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At the risk of turning political, it's a great example of how our taxes are wasted. Playing with space toys shouldn't be funded with taxpayer money. I'm sure I

At the risk of turning political, it's a great example of how our taxes are wasted. Playing with space toys shouldn't be funded with taxpayer money. I'm sure I'll get downvoted to hell for this, but why should my money be funding this? Sorry, but it has no benefit whatsoever. edit: Instead of downvoting a dissenting voice, why not argue your case - why should taxpayers fund space toys? edit2: Well, looks like I'm banned from commenting. Good job dealing with those that don't agree with you...

return0 12y ago
I 'd dare you to specify what's more important where your money should be spent.
- throwit99 12y ago
  Health, welfare, lowering taxes, employment.... y'know, things that enrich real peoples lives. Space toys and exploration are fun for those working on them, but will this event transform civilisation? Nope. Did the moon landing really transform civilisation? Nope.
  - bennyg 12y ago
    Not sure if you're trolling... http://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/benefits.html http://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/benefits.html for some. A comment above has many others listed.
  - dwild 12y ago
    Does space exploration has the potential to transform civilization? Yeah it actually does. It represent funding in research, it represent dreams, it represent our future. It's also an amazing collaborative project between countries. Also let not forget that NASA only represent 0.5% of the US federal budget. Do you really want to lower your federal tax by 0.5%? Seriously? Please lower your entertainment budget, stop alcohol and coffee consumption and donate all that money to a charity. If you actually believe that 0.5% should be put somewhere else because you doesn't believe they really transform civilization, then all that money that you use would probably be better somewhere else too.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      I'm in favor of the space exploration spending, but your argument is terrible. (S)he could just as easily reply that if you believe that space exploration has so much potential to transform civilization, why don't you donate all your entertainment budget & etc to NASA?
      - dwild 12y ago
        He said that it wasn't worth it because it doesn't really transform civilization. That's his point. If it's the criteria to fund something, then how his expense can be worth it too? Why don't I donate all to NASA? Because I never said that it was worth our money more than something else that worth more than what my entertainment is worth. (Sorry if it a little hard to understands, english isn't my first language, I'm still working on it). Also I never said that it has so much potential, I'm curious to know where you found this in my comment. What I said is barely enough to said that it can actually compete against his alternative, I was really counting on the fact that it was only representing 0.5% of the budget to make it seems worthwhile. EDIT: Hopefully you still haven't read this comment, I found a better way to explain what I said. He said that it wasn't worth it because it doesn't really transform civilization. I said that it was clearly worth its 0.5% of the funding. I also said that if it's not worth it because it doesn't really transform civilization, how could his own budget can be justified (and to avoid him answering that in a way, his job does transform civilization enough to be worth his salary, I only included expense that could be avoided without affecting too much his job).
        icebraining 12y ago
        If it's the criteria to fund something The point is that the criteria for the State/government doesn't have to be the same as the criteria for personal expenses.
        icebraining 12y ago
        Also I never said that it has so much potential, I'm curious to know where you found this in my comment. What. The first two sentences of your comment: > Does space exploration has the potential to transform civilization? Yeah it actually does.
  - antimagic 12y ago
    You're kidding right - this would have lowered my taxes by about 20 cents a year, or 3E50 total. Careful not to spend it all at once. So much for lowering taxes. Simply put, Rosetta's budget was about 70m Euros per year over 20 years. That's like funding maybe two schools, or one hospital ward, spread over the whole EU. None of these enrich humanity as much as Rosetta is. As for employment, well, the project is creating exactly the right sort of jobs for the European economy - that money is being spent in Europe, helping to usefully occupy the European aerospace industry, and thereby keeping engineers and scientists in work.
    - johndevor 12y ago
      >That's like funding maybe two schools, or one hospital ward, spread over the whole EU. None of these enrich humanity as much as Rosetta is. Really? You're basically saying you'd prefer a robot on a comet over thousands of healthy and educated peers. Who are you to decide this?
