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NASA Cancels Missions After All
jd writes "Barely a day after NASA chief Dr. Griffen swore blind that projects might be frozen but not cancelled due to the new priorities and budget constraints, news comes of a new asteroid mission that has been cancelled due to the new priorities and budget constraints - something Dr. Griffin did not mention in his earlier comments. The visit to two asteroids, short about $90 million, was completely abandoned according to NASA, with no possibility of revival. In consequence, smaller missions are reportedly feeling at much greater risk."
Probably not, because history has soon that whenever a president is in some form of political trouble, they will often trot out "visions" of American returning to space with such regularity you would think they were smoking Peyeote, but they are shelved once the crisis passes or a new president takes over.
I constantly hear people saying one or both of two things.
1. NASA shouldn't be shooting for the Moon and Mars because it takes away from the smaller missions.
2. NASA should take a lesson from the private industry on how to get to space cheap.
But isn't this exactly what government is great at. Shouldering HUGE projects that no private industry in its right mind would spend money on... Ultimatly to progress science or humanity in general. No private industry is going to beat NASA to Mars. So let them have the small missions, hell once they really get their feet under them we can even contract out the smaller missions to them. But the really big stuff like getting people to Mars is only going to get done my NASA. And sure maybe we could hold back and wait for technology to progress a bit more, but we would still be stuck in Europe if that was the case.
Believe it or not that 5 billion is not being spent on killing people. Rebuilding and effectivly running a country is expensive. Look at it this way the current national budget is 2 trillion I believe, thats 40 billion per state. Iraq has a population of 26 million (for comparison texas has a population of 20 million, california has 33 million). So that 5 billion a month = 60 a year. Yes a bit more expensive than the average state, but you have to subtract the prewar level of spending on those troops. We really should be collecting income tax from these people.... :)
Eliminate cigarettes and alcohol and you end up with a heck of a lot of money not being spent that could be used for any number of better things.
Such as law enforcement?
Get this very clear: ANYTIME you ban a substance or object you will ALWAYS create a blackmarket for said substance or object. Why do you think kids are killing each other on the streets today? Video games? No, it's drugs... a blackmarket that is ripe for the kind of thugs who can play the game... Do you recall prohibition at all?
Currently smokes and alcohol are a windfall for the US government considering the level of taxation as well.
But whatever, ban them, let's go back to bath tub gin (which probably caused more health problems in speak easies than what factory made alcohol causes in today's society.)
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Technology should move at the speed of profitability, not humanity's best interest.
And this is exactly why there are no more antibiotics on the horizon -- much more profit in Viagra.
Sorry, government should (IMHO) take charge in those areas where something is in humanity's best interest, but is not yet profitable. Once things are profitable, the gov't can get out of the way. Private industry is too focused on short-term profit to care much about anything else.
No, the question is if. As in, "we can go to the stars, if we remain a high-technology civilization long enough to do it." I'm not convinced that we're going to be able to do that. We're making a lot of fundamental mistakes right now, mistakes with very long-term consequences.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Profitable ventures are by definition in humanity's best interest.
No, they are not. "By definition", they bring in more money than they cost. That does not mean they are in "humanity's best interest".
Proof: murder, robbery, and war, are all profitable, and are very much *not* in humanity's best interest.
It sounds terrible, but I am yet to hear one good reason to make antibiotics for people who can't pay.
Because sometimes it's *you* who can't pay. Ever been broke? Should you deserve to die because you got sneezed on by some unclean jerk during the short period where you didn't have enough money for medication?
If you can't keep yourself alive, you deserve to die. It's that simple.
That's nonsense. By your morals, it would be absolutely moral for someone to kill you, since it would show you are unable to "keep yourself alive", and thus "deserve to die".
What? It's OK for the government to help keep you alive with police, fire, and military? Hypocrite.
Your ideal world is the "law of the jungle". It's in the top of your list, "1. Arm Citizens". What do you think happens when a beloved family member of one of those "armed citizens" becomes deathly ill and needs medicine they can't pay for? Do you think they'll just politely die, as you think is their darwinian duty? Don't count on it.
Darwinism would suggest they take those arms and acquire what they need (or want) by force. Who are you to stop them? It's darwinism, after all.
You've got Darwin all wrong. It's not just the survival of the one with the biggest gun and the most money. It's also strength in numbers. You focus on some lazy, drug-addled, morally inept, socially obscene bum who gets free health care and cry "foul". Just like with freedom of speech, it's not there to help the undesirable elements of society, it's there to help us all. To do so, to do it right, yes, you have to protect the undesirables. But free medical care helps you, too, even if you can fully afford it on your own. Fewer people coming in to the office sick, fewer children getting sick at your school. You lessen unemployment, you lessen stress, you allow people the freedom to spend money on what they want, rather than on what they are forced to, which leads to a stronger economy and a healthier, more robust society.
It makes completely rational sense to provide the public with free access to government services, and it even makes "darwinian" sense, if you must.
I think you're really missing a very large point about what the government is for, and what private industry is for. Private industry is really great at putting money in forseeable goals where profit can be made. It's really bad at funding basic research in areas where there's no clear profit to be made. It's also really bad at developing anything that benefits everyone as a whole, but can't be charged for. 100 years ago what corporation would have wanted to fund some patent clerk who didn't even do any experiments and just wanted to think about the nature of light? But yet now our entire view of the Universe is different, and many of the devices you use every day rely upon an understanding of relativity.
The problem (as far as a corporation is concerned) is that in science you don't always know what you're going to find out before you find it out. Weird problems in one area can lead to huge advances of knowledge in something that's completely unrelated. That's why it's best for the government to continue funding this basic research, since it's the people that're going to eventually benefit from it, or maybe never benefit from it. What corporation wants to fund experiments counting the number of Neutrinos (very weakly interacting particles that have no forseeable practical applications) that come from the sun? No corporation in their right mind is the answer. They'll never make back money invested in it. But yet that very experiment has led to big developments in the understanding of particle physics. We now know that neutrinos have mass, and oscillate between the different types of them. And even this knowledge has no practical applications of it at all. Might it someday? Maybe, then again maybe not.
Really, the big problem with a Mars mission is you're going to waste a lot of money on one big project that could produce a LOT more scientific results if used in 100 other small projects. You'll probbably gain some technology along the way, but what do we really expect to gain scientifically from a manned Mars mission? Maybe we'll find life on Mars, and learn more about planetary geology. Is that worth scrapping all the other smaller missions? I don't think so.
What worries me about the manned Mars mission is the vast majority of the money is going to go to private industry to develop technology only suited to going to Mars. That's great if you think Science is just about making the world like Star Trek, but it isn't so good if you think science is about learning things about our universe. Don't get me wrong, I think the manned missions have some importance. I just don't think that importance overshadows the science that Nasa (and really hardly anyone else) produces.
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