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Majority of Americans Believe It Is Essential That the US Remain a Global Leader in Space (pewinternet.org)
Pew Research: Sixty years after the founding of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), most Americans believe the United States should be at the forefront of global leadership in space exploration. Majorities say the International Space Station has been a good investment for the country and that, on balance, NASA is still vital to the future of U.S. space exploration even as private space companies emerge as increasingly important players. Roughly seven-in-ten Americans (72%) say it is essential for the U.S. to continue to be a world leader in space exploration, and eight-in-ten (80%) say the space station has been a good investment for the country, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted March 27-April 9, 2018. These survey results come at a time when NASA finds itself in a much different world from the one that existed when the Apollo astronauts first set foot on the moon nearly half a century ago. The Cold War space race has receded into history, but other countries (including China, Japan and India) have emerged as significant international players in space exploration. Another finding in the report: Most Americans would like NASA to focus on Earth, instead of Mars.
Moon colonization shout be the goal along with asteroid mining. That is the best way to build a sustaining space travel infrastructure. Mars can wait.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Considering 1 in 3 Households in the US rank as âoeThe Working Poorâ, Americaâ(TM)s fastest growing demographic and the fact that the majority of US Households cannot afford to send their children to a college in the US, how exactly shall the US remain relevant at all. Itâ(TM)s a well known fact on Wall Street that the days of US economic supremacy are over. Itâ(TM)s all about the cash heist now. By 2035 China and the BRICS will rule and the US will become a 3rd world shithole renowned for it Prison Society and corporate backed military authoritarianism against its population of impoverished ignorant bible banging fuckwads
72% think it is essential that the US be at the forefront of space EXPLORATION, but 18% think we should do any exploring. People as a whole are completely, utterly useless at directing policy. If you ever want to do anything important or interesting ignore what people think about it.
fixed it for you
We could do both if we weren't so all-fired eager to get involved in every brushfire war worldwide.
Why?
I get a kick out of space stuff, but what's the return on investment? Could we realize a better return per dollar by spending it on other areas?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Trump as president is just a symptom. Removing him will do nothing about the actual problem.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Another finding in the report: Most Americans would like NASA to focus on Earth, instead of Mars.
Read TFA yourself of course, but note the following:
The questions shown about what should NASA have as its priority included:
"Monitor key parts of the earth's climate system"
"Monitor asteroids/objects that could hit Earth"
and
"Send astronauts to Mars"
Whether you believe man is changing the climate or not, it still is an obvious priority preference to monitor climate unless you are really fringe and don't think it changes at all.
Additionally, even that fringe is going to consider not getting whapped by rocks..from..spaaace.. higher priority than having someone take a joyride out to one.
--- Mercutio was right.
Why not do both? The money drain is the military, not space exploration.
The electoral system is not the problem.
Americans are well aware of how that works and they accept it.
There's no disproportionate problem of any kind.
Voters are not banned from voting and that includes voting for politicians who would change the election laws.
For "problems," with voters, look to those who don't.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Here's how it really works, though. Areas with disproportionate amounts of representation have more power and have no interest in fixing the system, because it gives them more power. Thus, the system remains the same.
Ignoring the fact that you trying so hard to troll that you felt it was important to post this drivel twice.
I'm going to go forward and say that at this point it seems space is pretty much out of hands of the U.S. tax payer. The way forward seems to be in the hands of private industry. I predict that in a few years NASA will be come what the FAA is now. Just another regulatory agency. Which I think would be a good move for NASA.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
How about equal representation under law? Why is someone in Wyoming or Rhode Island more worthy of political power than someone in Texas or California?
Also, the population disparities between states were much smaller (percentage-wise) in the 1790s than in the 2010s.
And speaking to the electoral system, why not a direct popular vote in the 1790s? It wasn't because of technology -- vote totals could still have been brought by couriers. It was to avoid penalizing states that disenfranchised their residents.
Otherwise, New Jersey, which allowed women and blacks to vote in the 1790s would have had much more voting power per resident than a Southern state that only allowed white male landowners to vote. Since any citizen over 18 can vote now, the reason for the electoral system is mostly gone.
As far as a "final solution"... #calexit2020! Let's do it! No reason why Californians should need to continue paying taxes to DC to support people who seem to hate them...
Very good. I mis-interpreted your intentions. You have my apologizes.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Real men wouldn't consider anything less than galactic leadership.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I didn't see anywhere where it says how many people participated in this poll. I sincerely doubt that all 300,000,000 citizens responded.
That's the problem with these 'polls': limited number of participants, how do you expect anyone to believe this truly represents the majority?
Maybe we could blame him for appointing Pruitt and rolling back all the environmental regulations that we've so painfully established? Just so his buddies can make a profit while the rest of us drown in filth? How about blaming him for that?
you're hilarious, we're spending trillions attacking people that didn't attack us and you're worried about that 18 billion?
we all pay taxes, we only need to spend a tiny bit less on stupid shit.
First to send probes outside the solar system. First space telescopes of many kinds. First to Pluto. The United States has been claiming by far the most firsts for each of the last 5 decades.
