Mars exploration and govt. spending.

[Perd Hapley]

I didn't want to sour the Mars rover thread with this, but isn't there a disconnect between politicians blaming each other for deficit spending, and promising us fiscal responsibility; and sending million-dollar tech to Mars? In a sane world, wouldn't they at least wait until spending is not such a sensitive issue?

[longeyes]

If they do that, they might as wait for anti-gravity interstellar drive or the wormhole express...

Fiscal responsibility is still an issue, but the real issue, it seems to me, is the nobility of the investments we choose to make with limited fiscal resources.  There are the compassionators and there are the strivers.  This goes to the heart of our vision for America.  Maybe, God forbid, we have to cut back on social welfare a smidgen so we can reach for the stars?

[AJ Dual]

http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/fy2010_spending_by_category.jpg

Takes awhile to find NASA in there...

It would be great if private enterprise was doing this instead. However the whole "I'd like to buy the World a Coke/Kum-by-yah" U.N. space treaty that forbids ownership of anything off of Earth's surface is kind of a hindrance.

If we withdraw from that, private space exploration/exploitation would pick up it's pace exponentially.

[Perd Hapley]

 Maybe, God forbid, we have to cut back on social welfare a smidgen...

You monster. 

[TommyGunn]

I didn't want to sour the Mars rover thread with this, but isn't there a disconnect between politicians blaming each other for deficit spending, and promising us fiscal responsibility; and sending million-dollar tech to Mars? In a sane world, wouldn't they at least wait until spending is not such a sensitive issue?

I was a young kid when the Apollo Program was launched to get us to the moon.  I often saw or read people wringing their wrists over similar arguments.  Not financial, per se, but human problems in general.  It was a troubled time....war in Vietnam, the Cold War, Poverty, etc, etc, etc.  People argued we shouldn't spend millions of dollars on going to the moon until we solved earth's problems.
Well, OK, that sounds good.  I mean, what kind of meanie doesn't want to "solve" problems like war and poverty and such?
The problem is, when I look out at the world of the early 21st century I see the the same world I saw as the Apollo Program was underway; a world full of poverty, a world at war, troubled by corrupt politicians at the very least and being slaughtered by vicious tyrants at the very worst.
It ain't gonna go away folks.  The only difference is we have more high tech ways of killing and communications now.
Vacuum tubes aren't being phased out by transistors ~~ everything has morphed into silicon chips.
You wanna wait until all our fiscal problems are over?  That'll be when we've collapsed because we can't borrow any more money and our GDP is a small sliver of what our national debt is.
But no one then will care about space flight.
And Captain Kirk will grow up on that farm in Iowa and cut the wheat with hand-held scythes.  Or maybe ... if he's lucky ....he'll have a horse or donkey to help......
And NASA is like # 878687th on the list of govt. agencies to fund anyway ......

[Perd Hapley]

http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/fy2010_spending_by_category.jpg

Takes awhile to find NASA in there...

It would be great if private enterprise was doing this instead. However the whole "I'd like to buy the World a Coke/Kum-by-yah" U.N. space treaty that forbids ownership of anything off of Earth's surface is kind of a hindrance.

If we withdraw from that, private space exploration/exploitation would pick up it's pace exponentially.

I'm not arguing about whether government should explore space. I'm saying, wouldn't it make sense to suspend those kinds of programs until we address our spending problem, or at least until the voters are less worried about out-of-control spending?

I think, were I a cynical politician, I might even make a big show out repurposing NASA, at least temporarily, to finding cost-saving, energy-saving technologies. Who knows how well it would work, but it would make me look good.

[AJ Dual]

NASA already had it's budget slashed. If you want to make the emotional case that we're not going to spend money on 'frivolous things' to bolster a political campaign, I guess that's one way to go about it. However, you'd just be a liar and a charlatan like any other politician. Nothing special.

Hacking away at what represents 1% of the federal budget, when entitlements and defense are well over half, is just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

It's like a homeowner making a big deal about turning off some lights and setting the thermostat a degree off, while ignoring their ARM mortgage and balloon payment about to come due.

[HankB]

With the space program, we get technology development and knowledge; as a taxpayer, I see that as a better ROI than all manner of welfare programs and unearned entitlements that serve only to harm this country and its economy.

If we're going to curb spending - and we should! - there are plenty of places other than the space program to start.

[Fitz]

With the space program, we get technology development and knowledge; as a taxpayer, I see that as a better ROI than all manner of welfare programs and unearned entitlements that serve only to harm this country and its economy.

If we're going to curb spending - and we should! - there are plenty of places other than the space program to start.

This

[SADShooter]

Not only have we seen ROI from the space program, but what has the War on Poverty achieved, other than keeping the percentage of the population in poverty roughly the same or higher? As TommyGunn alluded, ending poverty is a heck of a lot more ambitious and unrealistic than colonizing Mars. Altering the environment is easier than changing human nature.

[Tallpine]

We need to search for intelligent life in space, since there is obviously none here on earth

[Balog]

NASA already had it's budget slashed. If you want to make the emotional case that we're not going to spend money on 'frivolous things' to bolster a political campaign, I guess that's one way to go about it. However, you'd just be a liar and a charlatan like any other politician. Nothing special.

Hacking away at what represents 1% of the federal budget, when entitlements and defense are well over half, is just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

It's like a homeowner making a big deal about turning off some lights and setting the thermostat a degree off, while ignoring their ARM mortgage and balloon payment about to come due.

