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I know that going into space is sexy and nerdy and cool and that it’s a difficult problem. What I don’t get is why so many people think about going to space and

I know that going into space is sexy and nerdy and cool and that it’s a difficult problem. What I don’t get is why so many people think about going to space and spend so much money on it when there are people in the US who drink water that catches on fire..and people elsewhere who don’t have access to water at all. Seems like we should work on the truly hard problems rather than the ones that are basically “just go up, really fast”

_plg_ 5y ago
Why not to do both?
aero-glide2 5y ago
So much money on it? NASA budget is $23B, total govt spending is $4000B. Show me your math.
ncallaway 5y ago
If we use the same logic, don’t we get a conclusion that we should spend nothing on basic research until we’ve solved world hunger, and every other problem? I agree that we should invest more into safe drinking water (though lead seems like much more of a problem than catching fire). But I don’t think it would be wise to dedicate 100% of our nation’s resources into the problem. Some amount of R&D seems like a worthwhile investment, even when other pressing problems exist.
- malfist 5y ago
  Not only that, but R&D can sometimes solve the other problem. Like synthetic nitrogen for fertilizers. A lot of people say (I have no idea how true this is) that the problem isn't growing enough food, it's getting that food too people. What if we can grow rice or wheat on the moon, or ganymeade, or a spacestation or whatnot and drop it where it needs to go a-la Moon Is A Harsh Mistress style. R&D is looking forward. Pointing at it and saying "people are hungry" is willfully ignorant of how science has played a roll in feeding more and more people and is a defeatists attitude.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >If we use the same logic, don’t we get a conclusion that we should spend nothing on basic research until we’ve solved world hunger, and every other problem? Sounds like a very good principle. Like, if you can't fix war at the level of horses, bayonets and canons, maybe not go for inventing aircrafts and tanks and machine guns just yet - you'll just get new wars leveraging those improved means, oh wait!
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    Great so nobody ever researches anything and we still all live in the stone age. But at least we are pure in our hearts that we didn't mis-allocate resources when people were starving. That this mindset exists blows my mind. > Like, if you can't fix war at the level of horses, bayonets and canons, maybe not go for inventing aircrafts and tanks and machine guns just yet Aside from the practical, problem of "Great way to get killed by people with guns that you don't have". The underlying philosophy is equally flawed. Its like picking out of the technology bucket only things you don't like. The same things that made those things possible also made a huge number of other things possible that would otherwise not have existed at all.
    - coldtea 5y ago
      >Great so nobody ever researches anything and we still all live in the stone age. Sounds far more climate friendly. Also moving out of stone age only once we've stopped with hunger and war? Sign me in! >The underlying philosophy is equally flawed. Its like picking out of the technology bucket only things you don't like. God forbid we're picky with the tecnologies we adopt!
      - panick21_ 5y ago
        Wow, didn't not expect so technology negative open in on HN. > Sign me in! Then we would still be in the stone age. > God forbid we're picky with the tecnologies we adopt! Be picky all you want. As we progressed certain things simple became viable and just ignoring the problem doesn't make them vanish.
  - 5y ago
- himinlomax 5y ago
  > If we use the same logic, don’t we get a conclusion that we should spend nothing on basic research until we’ve solved world hunger, and every other problem? If I were to sum it up less charitably, I'd say that OP is arguing that if he can't walk and chew gum at the same time, humanity can't either.
  - theshadowknows 5y ago
    lol ok little buddy
XorNot 5y ago
Money spent on going to space doesn't vanish in an exhaust plume. The money spent building a rocket is paying for the ongoing training, expertise and development of precision machining, software control systems, welding techniques, project management, infrastructure upgrades etc. Though that's not really the issue anyway: the US's problems aren't caused by a lack of funding, they're caused by a lack of political will and a populace which is in part completely happy with the current state of affairs and votes accordingly. People's townwater isn't flammable because we didn't spend enough money fixing that problem: it's because the government (and voters) are in aggregate, completely happy to let it happen. Money - distinctly - will not buy a solution.
jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
Are you truly living your life in the way you are suggesting other people should here? Do you, for example, eschew all spending that's remotely luxurious and donate it to people that have way less than you? My point is, lead by example if you want others to follow.
wokwokwok 5y ago
This is a difficult argument to argue with because it doesn’t have any constraints. Instead of doing X why don’t we do any of the Y other things we could do? Surely, at least some subset of Y is more important than X, right? …but, is it? Are we better off, specifically with spending slightly more money on proving people with water, than having weather forecasts that can help thousands of farmer provide better yields and grow more food? Could we not say, spend a little bit less on building guns and use that money to do it instead? There’s loads more money in guns than space and hell, and wtf are the people crying for us to stop doing that? My observation has been, that people who want space funding redirected are not familiar with the benefits it provides, and fail to understand that the funding is, actually, insignificant. There’s a good write up of this here: https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasa-budget https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasa-budget What wrong with investing in science? :(
