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> Space exploration is just one of many such wasteful examples. Only if you place low value on the scientific returns. Science research is one thing the priva

> Space exploration is just one of many such wasteful examples. Only if you place low value on the scientific returns. Science research is one thing the private sector does poorly, and it's something NASA does a lot of. The other main area is human spaceflight which you could say is wasteful, but NASA did a lot of the high cost low return R&D for human spaceflight. Now private companies can go into the effort with timescales that can keep investors happy.

dennisgorelik 15y ago
I do not value scientific research in directions that are not important to me. If I don't need spaceflight in the next 100 years, there is no point spending valuable resources on researching human spaceflight. 100 years from now such research would be significantly less expensive and more meaningful. I'd rather see valuable resources spend on what's important. For example on better rating system on HN. Government is not capable of doing things like that.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  Sometimes it's hard to tell what ends up being important. Would you have valued scientific research into space travel in the 50's? Especially if there wasn't a cold-war powered space race? Because I sure enjoy GPS and other satellite-backed technologies.
  - dennisgorelik 15y ago
    It would be much cheaper to develop space missiles 20 years later. Especially if saved resources would have been invested by private sector into more useful technologies such as chemistry, computers, machinery etc.
  - jerf 15y ago
    That argument is too powerful. What if we spent the money we're dumping into a rather ineffective space program on $RESEARCH_X instead? Who knows what aspect of $RESEARCH_X will be important? You haven't proved money should be spent on the space program, you've proved money should be spent on X for all X. Though this does bear a certain resemblance to our budgetary priorities of late.
    - jjmaxwell4 15y ago
      This is exactly the problem - why should the government decide what is useful research? When you let the government do anything, it instantly becomes political. Nowadays professors have to constantly jockey for research dollars. I say that private markets/individuals do a pretty good job deciding what technologies are worth long term investment dollars/charitable donations. Let them figure out what research programs they should be funding.
uvdiv 15y ago
Science research is one thing the private sector does poorly, and it's something NASA does a lot of. Yes, but... NASA does very little space science compared to non-scientific human space travel. Their budget for launching humans into space (Apollo, STS, ISS, Constellation) -- for shits and giggles, basically -- is orders of magnitude greater than their budget for actual science. Icy Moons, James Webb, LISA -- real science, real discovery -- tends to get budget-axed to make more room for politically-savvy STS, ISS, Flags on Mars. Icy Moons -- first substantial progress in space probes in decades, long-delayed trial of nuclear electric propulsion -- not important enough. (Wikipedia says it was cancelled because of "shift in priorities" towards manned missions.) Order-of-magnitude greater I_sp than chemical rockets. Massive (1.5 tons payload), high-powered (200 kWe available) science juggernaut -- exploring Jupiter's moons, one by one. New frontiers in experiment capability: scanning mysterious moons with high-powered radars, spectrometers. Total budget less than the cost of cleaning up astronaut shit on ISS. James Webb -- Hubble's successor is killed. Hubble has no successor! This is a national shame. A hundred times more powerful, the greatest space telescope of all time, so perceptive it has to be positioned in sun-earth L2 to get away from earthshine. LISA -- undiscovered gravity radiation? Resolving relativistic emissions of distant black holes, making new tests of Einsteinean general relativity? Sounds like nerd stuff, who cares. In theory, it is nice that we have a government agency funding pure exploration of the cosmos (any funding, at all). In practice, NASA is a case study of how badly putting science funding in the hands of a political bureaucracy can go wrong. Very few Americans, sadly, actually understand or care about the comparatively bland-looking experiments which are science, which advance human understanding, compared to TV-friendly astronaut acrobatics tripe. So science gets marginalized; the political nature of NASA favors useless shit. I say euthanize NASA, it has no life left.
- mturmon 15y ago
  I appreciate that you know some details about some space missions, but unfortunately your understanding of advances in science instruments, measurements, and research at NASA is utterly wrong. Just completely wrong. In fact, for the most part, science missions at NASA are now, and have been, guided by reports of the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Science. They produce "Decadal Surveys" which basically are ranked lists of mission proposals. There's one for Earth Science, in particular, that has been very closely tracked by NASA mission proposals (see http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/ http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/). Every potential mission team scrutinizes this list and tries to position their work to be responsive to these science goals. For the list of mission concepts, see http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11820&page=81#p200131de9960081001 http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11820&page=8... The menu of missions is rather amazing in its scope, novelty, and potential to advance the understanding of Earth systems like pollution, aerosols, solid earth hazards, land use, vegetation, weather, etc.

