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"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. T
by 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.
- auctiontheory 13y agodid I just delete wealth? Of course not. Exactly. Because you were well-trained to protect yourself with aliases. Now if you'd done '\rm <etc.>', it would be another story.
- jlgreco 13y agoWho uses aliases to prevent the deletion of directories? The directory of source code created during my education is not something that wealth was poured into. Wealth was poured into my brain, that directory is just a byproduct. If I, and all of those engineers, technicians, and scientists, gave ourselves brain-damage, then and only then would all of that wealth be destroyed.
- quinnchr 13y agoWell, you could argue the labor theory of value, and since that directory consumed your labor it theoretically has value. Does it have value to anyone but you? Probably not.
- jlgreco 13y agoIt would have some value to me, but not much in the grand scheme of things. I don't look at that directory and think "Welp, that was [X]-grand well spent", because just getting that directory wasn't worth many thousands of dollars to me. That's not where the wealth represented by all of those thousands of dollars went, so the wealth represented by all of those thousands of dollars cannot be destroyed by deleting it.
- quinnchr 13y agoI agree, I'm really just arguing technicalities here. The majority of your labor went into acquiring the knowledge, not writing the code in that directory. But that directory still holds value, however minuscule it may be, and it is still being destroyed. If I deleted that directory I would think "Welp, that was [x]-hours of time well spent," which is where it derives it's value* not from the money I spent on my education. *That is, of course, if you ascribe to the labor theory of value.
- nitrogen 13y agoI do like how some distributions ship with an alias of rm to 'rm -i'. But, I prefer having the raw power of rm available at all times, because it led to a habit of checking everything into git, backing up critical files, and always thinking twice before I type -rf or hit Enter.
- mikeash 13y agoThe cost of satellites and rocket launches would tend to disagree. They are not cheap. I won't dispute that valuable talent was also developed, but the cost of the hardware is hardly "a rounding error". The fact that you persist in confusing money with wealth makes me think you haven't really understood my point. Gold is not all that useful by itself, so launching a bunch of gold into space would not be throwing wealth away the way launching an expensive and fancy satellite is. A Mars mission is not undergrad CS work. It's a serious project. If we deleted all copies of the Linux kernel from the world, have you destroyed wealth? Of course you have.
- nzp 13y ago> Gold is not all that useful by itself, so launching a bunch of gold into space would not be throwing wealth away the way launching an expensive and fancy satellite is. At the point of launch the satellite would be even less valuable (in the use value sense, which is what you're referring to) than a bunch of gold. At least gold could be put to some use (it is a useful metal), while a satellite's only useful purpose is to be launched into and operate in space. It's why a satellite exists, you would lose wealth only if it wasn't launched.
- vinceguidry 13y agoThe most commonly reported figure for the cost of the Mars mission is US$72 million. There's apartments in NYC/London that cost more than that.
- mikeash 13y agoAt no point am I arguing that the mission was too expensive or anything like that. I really wish that, just once, I could criticize a bad argument without everyone thinking that I support the opposing view.
- vinceguidry 13y agoYou said they weren't cheap. In this case, they were.