- coldtea 5y ago
  >Are we better off, specifically with spending slightly more money on proving people with water, than having weather forecasts that can help thousands of farmer provide better yields and grow more food? And, with the crumbling infrastructure, declining middle class, poverty stricken working class, and so on, how's that worked out for us?
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    So the middle class is poor because a tiny part of the budget is invested in space? I don't understand what argument you are trying to make.
    - coldtea 5y ago
      >So the middle class is poor because a tiny part of the budget is invested in space? No, it's poor because the same logic that invests that "tiny part of the budget" in space (and prints billions of money to fund the likes of Musk, Bezos, and so on), also runs the other investments and public policy decisions.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
The problem with waiting for all of humanity’s problems to be solved before doing space things is that humanity’s problems will never all be solved, and thus space things will never happen. It’s also just not a resources problem. There is ample cash and manpower to make both space and clean drinking water for everybody happen. The real issue is the political will and obstructions to those who have such will. The fix for drinking water specifically is to vote out all who oppose improving public infrastructure.
panick21_ 5y ago
Why are you an Hacker News, there are literally people dying right now that you could be saving.
vidarh 5y ago
Solving food and clean water is not a technology problem. It's a political choice. The money exists to solve those things not just for the US but worldwide. I'm very much in favour of political change to solve them, but I long ago resigned myself to accepting that there's very little benefit in individual action to try to counter them other than to feel good unless a majority is willing to commit to the necessary societal change. Meanwhile the money spent on space is a rounding error compared to the many other places you can also choose to cut to lift people out of horrible living conditions, yet so many people focus their ire on space, which, while some of the flights are wasteful, have as a sector done immeasurable amounts of good in terms of improving our ability to e.g. feed the planet (weather forecasting and crop monitoring for example), and will continue to provide advances for a long time. Focusing the frustrations on space exploration and technology improvement rather than on the lack of political will to solve the problems you mention solves nothing.
- panick21_ 5y ago
  Not to mention that surviving on Mars will require living with little water and low water agriculture that might help many people.
- themaninthedark 5y ago
  To add, solving world hunger is more than just give everyone food. The USA had been supplying cheap/food to countries but this started causing the farmers in those countries to stop growing food because they could not compete with the free food. So either the US is a monster because they are undercutting the local market or they are a monster because they are throwing away food when people are going hungry.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    You're right, but that's "just" a political problem too in the sense that it's a matter of willingness to spend the money near those who need aid rather than near the giver. Reducing subsidies in developed countries and instead paying to upgrade farming in developing countries would be one way. So sure, giving food away is not a perfect solution other than for short term crises, but it's still a problem that is entirely solvable if there was will to do so.
ajuc 5y ago
> why so many people think about going to space and spend so much money on it when there are people in the US who drink water that catches on fire Because people drinking bad water are poor so it's not profitable to help them. This problem can be solved with current technology (and in fact was solved in many countries with slightly stricter environmental legislation). > Seems like we should work on the truly hard problems rather than the ones that are basically “just go up, really fast” The problem with that is assuming that focusing on solving problem X is the way to solve problem X. In history it often turned out that problem X was only solved by people who ignored X and worked on Y instead. For example the hard problem of 70% of kids dying before adulthood wasn't mostly solved thanks to people who worked on it (shamans, healers and priests) but by people who worked on "useless" abstract stuff like math, philosophy and writing systems. If we put everybody on it we would still devise new ways of praying or dancing to stop gods killing infants. In general it's better not to put EVERYBODY on the same problem. Humankind is pretty good at solving many problems in parallel. Some people are better at X, others at Y. Also there might be interactions that we don't know upfront. Maybe designing space colonies gives us a cheap way to filter water on Earth as a byproduct? Would be pretty stupid to wait forever because we guessed the order wrong. Cancer is more serious than broken bones or flu, but it doesn't mean that we should assign all doctors to only deal with cancer until it's solved.
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
Why not do both? Run for office on your platform and I’ll probably vote for you.
oxplot 5y ago
> spend so much money on it If you actually look at $$$ going into space development, it's minuscule compared with say, just marketing cost of Windows Vista ($500 million whereas development of Falcon 9 rocket was in $400 million range).

