Hacker News Reader

Comment by Paul_S | Hacker News Reader

I will accept halving of my salary if we can start making an effort towards Mars colonisation. But we all know that any extra money would be spent on building vanity structures here or earth and other forms of culture I don't appreciate.

We can send a robot mission to Mars or build another Olympic(tm)(r) stadium. I wish I was joking.

View on HN

You would only need to accept a 0.25% salary decrease. NASA's budget is tiny for all the impact it has.

To fund the great achievements of the 1960's space race, NASA's budget was only twice as much as it is today. Bringing it back up would take a whopping... 0.5% more of the federal government budget.

That 0.5% also accounts for one third of the total spending on academic scientific research in the United States.

Also considering that federal government spending is about half of the total government spending in the US, your total taxes would only need to be raised by about 0.25%.

Pretty sad when you think about it.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

On that note, how come no government has entertained the idea of opening up tax money budget allocation, e.g. by letting citizens vote on where they want their money used? I understand that the average citizen has little or no idea of how to run a country, but still, surely decisions like whether to build a stadium or send people to Mars could be debated.

I recall at least one short story with that. (Eugene by Greg Egan) The main character previously worked in Social Security, who had to lay off everyone due to no one giving them money.

Anyway, you can directly donate to NASA. They just aren't allowed to promote it or somesuch.

http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/displayDir.cfm?Internal_ID=N_PD_...

Has anyone done this before? Looking at this page it doesn't really list where to mail a check to or who to make that check out to.

http://www.penny4nasa.org/donate/ allows you to donate even through dogecoin.

None of that money goes to NASA.

Oops, you are absolutely right, I'm sorry. Serves me right for not even reading the faq.

> how come no government has entertained the idea of opening up tax money budget allocation, e.g. by letting citizens vote on where they want their money used?

I'd wager that most people would vote to allocate the money to themselves, one way or another. Fixing potholes, hiring more police and firemen.

How many people would choose to fund researching things that might not pay off in their lifetime?

Or welfare, tax cuts, rebates, free everything (public transport, tolls, etc). Democracy is great, but it falls down when everyone is selfish.

edit: thinking about it now, basically populist politics.

Yea, there's no point in accepting a salary cut. There's enough money, but different priorities. Like funding useless wars.

Then why aren't you donating to SpaceX?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com