While I think humanity needs to grow past anachronistic nationalism, US society is still technologically vibrant.
Greed is the root of all evil.
What people are talking about is building a self-sustaining (as far as possible) moon base as a demonstration humans can survive long-term without deliveries from earth.
Quite so. The real challenge in doing so is finding an economic reason to build such a moon base in the first place. It won't get done without a darn good reason. Either we need to discover something really valuable that can only be exploited on the moon or there would need to be some national/global defense reason to do it. Literally every really large expenditure (talking MUCH bigger than stuff like the ISS or LHC) made for exploration is made for one of those two reasons.
My personal guess is this will take at least 100 years to accomplish.
Unless it was declared to be a massive national/global priority I think your time estimate is short by several hundred years. Such an endeavor would be massively expensive and requires large amounts of technology we are in no danger of developing in the near future. I could see it happening at some point but a real moon based like you are proposing is going to take a really long time to come to fruition if it ever does. The biggest obstacle to it is economics. There just is no obvious direct economic benefit to building such a thing.
Moon colonization shout be the goal along with asteroid mining.
Asteroid mining is a ludicrous proposition. Either it requires returning a dangerously large amount of material back to earth (dropping a large rock on Earth from space tends to make a rather large boom - de facto a WMD) or it requires processing in space for which we have not the technology, the infrastructure, nor any demand. To make asteroid mining and processing in space we would have to build a huge amount of space based infrastructure, supply chains, and economy for which there is no obvious ROI. People who suggest processing in space tend to rather glibly gloss over the details about how manufacturing supply chains actually work in the real world because they don't understand manufacturing. We take for granted a lot of things that are FAR more difficult to achieve in space. You have to replicate not just processing equipment but entire supply chains and then automate them which we cannot even do here on Earth.
Moon colonization? Fun idea but what's the motivation for doing it? What's the economic or defense reason that would justify and pay for such an enormous outlay of cash? Just because it's cool (and it is) isn't sufficient. Scientific research isn't enough either though that's closer. I'm all for colonizing the moon but I just can't see a roadmap to making doing it possible on a time scale shorter than hundreds of years. We would need a LOT of massive advances in technology to really make it practical and economic to do and even then we still would need an economic reason to be there for any length of time.
That is the best way to build a sustaining space travel infrastructure.
That's debatable and there are plenty of people more informed on the subject than either of us that have different opinions.
Trump as president is just a symptom. Removing him will do nothing about the actual problem.
Quite so but it would definitely be a good start to solving the actual problem.
If you look at History and the various technologies that have come along, you notice that there is one kind of technology that enables most others...transportation.
Whether it's inventing a wheel, canoe, ship, automobiles, etc. enabling someone to get from A to B quickly and easily is the key to creating the huge, glorious stuff once you are there.
So too with space. Don't try to be the first to Mars. Be the first to make getting to Mars cheap, quick, and easy. Don't be the first to put up a giant space station, be the first to make putting space stations up quick and easy. Don't be the first to establish a Moon colony. Be the first to make regular or on demand supply runs to that colony.
So focus on launch capabilities and, once in space, the ability to go from A to B without years of planning and relying on being shot across space on chemical rockets.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I've got one:space based solar power.
Ok, devil's advocate here. Where is the economic benefit over terrestrial generation that would justify the immense expense of developing the technology (presuming it's possible) and deploying it to space? Terrestrial solar in principle can already cleanly provide more power than the global need multifold without even taking up arable land nor requiring any new technology to be developed. It's also not clear how you plan to transmit this energy safely to Earth... For space based energy generation to become a thing it needs to provide an economic advantage over the existing options. (and it needs to be technologically feasible)
It should come as no huge shock that China is the technology leader in this space.
??? Nobody is a leader in this space because it doesn't exist outside of a few academic research projects with no immediate chance of application. There is precisely zero power being transmitted from space based solar generation to Earth nor any reasonable prospect of it happening any time soon.
But the original implication was that basing our space plans on mining will be less expensive than alternatives such as Mars colonies because of the value of the ore.
It's still far cheaper to get precious metals from Earth mines than space, and it doesn't look like that economic reality will change any time soon. Digging and sifting many tons of dirt on Earth is still much less expensive than sifting less dirt on asteroids because big machines are still far easy to build and maintain on the ground than having smaller mining machines on asteroids; plus the huuuuge expense of fuel needed to move stuff into and out of Earth's gravity well.
A permanent Mars colony would be a far more glorious "human" achievement than an asteroid mining operation. Perhaps the original poster believes that asteroid mining will gradually get more efficient if we simply get actual practice, and therefore should put our resources into space mining.
However, I suspect it will take breakthroughs in other technologies, such as AI and/or space elevators, before space mining becomes practical. It may not be worth waiting around for grand inventions such that we should perhaps focus on a Mars colony instead.
Table-ized A.I.
no, the tech alone from space exploration has made trillions in wealth and saved lives. fantastic investment
Yeah, I was wondering that too. I'm not sure what is interesting about admitting that I was wrong and making a public statement of the such.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.