      - acqq 12y ago
        It's much better to compare the cost of the whole Rosetta mission (cca 1 billion EUR) to the cost of the just one type of fighter jets, just for the UK: cca 30 billion EUR. Apparently the fleet is only around 100 planes at the time, giving the cost of the Rosetta for the whole Europe equal to the cost to the UK for just three planes in the UK military fleet of a 100 of such planes. It's mind boggling.
      - jarek 12y ago
        > Really? You're basically saying you'd prefer a robot on a comet over thousands of healthy and educated peers. Who are you to decide this? Coming from an American this is pretty ironic. The choice in ESA-funding countries isn't between two schools and illiterate children, it's between further improvement to two good schools already affording excellent social mobility and a comet landing. As for who decides this, the voters do as part of the democratic process.
  - TaylorAlexander 12y ago
    How do you know the moon landing didn't transform civilization? Did you try living in an alternate timeline where it did not happen and find things to be the same? What about all those scientists who learned to build rockets, who would later go on to help NASA launch the first weather satellites? What about the work done that led to the formation of the global positioning system? Are you sure it would have happened in the same timeframe by some other actors if NASA hadn't gone to the moon? Where would the scientists have gotten their training? What would have been the economic rationale for doing it? Remember, too, that the moon landings were not scientific exploration. It was a military operation to prove supremacy. The russians put a man in space one month earlier, so Kennedy basically said "Yeah? you put a man in space? well we'll drop one on the Moon and then bring him back!" It was an insane commitment to proving our supremacy. We sent fighter jet pilots on the first several missions, and didn't send a single scientist until several missions in. Meanwhile, exploring the origins of comets helps us understand how the early solar system formed, which helps us understand how the universe formed, which helps us understand physics at a fundamental level, which helps us make better microchips, solar panels, and superconductors that make the tech in our world better at serving our needs. It has nothing to do with "fun for those working on them", though I'm sure they have fun. Truck drivers probably have some fun too, but that doesn't mean delivering goods isn't worthwhile for legitimate economic reasons. Hard science is the same - it costs relatively little and the payoff, while abstract, is huge. If you want to complain about spending, complain about military spending. In the US it is 70X NASA's budget, and 2x the military budget at the beginning of 2001. THAT is bloat. We know how to manufacture bombs. Making more doesn't do much for innovation. Funding science does.
    - lentil_soup 12y ago
      WOW! the best answer by far in here, thanks for your comment it really proves all the benefits the ENTIRE human race gets from this (relative) small investment.
    - ButchDriveshaft 12y ago
      I had to create an account just to thank you for this response. I always recommend anyone wondering about whether or not space exploration is worth it to view the following amazing video compilations. "We Stopped Dreaming - Episode 1": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc "We Stopped Dreaming - Episode 2": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFO2usVjfQc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFO2usVjfQc
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    It's how a large chunk of your fellow citizens want their money spent. And that's more than enough reason in itself. Welcome to democracy.
  - return0 12y ago
    Sure i could point out that this mission could indirectly advance health technology (landing a robot on a comet is no small technological feat. The side-benefits of big research projects, such as the WWW that allows us to argue here, are no small thing) But most importantly it bothers me that you think that risking a relatively small amount of money to expand our limits is not important. IF it were a "showoff" mission or a re-enactment of the moon landing, i would agree with you but this is about going into unknown territory. When Columbus set off to find a short path to the Indies, i bet someone would think the money was frivolously spent, but this guy never made it to the history books. If you insist that we shouldn't take risks like this, you are literally asking the civilization to stop.
- innguest 12y ago
  Why is the criterion importance? How about, governments shouldn't require protection money from its citizens? The way it used to be before 1913.
  - ameister14 12y ago
    The way it used to be...in the United States, as regards solely taxes on income in peacetime?
  - rmc 12y ago
    There were taxes before 1913
    - johndevor 12y ago
      Not really though. Microscopic compared to today.
      - return0 12y ago
        Then undoubtedly they correlated with better life standards by a large margin.
        johndevor 12y ago
        Are you being sarcastic? Because that statement is not an argument at all.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    I was unaware that taxes were such a recent invention. Clearly I've been misinformed about history. What other insights can you provide?
sbarre 12y ago
Ok I'll bite. Do you really believe space exploration has "no benefit whatsoever", or are you just trolling? A cursory Google search returns all kinds of counter-points to your claim. If you really do believe this, perhaps some brief research of your own will change your mind..
