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One thing that space exploration detractors seem to have a difficult thing comprehending is exactly what happens to money spent on a space program. Seemingly,

by jlgreco 13y ago

One thing that space exploration detractors seem to have a difficult thing comprehending is exactly what happens to money spent on a space program. Seemingly, they are under the delusion that all that money gets stuffed into a rocket and blasted into space, never to be seen again. Of course the material cost of the rocket stages and probes/satellites is quite small, the vast majority of money spent on space exploration is spent on earth. Paying earth engineers earth dollars that they will in turn spend on earth. That 25 Billion USD Apollo program? That money didn't get sent to the Moon, damn near all of that money was spent in America. Hell, think of it this way: India needs satellites, so they can either dump money into another country that will build and launch those satellites for India, or they can dump that money back into India and develop those capabilities themselves. How could you possibly fault India for keeping their space money domestic?

bcoates 13y ago
How is consuming billions of dollars of the time of talented specialists a good thing in and of itself? There's an argument that it's the best possible thing they could be doing, or that India's space program is extremely cost effective, etc. But an expenditure is a loss not a gain--otherwise we could make ourselves rich by breaking all the windows in the world.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- kamakazizuru 13y ago
  I really tried to understand this - but completely fail to. Can you try and make any sense at all? How in the world is something productive - that leads to mankind as a whole gaining knowledge and information AND to India bolstering national pride and marketing itself as a Space logistics provider to the world - even remotely comparable to breaking windows? Geez - by your logic everyone should keep money in their mattress and go to bed.
  - fspeech 13y ago
    The leading comment stated that expenditure is not cost. In that context the response is to the point. Your argument that it is a cost-benefit analysis is of course correct. But that is consistent with arguing that one can not simply wave the cost away as if it is not real.
  - anopows 13y ago
    I think what he refers to is the broken window fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window It is not about, if the US space program was better/worse than the Indian one. But that we don't know the alternative outcome of a lot of smart people working, not on the space program, but on many different fields that could lead to a greater outcome than this one project (the work would be less visible to the public than one shiny big project but in the end there is (in my opinion) more gain for the people, because the market responds generally better to the needs of people than a bureaucracy)
    - kamakazizuru 13y ago
      yes but that makes a large assumption that those smart people would rather work on something else. there isnt much stopping them from going elsewhere and working on space programs - if thats what they'd rather do. this way the country is atleast keeping those folks around - and making sure the money stays within the economy.
      - anopows 13y ago
        I will link to mikeash comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6692694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6692694 Money is not equal wealth. You can spend money in a circle of two people a thousand times, that doesn't make the two richer. Or you can add 0's at the end of all bills, that doesn't make anyone more rich either. I think it's more reasonable if we focus on wealth and not on money in this discussion.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  > How is consuming billions of dollars of the time of talented specialists a good thing in and of itself? Well, I didn't say that it is, I just argued that it wasn't a negative thing. Wealth was not destroyed or sent away to some far off land, just shuffled around within the same country. I will say that it is now though: One of India's greatest assets is their production of quality engineers and scientists. The more money they can dump into engineering and scientific endeavors, the better. Unlike breaking windows and then replacing them with identical windows, programs such as these actually create something: experience and expertise. In evoking the broken windows parable, you are mistaking a rocket for a window. Space programs do not destroy wealth to move money around. Perhaps if we senselessly knocked down a few buildings every time we built a rocket, you might have a point; space programs aren't "cash for clunkers", we aren't destroying wealth (old cars) to encourage the exchange of money (buying new cars).
