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Manned space flight in generally is a hugely wasteful money sink. It eats up about 50% of NASA's budget, and there's no real reason for it other than "we're put

Manned space flight in generally is a hugely wasteful money sink. It eats up about 50% of NASA's budget, and there's no real reason for it other than "we're putting people into space because we want to put people into space." People vigorously defend these boondoggles, then finally admit they were a huge waste years after the fact (as we've seen with the space shuttle, and as we're now starting to see with the SLS).

esseph 1y ago
Idk, absolutely does fucking not at all look wasteful: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/20-breakthroughs-from-20-years-of-science-aboard-the-international-space-station/ https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/20-breakthroughs-from-...
- gonzobonzo 1y ago
  > Idk, absolutely does fucking not at all look wasteful It does if you actually look into at the facts instead of just taking a PR listicle at face value. For instance, the very first thing mentioned on that list is Alzheimer's. Go ahead and look into what the ISS actually did with regards to Alzheimer's, and you see a lot of "this has the potential to teach us more about the disease," without any evidence that anything was ever learned. There's a reason why you don't hear researcher's working on these diseases go "well, we expect a huge breakthrough once this ISS experiment is done!" This is the problem every time this gets discussed. People just run a Gish Gallop of copying and pasting a big list of vague claims from the NASA PR department, without bothering to look at the actual claims to see if they're accurate. When you do, they're invariably far less than they're made out to be.
  - esseph 1y ago
    So many of the things we use today on a daily basis came from having a manned space program. It used to be that in the 1960s we were spending about 4.4% of the total federal budget on the space program. Since the 1970s, it's gone down to around 0.71%. Since the 2010s, it's gone down even further to 0.3% - 0.4%. We've also not pushed much for talent in the federal government by way of salary and perks. Despite these challenges, there are a whole host of technologies, medical treatments, navigational advancements, etc. we would not have without simply being in space. Even accounting for inflation adjusted dollars, the amount total spent in the history of NASA, across all programs, is absolutely miniscule to the technological and economic advancements that have come from it. There are around 1,600 published papers with data from the ISS, and those have been collectively cited over 14,000 times by other papers. That is a significant impact and can only be done by having people there.
    - actionfromafar 1y ago
      We have ad-tech now I guess.
    - pfdietz 1y ago
      > So many of the things we use today on a daily basis came from having a manned space program. What are these? If you say "integrated circuits" I'll point out that's largely a lie, unless by "space program" you mean "Minuteman II ICBMs". "Comes from NASA" ends up meaning "NASA was tagentially involved early on". And really, how could it ever be concluded NASA was essential? You'd need to argue the counterfactual that a technology would not have been developed otherwise, and how can one do that?
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago
Well, you have to quantify "waste" to make that claim. There are many arguments that the space shuttle program's side effects helped win the cold war, foster modern communications, inspire generations to study science, ... Those are good things, without stating its known direct accomplishments.
- gonzobonzo 1y ago
  People debate whether the Human Brain Project was a failure, despite the fact that it generated a lot of new research. In 2025 dollars, the cost for the Human Brain Project is just under $2 billion. In 2025 dollars, the Space Shuttle total cost is $311 billion. NASA spends about $3 billion every year on the ISS - more than the entire Human Brain Project. The problem is that people are able to look at the Human Brain Project, and say that despite important research coming out of it, it might not have been a good idea (again, this gets debated). But people act as if some research coming out of NASA's endeavors entirely justifies them. When people refuse to look at things critically, resources almost invariably end up misallocated.
  - ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago
    I am not saying that because good things happened that there was no waste. However, to say that nothing good came from (or can come from) something and it was a waste is stating something else entirely.
  - jajko 1y ago
    Not sure whats your problem, why can't we have both? Those are definitely not money wasted - for waste look at things in ballpark of trillions like meaningless wars for made up reasons that destabilized whole parts of world and killed millions of civilians, look at various ways ultra rich and their companies avoid paying even bare minimum taxes and contributing back to societies form which they siphoned those vast amounts of cash. These are peanuts which keep giving back to whole mankind and our future, instead of destroying it.
    - gonzobonzo 1y ago
somenameforme 1y ago
Putting a man on the Moon is something many view as humanity's greatest achievement, ever. Even if we ignore absolutely everything else, I think this alone makes it worth it. People need to be inspired. It's the spice of life. But if we look the future, the possibilities are even more enticing. Richard Nixon effectively cancelled human space flight after a series of Moon landings. Had he not, we could very well have a civilization on Mars today, industry in space, and who knows what else. I mean there's no realistic argument for why these things should be impossible given what we know today - they're certainly far less to strive for than putting a man on the Moon when starting from effectively nothing. And these achievements are no longer just flag poling, but stand to genuinely revolutionize humanity - to say nothing how inspiring such achievements will be. Perhaps we might live in a world where our grandchildren will again want to be scientists and astronauts, instead of YouTubers.
- gessha 1y ago
  > Putting a man on the Moon is something many view as humanity's greatest achievement, ever. Because the Americans have such an amazing propaganda department and had to rub it in to the Soviets even after flunking every other “space race”. As for canceling the space programs, if it wasn’t Nixon, it would’ve been done by any of the politicians following Hayek/Friedman economic policies - basically everyone after Nixon.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    It has nothing to do with propaganda. It's such an inherently unbelievable achievement that many have indeed begun to doubt we ever actually even did it. And that doubt is very easy to understand because in modern times many have lost the ability to think big, let alone actually do big things. I mean can you believe we put a person on the Moon, let alone at a time when a "super computer" would have had a millionth of the processing power of that cheap phone in your pocket? It's nothing short of stupefying. It's similar to how we still marvel at how people managed to build the pyramids. There, at least, there can be no doubt that they truly exist - but people have been debating, and aweing, at them for literally thousands of years. The Greeks, no amateurs to construction themselves, were debating how they such a thing could have been constructed all the way back in the 5th century BC! These great achievements are what define humanity. In the blink of an eye on the scale of time, most of every company, person, and thing you know of today will be gone and completely forgotten. The very few things that will stay with us are these grand achievements that define not only an era of humanity, but humanity itself.

