN, for example.
That's ridiculous, though. But it's the logical extreme of the defeatist argument that there's no way to get more money for these things.
It's obvious that we can tax them a bit, but if we tax them too much they use their power to stop it. That power manifests in many ways. It can be to give money to right wing politicians, or it can be to move to lower-tax regimes. But anyway it's clear that there is not an unlimited pot of rich/corporate tax money out there ready for the picking without resistance.
This is objectively not true. Resource usage (money or other resources) is zero sum, and every dime spent on science is money that cannot be used for something else. I'm not opposed to spending money on science, but it doesn't do any good to make false claims like this.
Sure thing. We don't have to do them in a specific order, there are enough resources to tackle them all at the same time. A $5 billion project is small enough that it won't affect others, but at least someone is doing something about one of those projects.
> A $5 billion project is small enough that it won't affect others,
$5 billion would go a long way to providing shelter, water, fire, and food for the homeless in the United States.
Priorities.
It's no longer enough to work hard to get into heaven, you need to work hard on something useful for humanity (decided arbitrarily by whomever) to reach eternal life.
Which is frankly hilarious coming from someone who's supposedly "following the Dao".
I agree this is a false dichotomy, but also pretty sure dumping money into building houses and hiring every unemployed person at a socially inclusive minimum wage would eliminate both housing and unemployment.
But I also think we have enough resources to both conduct space exploration, house and feed everyone. We can eliminate involuntary unemployment with a couple of keystrokes.
The sum total of all of this would be to stimulate the type of innovation required to transition to a zero carbon emissions economy.
It’s one of those things where the details of the implementation are critical. In the US specifically, large amounts of money have already been put towards these problems to little effect.
To be clear, I staunchly support spending money on these things; clearly, they’re dire needs that should be addressed, but if something isn’t done to increase effectiveness and hold those responsible for the spending accountable, increasing spending is unlikely to move the needle.
Additionally, even if the goal were to reallocate funds, space programs aren’t really the best place to look. The pile of cash that would be yielded by “just” cutting fat in the US military apparatus would likely eclipse that of shutting down NASA altogether.
No. That $5B paid lots of people directly in their salaries, which then got spent in their local economies which then in turn went to construction workers building houses for those employees, the grocers selling the food those people eat, etc. It also went to go buy lots of actual raw materials, which once again employed lots of people and spurred those industries and all the secondary and tertiary spending that happens and what not.
So in a way, that government spending on science is investing in those towns. And ultimately does lead towards more people being able to afford a home, put groceries on the table, etc.
Growing up surrounded by NASA in Clear Lake it was quite obvious to me how important government spending was to the local economy, and how negatively it would affect people if the government decided it wouldn't be worth it to fund it anymore.
How many blue-collar construction workers will do better when NASA gets funding to upgrade their 1960's facilities? Won't it help them afford housing? Won't it help ensure their kids don't go hungry?
Creating a dependent local economy or industry that consumes more than it produces is not an investment, it is welfare.
While government can make investments, not all spending is an investment any more than all the purchases I make are investments.
> An investment is something that provides positive return over time
That's one definition, implying it will just continue to give a return. Like dividends. Another would be "an act of devoting time, effort, or energy to a particular undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result." A definition on Wikipedia is "commitment of resources to achieve later benefits". All the spending is investing in knowledge of space, material science, biology, and more, hopefully for a worthwhile result.
One could say, "a student invested a lot of time studying for their sixth-grade math exam". Very much an acceptable statement to make, I don't think most would argue it is improper English. Is that strongly tied to positive productivity and economic exports? Did passing that test directly affect the GDP of the country?
Either way, the people I'm replying to weren't trying to debate the semantic differences between "investing" and "spending", and that wasn't really my main point. I do agree there are differences in this, but that can often be a matter of opinion and perspective.
I would just add the following thoughts. When discussing investment in terms of money, and especially government spending, the connotation is typically positive economic returns.
Similarly, if we are being pedantic, a bad investment is still an investment, as in the case where the returns are less than the cost. I would categorize much of this spending as a bad investment, one that leaves the country worse off in the long run.
I think the word is largely without meaning when used with the subjective definitions outside the economic context. It simply reduces it to "I like this thing". Buying beer is now an investment, because it will have some later "benefits", and I think getting hammered on a Tuesday night is "worthwhile" because I like doing it.