  - fspeech 13y ago
    Opportunity cost is the equivalence of wealth lost.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      The opportunity cost of giving money to the ISRO is lower than what they would have done with that money otherwise. Money sent to the ISRO is an investment in India's domestic STEM talent. There are few better ways they could have possibly spent that money.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Wealth was destroyed and sent to some far off land, specifically to space and to Mars. The wealth is not the money, it's the spacecraft. The return may well be worth the cost, but it's wrong to say that wealth was simply moved around within India. Money was moved around within India. Wealth was concentrated into a small package and then blasted into space, never to be seen again.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      "the vast majority of money spent on space exploration is spent on earth." The wealth, or money, represented by the physical spacecraft is a rounding error. The thing isn't made of gold bullion. Wealth was used to develop and exercise engineering talent. Wealth was converted into talent, not a spacecraft. Those engineers were not sent to mars, some largely inconsequential piece of metal was. The wealth remains on earth, in India. If I spend money to take a bunch of CS classes at community college, then at the end of that do `rm -rf ~/files/school/cs`, did I just delete wealth? Of course not. The wealth was not concentrated into that directory, it was not lost or destroyed when I sent it off into oblivion.
- gsk 13y ago
  An oft-repeated well-meaning but rather ignorant objection. Read this http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  History. It's rare to put a lot of smart people on the same program and not produce something with enormous social and commercial benefit. DARPA's little side project still produces new things decades after the initial investment.
comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
It is true that the cost may well be less than sending a check to some American farmers to ship over rice, because the monies circulate locally. But ultimately that money could have built a big dam, or a few beautiful bridges, or a small power plant in a country with lots of power outages. I personally think it is money well spent, because it heralds the arrival of India to the world of first class satellite launching, by doing something Russia failed at the first few attempts. But that payoff is over the long term.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  What bridge or power plants programs have been defunded because of the IRSO? The reason the IRSO is able to accomplish so much is because it is so efficient and damn good at what it does. The reason why other agencies and organizations in India have such a hard time keeping bridges safe or the lights on is because they are massively inefficient in comparison. These other programs, given the IRSOs budget, would have accomplished approximately "fuck all" more than they did without it. The IRSO should not be punished for the failings of other aspects of the Indian government.
  - dopkew 13y ago
    It is ISRO: Indian Space Research Organisation
- kamaal 13y ago
  >>But ultimately that money could have built a big dam, or a few beautiful bridges, or a small power plant in a country with lots of power outages. Why can't they be in parallel? And this is some what unfair to the people at ISRO. India spends a great deal of money on infrastructure too, bulk of that money is either stolen brazenly or sunk to corruption.
Arjuna 13y ago
Well said. From another perspective... I often look up at the night sky and think to myself: how many civilizations are gone, simply because they failed to have the vision to leave their home planet? A great line from a t-shirt: "Asteroids... are nature's way of asking: 'How's that space program coming along?'"
- jlgreco 13y ago
  I fear that the "Great Filter" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_filter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_filter) is less likely to be a big rock or hunk of ice whacking planets full of the uninspired, but rather the speed of light necessitating dense civilizations to minimize communication latency. The sooner we expand, the better, because we are only going to become more addicted to information and instantaneous species-wide communication.
  - wozniacki 13y ago
    Could you elaborate on a) communication latency b) addicted to information and c) instantaneous species-wide communication. and how those are greater risk factors?
mikeash 13y ago