esseph 1y ago

Idk, absolutely does fucking not at all look wasteful: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/20-breakthroughs-from-20-years-of-science-aboard-the-international-space-station/ https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/20-breakthroughs-from-...

gonzobonzo 1y ago
> Idk, absolutely does fucking not at all look wasteful It does if you actually look into at the facts instead of just taking a PR listicle at face value. For instance, the very first thing mentioned on that list is Alzheimer's. Go ahead and look into what the ISS actually did with regards to Alzheimer's, and you see a lot of "this has the potential to teach us more about the disease," without any evidence that anything was ever learned. There's a reason why you don't hear researcher's working on these diseases go "well, we expect a huge breakthrough once this ISS experiment is done!" This is the problem every time this gets discussed. People just run a Gish Gallop of copying and pasting a big list of vague claims from the NASA PR department, without bothering to look at the actual claims to see if they're accurate. When you do, they're invariably far less than they're made out to be.
- esseph 1y ago
  So many of the things we use today on a daily basis came from having a manned space program. It used to be that in the 1960s we were spending about 4.4% of the total federal budget on the space program. Since the 1970s, it's gone down to around 0.71%. Since the 2010s, it's gone down even further to 0.3% - 0.4%. We've also not pushed much for talent in the federal government by way of salary and perks. Despite these challenges, there are a whole host of technologies, medical treatments, navigational advancements, etc. we would not have without simply being in space. Even accounting for inflation adjusted dollars, the amount total spent in the history of NASA, across all programs, is absolutely miniscule to the technological and economic advancements that have come from it. There are around 1,600 published papers with data from the ISS, and those have been collectively cited over 14,000 times by other papers. That is a significant impact and can only be done by having people there.
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    We have ad-tech now I guess.
  - pfdietz 1y ago
    > So many of the things we use today on a daily basis came from having a manned space program. What are these? If you say "integrated circuits" I'll point out that's largely a lie, unless by "space program" you mean "Minuteman II ICBMs". "Comes from NASA" ends up meaning "NASA was tagentially involved early on". And really, how could it ever be concluded NASA was essential? You'd need to argue the counterfactual that a technology would not have been developed otherwise, and how can one do that?