- innguest 12y ago
  Have you searched the other side of the argument? Perhaps then you'll understand why we're against this.
  - kamaal 12y ago
    I've never understood the 'this OR that' argument. For the budgets nation states have, the spending is so diversified, one side can hardly complain that they are being treated unfairly or others are getting greater share of the budget. You can do two or more things at one time, especially when they are totally unrelated. I've heard this argument over and over during India's Mars mission on News debates, where people come on prime time television and complain health care, education or other sectors aren't doing enough progress so why go to Mars. So what should those people do? If others don't do their job properly should they stop doing theirs? If there are other aspects of society not doing enough progress, lets fix that instead of stopping hardworking people from making progress else where.
  - crocowhile 12y ago
    Just trying to see your perspective, here: the LHC costed $15B of tax payer money; the NIH invests ~$30B every year in medical research. Do you also think those are example of how to waste money?
vdaniuk 12y ago
This opinion is short-sighted. There may be zero practical attributable scientific or engineering benefits, though I am sure there will be plentiful. However, such epic events are extremely inspiring! It is massively televized, broadcasted, discussed on social media and news aggregators. This may be a single trigger that will send many curious young guys and girls towards STEM professions. And we need them inspired, motivated and engaged to build a better world for all humanity. So yeah, it has at least ONE benefit.
fsloth 12y ago
It depends. What's your definition of 'benefit'?
crazypyro 12y ago
Because it has huge benefits and one could argue that the money that was funneled into NASA during the moon landings gave tax payers much more bang for their buck than all kinds of other research, social programs, bank bailouts, etc. These sorts of human achievement defining missions are really hundreds of thousands of hours of engineering dedicated to solving some of the hardest problems we can dream up. You are way too short sighted if you cannot imagine the enormous benefits of having dedicated engineers, scientists and researchers working on difficult problems that don't have model-able, short-term returns. The exact types of problems that people only concerned with short-term balance sheets avoid like the plague. The exact types of problems that propel our entire civilization into new ages of discovery and technology.
- throwit99 12y ago
  So effectively, you want to subsidise scientists working on some arbitrary aim (Space exploration), in the hope they'll invent cool stuff you can spin off... I don't think you need to subsidise science like this. Did we really get "propelled" into new age of technology half a century ago? Did the moon landing really change anything here on earth? Technology would have advanced just fine without it.
  - charonn0 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies
  - bennyg 12y ago
    What other arbitrary aims would you rather scientists work on, since all aims are arbitrary anyways? I don't think you really understand how scientific research works at all. The engineering effort of NASA took a bunch of disparate scientific discoveries and pieced them together to land humans on the moon. Don't tell me you don't think that sparked major economic development in this country for decades. One of the largest reasons America is an international economic powerhouse is the space race and the need for technological innovation during the cold war. The entirety of humanity has been involved with exploring our curiosities. Exploring our curiosities tends to lead towards societal/scientific progress. Space is one of those.
stellar678 12y ago
Here is a nice long list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies
- throwit99 12y ago
  Do you really think that firstly, those technologies only exist because of NASA, and secondly that the cheapest way to innovate is to pick some arbitrary aim (Space exploration) and then spin off lots of innovation from it? You could do a better job just taking the money spent on space exploration, and opening some innovation/invention centers. edit: banned now, so I can't add any comments. It's really surprising just how extreme the religion of science is sometimes. Scary.
  - sondr3 12y ago
    Well, they do now and from what we've seen funding space research leads to loads of technology. We already have innovation/invention centers, but having loads of people focused on one incredibly hard task will bring out lots of awesome stuff.
  - csallen 12y ago
    Space exploration isn't all about side-effects. Humanity cannot survive on the Earth for eternity. Eventually we will have to move on to other habitable worlds. Doing so is an almost unimaginably difficult engineering task. This reason alone is sufficient to justify space exploration in my mind. On a shorter time scale, there are massive amounts of resources in space that, with better technology, we could theoretically harvest for our use here on Earth. Once again, this is incredibly difficult to accomplish and won't happen without learning from experiments. In the present, satellites are extremely beneficial to humanity, and factor into our everyday lives. In addition, space telescopes and space stations facilitate research that couldn't be done on Earth.
