Hacker News Reader

Well yeah, NASA is a research agency and SpaceX is a company trying to commercialize space technology. That's like saying the Human Genome Project cost billions of dollars but you can get your genome sequenced for $99 from 23andMe, so obviously the Human Genome Project was a waste of money.

View on HN

You have no clue what you are talking about.

Human Genome project is an example of complete DNA sequencing while 23andMe only tests for specific variations at specific loci. 23andMe and similar companies use commercially available solutions like DNA microarrays [1] with probes preprogrammed [2] for specific target variations and they cannot "read" arbitrary DNAs.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_microarray

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybridization_probe

NASA sent men to the moon, robots to Mars, and space stations into orbit. SpaceX sends unmanned rockets to low earth orbit. So there you go.

For what it's worth, whole genome sequencing is also commercially available for much less than the Human Genome Project cost.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com