_plg_ 5y ago

Why not to do both?

aero-glide2 5y ago

So much money on it? NASA budget is $23B, total govt spending is $4000B. Show me your math.

ncallaway 5y ago

If we use the same logic, don’t we get a conclusion that we should spend nothing on basic research until we’ve solved world hunger, and every other problem? I agree that we should invest more into safe drinking water (though lead seems like much more of a problem than catching fire). But I don’t think it would be wise to dedicate 100% of our nation’s resources into the problem. Some amount of R&D seems like a worthwhile investment, even when other pressing problems exist.

malfist 5y ago
Not only that, but R&D can sometimes solve the other problem. Like synthetic nitrogen for fertilizers. A lot of people say (I have no idea how true this is) that the problem isn't growing enough food, it's getting that food too people. What if we can grow rice or wheat on the moon, or ganymeade, or a spacestation or whatnot and drop it where it needs to go a-la Moon Is A Harsh Mistress style. R&D is looking forward. Pointing at it and saying "people are hungry" is willfully ignorant of how science has played a roll in feeding more and more people and is a defeatists attitude.
coldtea 5y ago
>If we use the same logic, don’t we get a conclusion that we should spend nothing on basic research until we’ve solved world hunger, and every other problem? Sounds like a very good principle. Like, if you can't fix war at the level of horses, bayonets and canons, maybe not go for inventing aircrafts and tanks and machine guns just yet - you'll just get new wars leveraging those improved means, oh wait!
- panick21_ 5y ago
  Great so nobody ever researches anything and we still all live in the stone age. But at least we are pure in our hearts that we didn't mis-allocate resources when people were starving. That this mindset exists blows my mind. > Like, if you can't fix war at the level of horses, bayonets and canons, maybe not go for inventing aircrafts and tanks and machine guns just yet Aside from the practical, problem of "Great way to get killed by people with guns that you don't have". The underlying philosophy is equally flawed. Its like picking out of the technology bucket only things you don't like. The same things that made those things possible also made a huge number of other things possible that would otherwise not have existed at all.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >Great so nobody ever researches anything and we still all live in the stone age. Sounds far more climate friendly. Also moving out of stone age only once we've stopped with hunger and war? Sign me in! >The underlying philosophy is equally flawed. Its like picking out of the technology bucket only things you don't like. God forbid we're picky with the tecnologies we adopt!
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      Wow, didn't not expect so technology negative open in on HN. > Sign me in! Then we would still be in the stone age. > God forbid we're picky with the tecnologies we adopt! Be picky all you want. As we progressed certain things simple became viable and just ignoring the problem doesn't make them vanish.
- 5y ago
himinlomax 5y ago
> If we use the same logic, don’t we get a conclusion that we should spend nothing on basic research until we’ve solved world hunger, and every other problem? If I were to sum it up less charitably, I'd say that OP is arguing that if he can't walk and chew gum at the same time, humanity can't either.
- theshadowknows 5y ago
  lol ok little buddy

XorNot 5y ago

Money spent on going to space doesn't vanish in an exhaust plume. The money spent building a rocket is paying for the ongoing training, expertise and development of precision machining, software control systems, welding techniques, project management, infrastructure upgrades etc. Though that's not really the issue anyway: the US's problems aren't caused by a lack of funding, they're caused by a lack of political will and a populace which is in part completely happy with the current state of affairs and votes accordingly. People's townwater isn't flammable because we didn't spend enough money fixing that problem: it's because the government (and voters) are in aggregate, completely happy to let it happen. Money - distinctly - will not buy a solution.

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago

Are you truly living your life in the way you are suggesting other people should here? Do you, for example, eschew all spending that's remotely luxurious and donate it to people that have way less than you? My point is, lead by example if you want others to follow.