    - ommunist 12y ago
      Yeah, m8. With Musk to Mars!
matthewmacleod 12y ago
why should taxpayers fund space toys? They're scientific research, not 'toys'.
- ommunist 12y ago
  Because taxpayers are able to pay that much taxes today, because Newton and Leibnitz were playing toys like that some time ago.
rybosome 12y ago
Nations have a long history of funding exploratory ventures. It is generally understood that the process is useful for a variety of reasons: it creates jobs, there is a small chance that something practical could be discovered, and most importantly it satisfies a basic human need to know more. With this mission in particular, we may be able to answer some very fundamental questions about the arrival of organic compounds (or even life) on Earth...surely that's worth spending some money on? You have the right to feel however you want, but a world without curiosity would be pretty sad; the internet wouldn't even exist for us to have this discussion.
- tedks 12y ago
  Hijacking the top comment in this subthread to make a meta-complaint: The comment-parents viewpoint is perfectly valid, but has been censored because of disagreement within the broader HN community. For all the talk about "free speech" that HN does when the topic is, say, not objectifying women, or making racial minorities feel included in tech, it certainly seems to perform an about-face when confronted with... objecting to space science as a policy. 1. Doesn't it seem a little outlandish to have your priorities so far out of whack with respect to the number of non-whites in the world, versus the number of space scientists in the world? 2. Why should the comment-parent be flagkilled for expressing an unpopular opinion?
  - incision 12y ago
    >"Why should the comment-parent be flagkilled for expressing an unpopular opinion?" A comment shouldn't be killed for expressing an unpopular opinion and I don't think this one was. That comment is a perfect example of how not to state an opinion, unpopular or otherwise. It states an opinion as absolute and demands proof otherwise while providing none of its own. This is recognized as awful, trollish behavior on any forum. Further, the opinion stated is derisive and emotional. Finally, the it begs for downvotes repeatedly. This is exactly the sort of thing that should be killed regardless of the view expressed.
  - tim333 12y ago
    I think it's being flagkilled for hijacking the top comment which seems bad from and probably deserves it. re "free speech" a corollary is that those reading said speech are free to call it dumb
ajuc 12y ago
Roseta mission is 1 400 000 000 euro. London summer olympics costed almost 10 000 000 000 euro. Consider the benefits. Landing on comets and knowing what materials are there (and how to detect that from distance) will eventually let humanity explore solar system. In next 10000 years it's almost sure there will be at least one global cataclysm (huge asteroid impact, ice age, global warming, methane-producing bacteria boom, some supervulcaon could go off). It's just statistics, we're in borrowed time anyway. How much would you pay to save human race?
- jafaku 12y ago
  How can one care about what will happen within the next 10,000 years?
  - prawn 12y ago
    How can you not? We are not talking about throwing away everything to insure ourselves against future catastrophe, we're putting a small portion towards a bit of futureproofing. Seems smart to me.
    - bdamm 12y ago
      Ah, that's just your DNA talking. Otherwise we could be immensely pleased with the amazing experience of being alive, and when our time is up allow Mother Universe to move on without us. Perhaps after we are wiped out, another better form of life will take hold and really do amazing things, fueled by our decay. Besides, it looks like our own behavior is going to do it for us, so might as well "love the bomb".
      - prawn 12y ago
        I guess that speaks to the dichotomy of urge in humans. We are equally as likely to sit on our butts staring mindlessly at something on a screen as we are to strive for extending the reaches and hopes of our species. I hope it could be us that will do those amazing things you mentioned.
      - 12y ago
pessimizer 12y ago
Good luck pushing that opinion amongst elites who are more likely to be the beneficiaries of space program spending than the victims of austerity. Space exploration for it's own sake is a self-perpetuating relic of the cold war.
- icebraining 12y ago
  How is space exploration categorically different from other kinds of scientific exploration?
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    In any number of ways, just as other types of scientific exploration are different from each other, and some seem to be worth spending billions on, and others are not. Do you have a more specific question?