So, the only reason why a city should build a park or a library should solely based on positive economic returns. We should price out how much actual dollar value return the library directly gives to the town this quarter or the playground on the park. How much did adding that swing set really increase property values? I guess we shouldn't have done it. Otherwise, it is purely just wasteful spending.
I would leave you with the following thought. Not everything needs to have an easily measurable economic/financial benefit to be a good thing. Having such a myopic view isn't a positive thing in my opinion. I agree there's still such a thing as waste even in (especially in?) the space programs of the last few decades, but acting like funding space programs in general is a waste because it didn't generate positive economic returns in an easily measurable fashion to be quite a shortsighted viewpoint.
And as mentioned, it's not like the money evaporated. It moved. That money spent is in the communities. It's in the homes there. Its built businesses. Its grown entire cities. People went to college because of that spending. People planted crops because of that spending. That spending kept the velocity of money up instead of having it stagnate under someone's mattress.
I dont think I agree with the velocity of money argument. It wouldnt be stagnating under some mattress. However, that is a much bigger topic that I dont think Im up for today
It is usually people refusing to do any work and pay the cost, but telling others that they should do these things.
Most topics have no lack of advocating, and a large lack of people willing to take action.
In short, I think most advocates are hypocrites trying to exploit others.
These things don't seem to depend on each other. And different people want to do different things in this world. I don't think that the people who want to help shelter homeless people would be deterred by other people wanting to send a space probe, or vice-versa.
I picked housing from the problems you mentioned just because it was the first one. I think this argument would still apply for the others. The reasons we're having those problems have nothing to do with how many probes we send to space.
But sure, we also need to tax the ultra-rich more, so that we can have money for all the things that need to be done. Tax evasion is a problem, not NASA's spending.
So basically you are proposing to forcedly seize money from 0,01% of the population to fulfill your view of a multi planetary future for human kind. I don’t see that very ethical or appropriate to be honest.
I’m all in for space exploration, but should be done in a way that respects individuals and their decisions on how to live their life and not by taxing them to fulfill the wishes of a few. That’s why space exploration needs to be a private endeavor or at least financed publicly but only via optional taxing.
Explore space together or in competition, instead of war.
And climate change is a concern for everyone.
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice/...
We need to prioritize. Have you ever tried to survive in the wilderness? Shelter, water, fire, and food. Priorities. You would not spend your time trying to find out if there is a form of life 20 feet below you.
Right now on earth there are plenty of people who do not have these basics.
Often enough. Quite succesful, even though I brought most basic supplies with me. So I know about basic needs.
"Right now on earth there are plenty of people who do not have these basics."
And there is a possibility, that this always will be the case. And I would not wait to find out and stop with all general progress till then.
My compassion is with humanity as its whole, not with every single human. I fear, I have not limitless compassion and I don't see, how we can stop all wars just like that(the main reason for famine today - can you stop the Gaza war for instance?), but I see how little effort can be spend to finance such an interesting mission.
Also, space exploration is a tool to bring humanity together.
No, they both exist. Motivation by your legislator is what doesn't exist. There's a reason some departments get almost everything they ask for and others get almost nothing: they know how to grease the political machine. That doesn't mean we should fight over scraps for science and social programs, it means you need to acknowledge that there's a game that needs playing. And yeah, it feels real bad that there are lives at stake playing that game, but that's the fault of capitalism, not science.
"As of late 2022, according to Snopes, 735 billionaires collectively possessed more wealth than the bottom half of U.S. households ($4.5 trillion and $4.1 trillion respectively). The top 1% held a total of $43.45 trillion."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
The US has the worst infant mortality, and maternal mortality rates, of any first world nation.[2]
Just think of it: with the highest spend of GDP per citizen, and getting so much less you're the butt of every other country's jokes about healthcare systems.
"Lack of money" has so little to do with the conditions in the US, it's essentially negligence to think it's the problem. The US doesn't want to fix any of the problems you list: it easily could, with the resources it has today.
[1] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...
[2] https://www.ajmc.com/view/us-has-highest-infant-maternal-mor...
But we should aim high, higher than we think our potential is, to actually get somewhere.