Money is the wrong thing to look at. You can observe this by how easy it is to fall into the trap of thinking that destroying the money would be a huge waste. It wouldn't. Money, by itself, has no value. It's only useful in how you can use it to obtain goods and services. Destroying money reduces your own ability to obtain goods and services, but doesn't actually destroy wealth, as everyone else's ability to obtain goods and services increases to compensate. While wealth is typically measured in money, wealth consists of goods and services. The fact that the money recirculates in the economy is irrelevant to the question of waste. If they wasted the money, it essentially means that the goods and services purchased with it were squandered. So, forget the money for a moment. Analyze it like this: a bunch of engineers and technicians spent thousands or millions of collective hours. High quality aluminum, steel, electronics, etc., were used. And the result is a spacecraft. That time and those resources could be used to do something else. Perhaps something better, like build schools or factories. That is the argument being made. I'm not saying it's necessarily correct (this mission doesn't seem like it's very expensive in the grand scheme of things, and the benefits for science, technology, and just plain prestige seem well worth it) but it is at least sensible in its foundations.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  This is little more than "why are we spending money on electronic gadgets when cancer still needs to be cured", an argument that has zero traction in this community. It doesn't suddenly start making sense when the topic is space. Factories and schools are not failing to be built because of a deficient in engineering talent caused by the IRSO.
  - paganel 13y ago
    > This is little more than "why are we spending money on electronic gadgets when cancer still needs to be cured", an argument that has zero traction in this community. It doesn't suddenly start making sense when the topic is space. Then the people that criticize space exploration based on similar arguments would be stupid to do that. In the long run (which may not be that long after all) we do need to get off this planet in order to survive as a species. This is just a fact, is how the observable Universe works.
graeme 13y ago
I'm all for space exploration, but this is the broken window fallacy. Those earth engineers could be doing other things. So if space exploration were in fact a worthless goal, then we'd be paying intelligent people to waste their time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window (I'm only addressing your first two paragraphs. Your third paragraph switches tact by arguing about the positive benefits of space exploration funding)
- rikacomet 13y ago
  and then we have no engineers who can accomplish anything related to space exploration when time comes for humanity to explore beyond earth majorly? You are suggesting we weaken our foundations. A talent pool takes a lot of generations. No one can say America or some other country will do the space thingy, you go work on poor. Mind you, these so called engineers and other workers are free independant INDIANS, who can do whatever they want, join any field they want to, work towards goal they collectively set. There are many unproductive things, .. drugs/prostitution/trafficking has billions of $ involved each year. We would rather spend energy in making those people productive, if anything.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    There exists a strange notion that engineers have some form of responsibility that goes above and beyond what 'normal' people have. Anyone can do anything they like with their lives... unless they are an engineer, at which point they suddenly become obligated to work on charitable endeavors. Decide to write novels? "That's nice, what a nice career choice." Decide to write iphone applications? "How the hell can you sit there programming iphone applications when you could be using your intellect to fight hunger!? There are more important things than iphone apps!"
    - saraid216 13y ago
      No, I've heard novelists get the same flak. And social justice activists, though I don't think I've ever heard privacy advocates take it. I was going to say I haven't heard bankers get it, but I think I recall a case or two.
wtbob 13y ago
That's the broken window fallacy rearing its ugly head yet again. That money could be spent on a Mars program, or it could be spent on feeding people, or on fancy dinners for rulers, or on anti-corruption investigations, or on a sports stadium, or...
seanlinmt 13y ago
There are other benefits too. http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-letter-to-a-nun-in-africa/ http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a...

