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There are complexities and nuances in the most 'trivial' activities of life. Brick laying is brick laying, you say, but there are several sophisticated factors

There are complexities and nuances in the most 'trivial' activities of life. Brick laying is brick laying, you say, but there are several sophisticated factors at play at erecting a wall. But the core principal has remained the same "stack bricks neatly, and use a plumbing bob". Photo sharing services have been around a long time, and i will dare say that there isnt anything significantly 'valuable' about them. And by value, i mean value to society, not some arbitrary financial random-number wall-street assigns. The space-race produced several useful byproducts, while facebook is turning programmers into sheep who dream of writing instagram plugins. -- a space nut.

ojr 14y ago
what did we achieve from going to the moon (there was nothing there)? Only a few people even saw the moon, ~900 million of people on facebook. Even people like Neil Armstrong has come against going to the moon again and is against SpaceX
- patrickk 14y ago
  I read somewhere that the ROI from Apollo and NASA generally exceeds any other US public spending by a massive amount. The amount of space age derived technology is hard to imagine and perhaps not communicated as well as it could be. I don't live in the US, but if I could wave a magic wand and do anything I wanted, increasing global space exploration spending x10 or more would be top of my list. The benefits would be enormous to everyone- you are pushing the very boundaries of what's possible, you are going to uncover some interesting new tech along the way. If the US got into a massive space race with China (sending a manned spacecraft on Mars for example) the benefits would be felt globally for decades. Pity it takes a rivalry to create the urgency for doing such ambitious projects, instead of doing them because they are worthy goals. http://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff/database http://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff/database

ojr 14y ago

what did we achieve from going to the moon (there was nothing there)? Only a few people even saw the moon, ~900 million of people on facebook. Even people like Neil Armstrong has come against going to the moon again and is against SpaceX

patrickk 14y ago
I read somewhere that the ROI from Apollo and NASA generally exceeds any other US public spending by a massive amount. The amount of space age derived technology is hard to imagine and perhaps not communicated as well as it could be. I don't live in the US, but if I could wave a magic wand and do anything I wanted, increasing global space exploration spending x10 or more would be top of my list. The benefits would be enormous to everyone- you are pushing the very boundaries of what's possible, you are going to uncover some interesting new tech along the way. If the US got into a massive space race with China (sending a manned spacecraft on Mars for example) the benefits would be felt globally for decades. Pity it takes a rivalry to create the urgency for doing such ambitious projects, instead of doing them because they are worthy goals. http://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff/database http://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff/database