Hacker News Reader

Comment by john_b | Hacker News Reader

Agreed, unfortunately meaningful projects such as this are not a high priority for the US electorate (and thus the US Congress) [1]. My hope is that growing interest by college students in STEM subjects [2] will ultimately lead to an increased understanding of the importance of these projects in the long term.

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

[2] https://www.stemconnector.org/sites/default/files/store/STEM...

View on HN

NASA is so prestigious that they basically can get away with paying everyone very little. They aren't stuck with bottom of the barrel people even though they pay them bottom of the barrel wages.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but I don't think more funding would really change much (other than allow them to fund more projects, but I'd argue that there are some serious diminishing returns at this point)

One could always ask for support saying a given experiment could prove the, say, biblical flood or somethimg equally silly. If someone believes that all animals on Earth descend from the living cargo of a wooden ship, it should be possible to convince them of anything.

Hacking a right-wing nutty congresscritter is an intriguing concept.

And, I guess, Bill Maher is a right-wing nutty? He believes Mars and Moon missions would be a great waste of money.

The Bible isn't holding us back....it's our lack of imagination and lazy jokes and the conflation of capital and fiat currency.

... or both you and the GP are partially right and _both_ are holding us back. :/

If we took religion away from history, would we have science?

> He believes Mars and Moon missions would be a great waste of money.

If they fail to inspire people to continue exploring, yes. I would prefer Moon missions because they'd be cheaper and, as far as inspiration goes, they'd achieve the same results. How many brilliant people have chosen to dedicate their talents to building web technologies because space is no longer cool?

Also, being able to build self sustaining off world colonies may prove handy if we end up unable to stop climate change...

I think if something is inspirational, it must be realizable; thus, unless we're talking about mining the moon and requiring human's for labor, we're going to miss the point.

Climate change on Earth is a constant, and if time is x, human existince is a speed bump.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com