Yup. In the utopian libertarian dreamworld sure fed.gov spending on NASA is a big deal. But unless steps are taken to address the SS Ponzi scheme, defense pork, and Medicare/caid, it's pretty pointless.

[Perd Hapley]

If we're going to curb spending - and we should! - there are plenty of places other than the space program to start.

Nobody's saying we should start there. Of course we should begin to gradually phase out most, if not all, social spending at the federal level. Along with education. Those are more important places to begin cutting. But those are also very hard to cut, politically. It would be relatively easy for politicians to eliminate funding to smaller, less "social" projects like PBS, and freeze the Mars project for five or ten years.

[agricola]

With the space program, we get technology development and knowledge; as a taxpayer, I see that as a better ROI than all manner of welfare programs and unearned entitlements that serve only to harm this country and its economy.

If we're going to curb spending - and we should! - there are plenty of places other than the space program to start.

This is emphatically correct.  Space exploration - and Apollo especially - is one of the greatest things your country has ever done; that your government and many of the elected representatives appears to be content to leave it to the Chinese should horrify everyone.  

Oh - and if spending a billion dollars to successfully lower a robotic car from a rocket in the Martian atmosphere using really thin nylon wire is wrong, is it really worth being right?

[Perd Hapley]

This is emphatically correct.  Space exploration - and Apollo especially - is one of the greatest things your country has ever done; that your government and many of the elected representatives appears to be content to leave it to the Chinese should horrify everyone.  

Oh - and if spending a billion dollars to successfully lower a robotic car from a rocket in the Martian atmosphere using really thin nylon wire is wrong, is it really worth being right?

OK, but I'm just questioning the timing. I never said we should just forget about it.

[AJ Dual]

OK, but I'm just questioning the timing. I never said we should just forget about it.

Think about the Solar System for a minute too.

The orbits and times when the planets align in the right spots does not care about the National Debt, or the budget.

[RoadKingLarry]

And it's not like they just stuff the thing with money and blast it off to Mars.
The money being spent on programs like this get circulated through the economy many times over and I'd bet a case of really good beer that what was spent on the Curiosity program "saved or created" a hell of lot more jobs than any of Obama's stimulations.  

[MillCreek]

In the utopian libertarian dreamworld

I am so stealing this.  Thank you for thinking of it, sir!

[MillCreek]

This is emphatically correct.  Space exploration - and Apollo especially - is one of the greatest things your country has ever done; that your government and many of the elected representatives appears to be content to leave it to the Chinese should horrify everyone.  

Oh - and if spending a billion dollars to successfully lower a robotic car from a rocket in the Martian atmosphere using really thin nylon wire is wrong, is it really worth being right?

Well put indeed. I don't want to concede space leadership to anyone, albeit I am happy to share the work.

[Perd Hapley]

And it's not like they just stuff the thing with money and blast it off to Mars.
The money being spent on programs like this get circulated through the economy many times over and I'd bet a case of really good beer that what was spent on the Curiosity program "saved or created" a hell of lot more jobs than any of Obama's stimulations.  

No doubt.

[RoadKingLarry]

Well put indeed. I don't want to concede space leadership to anyone, albeit I am happy to share the work.

There's always that "controlling the high ground" thing to think about as well.

[209]

NASA already had it's budget slashed. If you want to make the emotional case that we're not going to spend money on 'frivolous things' to bolster a political campaign, I guess that's one way to go about it. However, you'd just be a liar and a charlatan like any other politician. Nothing special.

Hacking away at what represents 1% of the federal budget, when entitlements and defense are well over half, is just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

It's like a homeowner making a big deal about turning off some lights and setting the thermostat a degree off, while ignoring their ARM mortgage and balloon payment about to come due.

Yeah, their budget was slashed.  And I seem to remember they spent a bunch of what they had left in the middle east a few years back trying to do something about educating folks there.  Maybe if we let NASA spend their budget on outer space issues rather than a political ploy to appease folks in other countries, we'd have a better return on the money.

[MicroBalrog]

Yup. In the utopian libertarian dreamworld sure fed.gov spending on NASA is a big deal. But unless steps are taken to address the SS Ponzi scheme, defense pork, and Medicare/caid, it's pretty pointless.

KACHING.

NASA neither infringes on my freedom, nor anyone elses.

A NASA scientist, to my knowledge, has never burned down anyone's house, nor executed a no-knock warrant, nor stopped anyone from buying a single toy.

No, the problem I have with NASA spending is that

1. It's too low.
2.  it's far too focused on exploration using robots, and not on sending people places.

We live in the universe where DARPA/NASA joint spending on potential designs for an interstellar spacecraft is $1.1 million while BATFE budget is $1.12 billion.

NASA funding for manned spaceflight contracts is over 1 billion.

That is to say, 1/700th of the value of TARP.

[longeyes]

A nation is not a budget, it is not a collection of accountants.  Ignore the spiritual dimension and you have a dispirited people.  And by spiritual I mean that part of us that strives for great things. 

[SADShooter]

A nation is not a budget, it is not a collection of accountants.  Ignore the spiritual dimension and you have a dispirited people.  And by spiritual I mean that part of us that strives for great things. 

And, with a couple of glasses of cheap wine under my belt after a crappy day at my crappy job, I have to applaud longeyes' percipient remark, and observe that this is the essence of "American exceptionalism". First, the belief that the seemingly impossible is not. Second, the will to see it realized. The world owes much of what is good in it today to that stubborn, impractical idealism.