dennisgorelik 15y ago

I do not value scientific research in directions that are not important to me. If I don't need spaceflight in the next 100 years, there is no point spending valuable resources on researching human spaceflight. 100 years from now such research would be significantly less expensive and more meaningful. I'd rather see valuable resources spend on what's important. For example on better rating system on HN. Government is not capable of doing things like that.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
Sometimes it's hard to tell what ends up being important. Would you have valued scientific research into space travel in the 50's? Especially if there wasn't a cold-war powered space race? Because I sure enjoy GPS and other satellite-backed technologies.
- dennisgorelik 15y ago
  It would be much cheaper to develop space missiles 20 years later. Especially if saved resources would have been invested by private sector into more useful technologies such as chemistry, computers, machinery etc.
- jerf 15y ago
  That argument is too powerful. What if we spent the money we're dumping into a rather ineffective space program on $RESEARCH_X instead? Who knows what aspect of $RESEARCH_X will be important? You haven't proved money should be spent on the space program, you've proved money should be spent on X for all X. Though this does bear a certain resemblance to our budgetary priorities of late.
  - jjmaxwell4 15y ago
    This is exactly the problem - why should the government decide what is useful research? When you let the government do anything, it instantly becomes political. Nowadays professors have to constantly jockey for research dollars. I say that private markets/individuals do a pretty good job deciding what technologies are worth long term investment dollars/charitable donations. Let them figure out what research programs they should be funding.

uvdiv 15y ago

Science research is one thing the private sector does poorly, and it's something NASA does a lot of. Yes, but... NASA does very little space science compared to non-scientific human space travel. Their budget for launching humans into space (Apollo, STS, ISS, Constellation) -- for shits and giggles, basically -- is orders of magnitude greater than their budget for actual science. Icy Moons, James Webb, LISA -- real science, real discovery -- tends to get budget-axed to make more room for politically-savvy STS, ISS, Flags on Mars. Icy Moons -- first substantial progress in space probes in decades, long-delayed trial of nuclear electric propulsion -- not important enough. (Wikipedia says it was cancelled because of "shift in priorities" towards manned missions.) Order-of-magnitude greater I_sp than chemical rockets. Massive (1.5 tons payload), high-powered (200 kWe available) science juggernaut -- exploring Jupiter's moons, one by one. New frontiers in experiment capability: scanning mysterious moons with high-powered radars, spectrometers. Total budget less than the cost of cleaning up astronaut shit on ISS. James Webb -- Hubble's successor is killed. Hubble has no successor! This is a national shame. A hundred times more powerful, the greatest space telescope of all time, so perceptive it has to be positioned in sun-earth L2 to get away from earthshine. LISA -- undiscovered gravity radiation? Resolving relativistic emissions of distant black holes, making new tests of Einsteinean general relativity? Sounds like nerd stuff, who cares. In theory, it is nice that we have a government agency funding pure exploration of the cosmos (any funding, at all). In practice, NASA is a case study of how badly putting science funding in the hands of a political bureaucracy can go wrong. Very few Americans, sadly, actually understand or care about the comparatively bland-looking experiments which are science, which advance human understanding, compared to TV-friendly astronaut acrobatics tripe. So science gets marginalized; the political nature of NASA favors useless shit. I say euthanize NASA, it has no life left.

mturmon 15y ago
I appreciate that you know some details about some space missions, but unfortunately your understanding of advances in science instruments, measurements, and research at NASA is utterly wrong. Just completely wrong. In fact, for the most part, science missions at NASA are now, and have been, guided by reports of the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Science. They produce "Decadal Surveys" which basically are ranked lists of mission proposals. There's one for Earth Science, in particular, that has been very closely tracked by NASA mission proposals (see http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/ http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/). Every potential mission team scrutinizes this list and tries to position their work to be responsive to these science goals. For the list of mission concepts, see http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11820&page=81#p200131de9960081001 http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11820&page=8... The menu of missions is rather amazing in its scope, novelty, and potential to advance the understanding of Earth systems like pollution, aerosols, solid earth hazards, land use, vegetation, weather, etc.