by jlgreco 13y ago

bcoates 13y ago

How is consuming billions of dollars of the time of talented specialists a good thing in and of itself? There's an argument that it's the best possible thing they could be doing, or that India's space program is extremely cost effective, etc. But an expenditure is a loss not a gain--otherwise we could make ourselves rich by breaking all the windows in the world.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
kamakazizuru 13y ago
I really tried to understand this - but completely fail to. Can you try and make any sense at all? How in the world is something productive - that leads to mankind as a whole gaining knowledge and information AND to India bolstering national pride and marketing itself as a Space logistics provider to the world - even remotely comparable to breaking windows? Geez - by your logic everyone should keep money in their mattress and go to bed.
- fspeech 13y ago
  The leading comment stated that expenditure is not cost. In that context the response is to the point. Your argument that it is a cost-benefit analysis is of course correct. But that is consistent with arguing that one can not simply wave the cost away as if it is not real.
- anopows 13y ago
  I think what he refers to is the broken window fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window It is not about, if the US space program was better/worse than the Indian one. But that we don't know the alternative outcome of a lot of smart people working, not on the space program, but on many different fields that could lead to a greater outcome than this one project (the work would be less visible to the public than one shiny big project but in the end there is (in my opinion) more gain for the people, because the market responds generally better to the needs of people than a bureaucracy)
  - kamakazizuru 13y ago
    yes but that makes a large assumption that those smart people would rather work on something else. there isnt much stopping them from going elsewhere and working on space programs - if thats what they'd rather do. this way the country is atleast keeping those folks around - and making sure the money stays within the economy.
    - anopows 13y ago
      I will link to mikeash comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6692694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6692694 Money is not equal wealth. You can spend money in a circle of two people a thousand times, that doesn't make the two richer. Or you can add 0's at the end of all bills, that doesn't make anyone more rich either. I think it's more reasonable if we focus on wealth and not on money in this discussion.
jlgreco 13y ago
> How is consuming billions of dollars of the time of talented specialists a good thing in and of itself? Well, I didn't say that it is, I just argued that it wasn't a negative thing. Wealth was not destroyed or sent away to some far off land, just shuffled around within the same country. I will say that it is now though: One of India's greatest assets is their production of quality engineers and scientists. The more money they can dump into engineering and scientific endeavors, the better. Unlike breaking windows and then replacing them with identical windows, programs such as these actually create something: experience and expertise. In evoking the broken windows parable, you are mistaking a rocket for a window. Space programs do not destroy wealth to move money around. Perhaps if we senselessly knocked down a few buildings every time we built a rocket, you might have a point; space programs aren't "cash for clunkers", we aren't destroying wealth (old cars) to encourage the exchange of money (buying new cars).
- fspeech 13y ago
  Opportunity cost is the equivalence of wealth lost.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    The opportunity cost of giving money to the ISRO is lower than what they would have done with that money otherwise. Money sent to the ISRO is an investment in India's domestic STEM talent. There are few better ways they could have possibly spent that money.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Wealth was destroyed and sent to some far off land, specifically to space and to Mars. The wealth is not the money, it's the spacecraft. The return may well be worth the cost, but it's wrong to say that wealth was simply moved around within India. Money was moved around within India. Wealth was concentrated into a small package and then blasted into space, never to be seen again.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    "the vast majority of money spent on space exploration is spent on earth." The wealth, or money, represented by the physical spacecraft is a rounding error. The thing isn't made of gold bullion. Wealth was used to develop and exercise engineering talent. Wealth was converted into talent, not a spacecraft. Those engineers were not sent to mars, some largely inconsequential piece of metal was. The wealth remains on earth, in India. If I spend money to take a bunch of CS classes at community college, then at the end of that do `rm -rf ~/files/school/cs`, did I just delete wealth? Of course not. The wealth was not concentrated into that directory, it was not lost or destroyed when I sent it off into oblivion.
gsk 13y ago
An oft-repeated well-meaning but rather ignorant objection. Read this http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html
mkr-hn 13y ago
History. It's rare to put a lot of smart people on the same program and not produce something with enormous social and commercial benefit. DARPA's little side project still produces new things decades after the initial investment.

comrade_ogilvy 13y ago

It is true that the cost may well be less than sending a check to some American farmers to ship over rice, because the monies circulate locally. But ultimately that money could have built a big dam, or a few beautiful bridges, or a small power plant in a country with lots of power outages. I personally think it is money well spent, because it heralds the arrival of India to the world of first class satellite launching, by doing something Russia failed at the first few attempts. But that payoff is over the long term.

jlgreco 13y ago
What bridge or power plants programs have been defunded because of the IRSO? The reason the IRSO is able to accomplish so much is because it is so efficient and damn good at what it does. The reason why other agencies and organizations in India have such a hard time keeping bridges safe or the lights on is because they are massively inefficient in comparison. These other programs, given the IRSOs budget, would have accomplished approximately "fuck all" more than they did without it. The IRSO should not be punished for the failings of other aspects of the Indian government.
- dopkew 13y ago
  It is ISRO: Indian Space Research Organisation
kamaal 13y ago
>>But ultimately that money could have built a big dam, or a few beautiful bridges, or a small power plant in a country with lots of power outages. Why can't they be in parallel? And this is some what unfair to the people at ISRO. India spends a great deal of money on infrastructure too, bulk of that money is either stolen brazenly or sunk to corruption.

