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Post by Moose on Jan 16, 2015 1:51:09 GMT
In a world where many people do not have access to clean drinking water or adequate nutrition, is spending billions on exploring the solar system a waste of money? Discuss.
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Post by jayme on Jan 16, 2015 3:20:27 GMT
No. A lot of the things that are invented by the space program are life-saving inventions, like the thingy that destroys brain tumors with lasers, for example. There are prolly lots of gadgets invented by the space program that make life easier, like microwave ovens. They do loads of experiments in the ISS to learn what they can to make life better down here, and maybe someday they will figure out up there, cheaper ways to clean water and feed people down here.
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Post by Miisa on Jan 16, 2015 6:34:09 GMT
Besides the long-term and tangential benefits of this, I find the notion of money being "wasted" when talking at a global or even government level a little silly. Is it being burnt as rocket fuel? Or is it going to pay scientists, rocket part manufacturers, cleaners, drivers, programmers who are working for the space program and who then sink the money back into the economy by doing frivolous things like buying food and paying off mortgages?
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Post by tangent on Jan 16, 2015 7:44:45 GMT
The majority of space launches these days are for commercial reasons, like weather satellites, global positioning systems (GPS), Sky TV and communications. (News reports, for example from Syria, often depend on satellite communications.) There are, on average, 34 commercial space launches each year, all of which are intended to make the world a better place but we don't usually hear about them because they are routine. We hear about India's mission to Mars but by far the largest part of India's space programme is spent on improving the economy, for example launching weather satellites that monitor the weather over the north of the country.
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Post by juju on Jan 16, 2015 8:30:48 GMT
There's plenty of money around, it's just not going to the right places. I think the space programs are one of the right places, but we need to deal with the inequality as a priority. It doesn't have to be an either/or, more of a both/and.
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Yuki
Senior members
Posts: 632
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Post by Yuki on Jan 16, 2015 8:37:22 GMT
If you think short term benefit, the space program is a good thing. It creates jobs, animates industries (which could have other products relevant to our daily lives), and inspires people, kids and adults alike. Everyday Things You Didn't Know Were Invented By NASASpace exploration is very challenging and very exciting at the same time. You get the benefit of a strongly motivated team pulling off very difficult missions, thus accumulating an experience and reaching a level of self-confidence that would be very useful elsewhere (if you can land a rover on Mars, you can do almost anything else). I don't think you would get the same thing if you gathered teams of scientists and engineers, to solve the problems of famine and water shortage in Africa. They'd certainly feel they're doing something noble, but they wouldn't feel the same excitement as they'd get from doing space exploration. It's a sad thing, but that's how human psychology works. That being said: 1/ research on space could help in that department. NASA is planning to make water and oxygen on the Moon and Mars by 2020. 2/ There are people working on our problems on Earth as well. 3/ NASA research is done with these problems in mind. It's NASA that warned us last year about the critical level of water reserves in the world. Consider how we could have obtained such data if we had no satellites. If you think long term benefit, the space program is an absolute necessity. The survival of our species depends on us eventually leaving this planet to live elsewhere in space. This is a diabolically hard endeavor, and the first steps will have to start now if we wish to create the first permanent colony on another planet or moon by 2050 to 2100 (Sir Martin Rees believes our civilization has 50% of collapsing in this century). Also, an asteroid large enough to make conditions on Earth unlivable could come at any moment. How would we detect its approach beforehand and deflect it if we have no space program? Soon, many of our minerals crucial for our industries will start running out. But those minerals are abundant on asteroids and throughout the solar system. How can we mine them without a space program? And if we want to think budget, let's consider this: the Rosetta mission which landed a probe on a comet for the first time in human history, costed less than the movie Gravity, a movie about space exploration! How about we cut half the movie industry to fund both space research and the endeavors to solve water shortage, famine, poverty, AIDS epidemic in some African countries, etc? Or how about we cut the exorbitant military budget in many countries (680 billion dollars in the US in 2011)? More comparisons with the budget of the Rosetta mission.
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Post by raspberrybullets on Jan 16, 2015 9:17:43 GMT
What Miisa and Greg said. And they should spend even more moeny on space exploration!
And also, on the topic of space exploration, I highly recommend the Chris Hadfield book "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth". Brilliant!
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Post by Moose on Jan 16, 2015 20:28:04 GMT
Yeah great replies all
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Post by ProdigalAlan on Jan 16, 2015 22:04:44 GMT
They are neither a waste of time or money. As a species we must strive to increase our body of knowledge, when we stop that we atrophy and decline. What I would argue is that the majority of money spent on aid programmes since the 1950s ( i.e. the start of the space missions ) has been wasted. Most of the aid has been spent on under researched, emotional knee jerk reactions that have been focused on immediate and often inappropriate western solutions without researching long term local knowledge based answers. All to often it has been seen that first world solutions are inappropriate to third world problems and perpetuate them rather than solve them.
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Post by Shake on Apr 5, 2015 23:20:02 GMT
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