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Yes but you haven't said anything tangible. This does nothing for people suffering from lack of fundamental necessities. How much hubris do you need to complete

• lazypenguin 11y ago
  Nor have you provided any evidence that it has negatively affected society, your argument is weak. As a matter of fact, NASA has made hundreds of contributions to society, particularly in material sciences. Here is a list I found on a pop-culture site after a few seconds of googling (I am sure there are more detailed lists elsewhere): http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/50-years-50-giant-leaps-how-nasa-rocked-our-world-879377.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/50-years-50-giant-... I believe it is quite common for knowledge to permeate across domains (e.g. math->computer science->internet or astrobiology->biology->medicine). You adopt a naive view where you make the assumption that the works of these scientists are trivial because YOU don't see the benefit to our society. With that sort of reasoning we should never embark on any endeavor where we are unsure the outcome would benefit us.
  • EC1 11y ago
    By virtue of not pursuing something that doesn't efficiently get basic necessities to everyone, I don't need evidence as you're doing the work for me. Great, but they could have added more if they abandoned space altogether and used all those billions on aid. There is quite literally no point in wasting money on manned interplanetary missions. It's futile because we can't move at light speed, so even if we did find something it'd prompt an "oh, ok, cool" and everyone would move on. And we'd still have slavery and poverty and starvation.
• xenophonf 11y ago
  casual philandering with space exploration Pure research is such a critical part of scientific advancement. Where would we be today without all of the work done by military rocketry and civilian space programs? Without various nations' space programs, scientists working on diseases including malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis would not have had access over the last twenty years to high-bandwidth communications services via communications satellites at hospitals, clinics, laboratories, and schools scattered across some of the most remote areas of the African continent---to name just one region with which I have direct involvement. I cannot even begin to stress how important that kind of access is even in this modern age of relatively good 2G/3G coverage (there are still plenty of locations in which we work to cure disease where satellite communications are still a necessity). It made it possible for our scientists to not only train their colleagues in country and raise up new generations of skilled doctors, nurses, and scientists, but also to access the sum total of scientific knowledge from places where good people frequently suffer and die from the kinds of endemic disease rarely seen in the West. Maybe searching web sites or holding conference calls seems droll and ordinary to you, but to our scientists and their colleagues, getting Internet access via satellite in the middle of sub-Saharan Africa during the late 90s and early 00s was revolutionary. So much good work---the fruit of which we see bearing now, like not just one but several effective malaria vaccines as well as mosquito population control programs---became possible, all because fifty years ago, people started "philandering" with space exploration. How much hubris do you need to think that you alone know how best to allocate not only the scarce resources of this planet but also the lives of every single human being on this planet, and to sit in judgment of what work is worthy and what isn't? To transcend the current boundaries of human knowledge and engineering skill has a direct impact on our (collective) lives, and for the better. This world is not zero-sum; it is not in thermodynamic equilibrium. For some people to work in space for the eventual benefit of mankind as a whole does not require other people to suffer and die of want and neglect (quite the opposite, in fact).
  • EC1 11y ago
    > How much hubris do you need to think that you alone know how best to allocate not only the scarce resources of this planet but also the lives of every single human being on this planet, and to sit in judgment of what work is worthy and what isn't? By looking at their merits? Giving a sandwich to a guy sleeping on the street does infinitely more for them than us reaching Mars. Are video games worthy? Anything consumer for the sake of consumption is arrogance in its purest most refined form. You must have grown up with a Mommy and Daddy that got along well and always provided for you, so you think space exploration is something noble, when in reality its a rich elitists nationalistic jerkoff game, where you engineers are the pawns fueled by childish and selfish ideals. Yes, you might discover something that helps elsewhere, but coincidence is hardly synonymous with intention. Repeat to yourself how silly it is to look for aliens. "I am looking for aliens." Repeat that 1000 times to yourself until you realize how stupid of a goal that actually is.
• lutusp 11y ago
  > This does nothing for people suffering from lack of fundamental necessities. This is a basic philosophical question -- shall we give the poor a fish, or shall we teach them how to fish? The answer should seem obvious, and in the modern world, science is the fishing pole. > I'd get it if we were all so smart we solved everything we needed to but we can't even solve our own planet. The problem on Planet Earth is very simple -- there are far too many people. The problem is easy to state, but almost impossible to solve. How do you tell people to have fewer children without violating one of the most basic rights we have? How do we know there are too many people? Science. How do we know that's a nearly impossible problem to solve? Science. > Your casual philandering with space exploration doesn't put anything on anyone's table but your own ... Christopher Columbus heard this argument too, as did every pioneer throughout human history. Your analysis overlooks the fact that space exploration is so valuable that it's in the verge of becoming a profitable enterprise and have no more need for public funding. How will you complain about it then? > ... much like how lots of minds are wasted crunching pointless numbers for data startups. A "data startup" succeeds or fails based on private funding by people who understand and accept the risks, so it can't be part of your argument about global poverty.