Arjuna 13y ago

Well said. From another perspective... I often look up at the night sky and think to myself: how many civilizations are gone, simply because they failed to have the vision to leave their home planet? A great line from a t-shirt: "Asteroids... are nature's way of asking: 'How's that space program coming along?'"

jlgreco 13y ago
I fear that the "Great Filter" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_filter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_filter) is less likely to be a big rock or hunk of ice whacking planets full of the uninspired, but rather the speed of light necessitating dense civilizations to minimize communication latency. The sooner we expand, the better, because we are only going to become more addicted to information and instantaneous species-wide communication.
- wozniacki 13y ago
  Could you elaborate on a) communication latency b) addicted to information and c) instantaneous species-wide communication. and how those are greater risk factors?

mikeash 13y ago

Money is the wrong thing to look at. You can observe this by how easy it is to fall into the trap of thinking that destroying the money would be a huge waste. It wouldn't. Money, by itself, has no value. It's only useful in how you can use it to obtain goods and services. Destroying money reduces your own ability to obtain goods and services, but doesn't actually destroy wealth, as everyone else's ability to obtain goods and services increases to compensate. While wealth is typically measured in money, wealth consists of goods and services. The fact that the money recirculates in the economy is irrelevant to the question of waste. If they wasted the money, it essentially means that the goods and services purchased with it were squandered. So, forget the money for a moment. Analyze it like this: a bunch of engineers and technicians spent thousands or millions of collective hours. High quality aluminum, steel, electronics, etc., were used. And the result is a spacecraft. That time and those resources could be used to do something else. Perhaps something better, like build schools or factories. That is the argument being made. I'm not saying it's necessarily correct (this mission doesn't seem like it's very expensive in the grand scheme of things, and the benefits for science, technology, and just plain prestige seem well worth it) but it is at least sensible in its foundations.

jlgreco 13y ago
This is little more than "why are we spending money on electronic gadgets when cancer still needs to be cured", an argument that has zero traction in this community. It doesn't suddenly start making sense when the topic is space. Factories and schools are not failing to be built because of a deficient in engineering talent caused by the IRSO.
- paganel 13y ago
  > This is little more than "why are we spending money on electronic gadgets when cancer still needs to be cured", an argument that has zero traction in this community. It doesn't suddenly start making sense when the topic is space. Then the people that criticize space exploration based on similar arguments would be stupid to do that. In the long run (which may not be that long after all) we do need to get off this planet in order to survive as a species. This is just a fact, is how the observable Universe works.

graeme 13y ago

I'm all for space exploration, but this is the broken window fallacy. Those earth engineers could be doing other things. So if space exploration were in fact a worthless goal, then we'd be paying intelligent people to waste their time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window (I'm only addressing your first two paragraphs. Your third paragraph switches tact by arguing about the positive benefits of space exploration funding)

rikacomet 13y ago
and then we have no engineers who can accomplish anything related to space exploration when time comes for humanity to explore beyond earth majorly? You are suggesting we weaken our foundations. A talent pool takes a lot of generations. No one can say America or some other country will do the space thingy, you go work on poor. Mind you, these so called engineers and other workers are free independant INDIANS, who can do whatever they want, join any field they want to, work towards goal they collectively set. There are many unproductive things, .. drugs/prostitution/trafficking has billions of $ involved each year. We would rather spend energy in making those people productive, if anything.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  There exists a strange notion that engineers have some form of responsibility that goes above and beyond what 'normal' people have. Anyone can do anything they like with their lives... unless they are an engineer, at which point they suddenly become obligated to work on charitable endeavors. Decide to write novels? "That's nice, what a nice career choice." Decide to write iphone applications? "How the hell can you sit there programming iphone applications when you could be using your intellect to fight hunger!? There are more important things than iphone apps!"
  - saraid216 13y ago
    No, I've heard novelists get the same flak. And social justice activists, though I don't think I've ever heard privacy advocates take it. I was going to say I haven't heard bankers get it, but I think I recall a case or two.

wtbob 13y ago

That's the broken window fallacy rearing its ugly head yet again. That money could be spent on a Mars program, or it could be spent on feeding people, or on fancy dinners for rulers, or on anti-corruption investigations, or on a sports stadium, or...

seanlinmt 13y ago

There are other benefits too. http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-letter-to-a-nun-in-africa/ http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a...