wokwokwok 5y ago

This is a difficult argument to argue with because it doesn’t have any constraints. Instead of doing X why don’t we do any of the Y other things we could do? Surely, at least some subset of Y is more important than X, right? …but, is it? Are we better off, specifically with spending slightly more money on proving people with water, than having weather forecasts that can help thousands of farmer provide better yields and grow more food? Could we not say, spend a little bit less on building guns and use that money to do it instead? There’s loads more money in guns than space and hell, and wtf are the people crying for us to stop doing that? My observation has been, that people who want space funding redirected are not familiar with the benefits it provides, and fail to understand that the funding is, actually, insignificant. There’s a good write up of this here: https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasa-budget https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasa-budget What wrong with investing in science? :(

coldtea 5y ago
>Are we better off, specifically with spending slightly more money on proving people with water, than having weather forecasts that can help thousands of farmer provide better yields and grow more food? And, with the crumbling infrastructure, declining middle class, poverty stricken working class, and so on, how's that worked out for us?
- panick21_ 5y ago
  So the middle class is poor because a tiny part of the budget is invested in space? I don't understand what argument you are trying to make.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >So the middle class is poor because a tiny part of the budget is invested in space? No, it's poor because the same logic that invests that "tiny part of the budget" in space (and prints billions of money to fund the likes of Musk, Bezos, and so on), also runs the other investments and public policy decisions.

kitsunesoba 5y ago

The problem with waiting for all of humanity’s problems to be solved before doing space things is that humanity’s problems will never all be solved, and thus space things will never happen. It’s also just not a resources problem. There is ample cash and manpower to make both space and clean drinking water for everybody happen. The real issue is the political will and obstructions to those who have such will. The fix for drinking water specifically is to vote out all who oppose improving public infrastructure.

panick21_ 5y ago

Why are you an Hacker News, there are literally people dying right now that you could be saving.

vidarh 5y ago

Solving food and clean water is not a technology problem. It's a political choice. The money exists to solve those things not just for the US but worldwide. I'm very much in favour of political change to solve them, but I long ago resigned myself to accepting that there's very little benefit in individual action to try to counter them other than to feel good unless a majority is willing to commit to the necessary societal change. Meanwhile the money spent on space is a rounding error compared to the many other places you can also choose to cut to lift people out of horrible living conditions, yet so many people focus their ire on space, which, while some of the flights are wasteful, have as a sector done immeasurable amounts of good in terms of improving our ability to e.g. feed the planet (weather forecasting and crop monitoring for example), and will continue to provide advances for a long time. Focusing the frustrations on space exploration and technology improvement rather than on the lack of political will to solve the problems you mention solves nothing.

panick21_ 5y ago
Not to mention that surviving on Mars will require living with little water and low water agriculture that might help many people.
themaninthedark 5y ago
To add, solving world hunger is more than just give everyone food. The USA had been supplying cheap/food to countries but this started causing the farmers in those countries to stop growing food because they could not compete with the free food. So either the US is a monster because they are undercutting the local market or they are a monster because they are throwing away food when people are going hungry.
- vidarh 5y ago
  You're right, but that's "just" a political problem too in the sense that it's a matter of willingness to spend the money near those who need aid rather than near the giver. Reducing subsidies in developed countries and instead paying to upgrade farming in developing countries would be one way. So sure, giving food away is not a perfect solution other than for short term crises, but it's still a problem that is entirely solvable if there was will to do so.

ajuc 5y ago

> why so many people think about going to space and spend so much money on it when there are people in the US who drink water that catches on fire Because people drinking bad water are poor so it's not profitable to help them. This problem can be solved with current technology (and in fact was solved in many countries with slightly stricter environmental legislation). > Seems like we should work on the truly hard problems rather than the ones that are basically “just go up, really fast” The problem with that is assuming that focusing on solving problem X is the way to solve problem X. In history it often turned out that problem X was only solved by people who ignored X and worked on Y instead. For example the hard problem of 70% of kids dying before adulthood wasn't mostly solved thanks to people who worked on it (shamans, healers and priests) but by people who worked on "useless" abstract stuff like math, philosophy and writing systems. If we put everybody on it we would still devise new ways of praying or dancing to stop gods killing infants. In general it's better not to put EVERYBODY on the same problem. Humankind is pretty good at solving many problems in parallel. Some people are better at X, others at Y. Also there might be interactions that we don't know upfront. Maybe designing space colonies gives us a cheap way to filter water on Earth as a byproduct? Would be pretty stupid to wait forever because we guessed the order wrong. Cancer is more serious than broken bones or flu, but it doesn't mean that we should assign all doctors to only deal with cancer until it's solved.

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

Why not do both? Run for office on your platform and I’ll probably vote for you.

oxplot 5y ago

> spend so much money on it If you actually look at $$$ going into space development, it's minuscule compared with say, just marketing cost of Windows Vista ($500 million whereas development of Falcon 9 rocket was in $400 million range).