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago

Well, you have to quantify "waste" to make that claim. There are many arguments that the space shuttle program's side effects helped win the cold war, foster modern communications, inspire generations to study science, ... Those are good things, without stating its known direct accomplishments.

gonzobonzo 1y ago
People debate whether the Human Brain Project was a failure, despite the fact that it generated a lot of new research. In 2025 dollars, the cost for the Human Brain Project is just under $2 billion. In 2025 dollars, the Space Shuttle total cost is $311 billion. NASA spends about $3 billion every year on the ISS - more than the entire Human Brain Project. The problem is that people are able to look at the Human Brain Project, and say that despite important research coming out of it, it might not have been a good idea (again, this gets debated). But people act as if some research coming out of NASA's endeavors entirely justifies them. When people refuse to look at things critically, resources almost invariably end up misallocated.
- ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago
  I am not saying that because good things happened that there was no waste. However, to say that nothing good came from (or can come from) something and it was a waste is stating something else entirely.
- jajko 1y ago
  Not sure whats your problem, why can't we have both? Those are definitely not money wasted - for waste look at things in ballpark of trillions like meaningless wars for made up reasons that destabilized whole parts of world and killed millions of civilians, look at various ways ultra rich and their companies avoid paying even bare minimum taxes and contributing back to societies form which they siphoned those vast amounts of cash. These are peanuts which keep giving back to whole mankind and our future, instead of destroying it.
  - gonzobonzo 1y ago

somenameforme 1y ago

Putting a man on the Moon is something many view as humanity's greatest achievement, ever. Even if we ignore absolutely everything else, I think this alone makes it worth it. People need to be inspired. It's the spice of life. But if we look the future, the possibilities are even more enticing. Richard Nixon effectively cancelled human space flight after a series of Moon landings. Had he not, we could very well have a civilization on Mars today, industry in space, and who knows what else. I mean there's no realistic argument for why these things should be impossible given what we know today - they're certainly far less to strive for than putting a man on the Moon when starting from effectively nothing. And these achievements are no longer just flag poling, but stand to genuinely revolutionize humanity - to say nothing how inspiring such achievements will be. Perhaps we might live in a world where our grandchildren will again want to be scientists and astronauts, instead of YouTubers.

gessha 1y ago
> Putting a man on the Moon is something many view as humanity's greatest achievement, ever. Because the Americans have such an amazing propaganda department and had to rub it in to the Soviets even after flunking every other “space race”. As for canceling the space programs, if it wasn’t Nixon, it would’ve been done by any of the politicians following Hayek/Friedman economic policies - basically everyone after Nixon.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  It has nothing to do with propaganda. It's such an inherently unbelievable achievement that many have indeed begun to doubt we ever actually even did it. And that doubt is very easy to understand because in modern times many have lost the ability to think big, let alone actually do big things. I mean can you believe we put a person on the Moon, let alone at a time when a "super computer" would have had a millionth of the processing power of that cheap phone in your pocket? It's nothing short of stupefying. It's similar to how we still marvel at how people managed to build the pyramids. There, at least, there can be no doubt that they truly exist - but people have been debating, and aweing, at them for literally thousands of years. The Greeks, no amateurs to construction themselves, were debating how they such a thing could have been constructed all the way back in the 5th century BC! These great achievements are what define humanity. In the blink of an eye on the scale of time, most of every company, person, and thing you know of today will be gone and completely forgotten. The very few things that will stay with us are these grand achievements that define not only an era of humanity, but humanity itself.