ISL 12y ago
Your point is not unfounded, and it's our duty as research scientists to justify the value you receive for your money. There's a famous example where a US Senator asked a similar question of a research physicist prior to the establishment of Fermilab, specifically tailored toward defense application [1]. SENATOR PASTORE. Is there anything here that projects us in a position of being competitive with the Russians, with regard to this race? DR. WILSON. Only from a long-range point of view, of a developing technology. Otherwise, it has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about. In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending. To address your concerns more directly: Basic and exploratory research pushes scientists to extract the very highest performance one can get from known technology. On occasion, that technology can do something exceptional (precision timekeeping, GPS, vaccines, medical imaging, etc.). The highly-motivated people who do this work tend to be willing to do it at low salaries and with limited chance for advancement, simply because they love the field. You can think of it as a low-cost government-run VC fund that aims for the occasional spectacular payoff at multi-decade timescales. Another key benefit is education: research funding underpins the post-graduate education of most people in the physical scientists. Funding basic research, which companies won't usually touch, furthers the continuous supply of a top-notch skilled workforce for industry nationwide. Furthermore, in many fields, retaining a trained and knowledgeable corps of scientists is an efficient way to retain the capability to respond to sudden and important societal needs (Manhattan Project, Ebola, asteroid mitigation, Fukushima, etc.). I'm biased, as taxpayer dollars pay for my work, but I think you're getting a reasonable-to-excellent return on your investment. [1] http://history.fnal.gov/testimony.html http://history.fnal.gov/testimony.html
- eastbayjake 12y ago
  Fun Fact: Sen. Pastore was the grumpy committee chairman when Mr. Rogers gave that famous speech about the value of public television for children. I don't know if Dr. Wilson swayed Pastore to support more funding, but after listening to Mr. Rogers for six minutes Pastore switched from wanting to cut PBS funding in half to cheerleading for increased funding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q
dang 12y ago
> looks like I'm banned from commenting For anyone who's wondering, we haven't banned this account. What happens is that when karma gets low enough to be in outlier territory, comments get auto-killed. This is a longstanding anti-troll measure. In the future, we plan to have a "moderated" status for comments, rather than "dead", so that the community will be able to fix cases where the commenter is not a troll or has corrected their ways. In the meantime, if you ever notice something being [dead] unfairly, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is usually enough to correct it. (Edit: but do please allow for the variable latency of our email stack. We will get back to you, but there's no SLA on when.)
foxylad 12y ago
Once upon a time, long long ago, the most powerful dinosaurs got together to consider the proposal of a young pterodactyl. The pterodactyl had come up with the strange proposal that the other dinosaurs should bring her food while she concentrated on devising ways to fly higher. "Why should we all work harder so you can learn to fly higher?" roared a huge tyrannosaurus, and bit the pterodactyl's head clean off. So their kind never discovered ways to fly higher, and out of the atmosphere, and all the multitude of skills required detect comets and fly spacecraft to them to find out what they were made of. And then a comet hit them and they all died.
- tripzilch 12y ago
  You weren't there. This is not how it happened at all. The strong and mighty individualist T-Rex was enslaved by the communist mammals. The once idealistic Pterodactyl was forced to evolve into a chicken, bereft of its flight, today kept in captivity by the trillions, bred by robots, for meat and eggs. Their feathers fill our pillows. How ironic that Mankind's dreams are birthed atop their crushed wings. What gives us the right to land on this comet? Weren't the dinosaurs there first? What about our robots? Who fills their pillowcases? Or, as Eddy Lizzard once wisely said, "Do you have a flag?!!"
  - foxylad 12y ago
    +1 for Eddy Izzard!
kbart 12y ago
Wasted taxes? Are you serious? The outcome of this mission might be immense considering what possibilities are open if we manage to perfect such technologies. I'd say it's the greatest our race achievement after the Moon landing. Besides, the whole mission budget is only 1 billion euros (~1.2 billion dollars). If talking about wasting tax money, consider F-35 project which cost 1 trillion dollars and still counting, that's 1000 more than this mission.
- acqq 12y ago
  The unit cost of one single F-35 jet was in 2011 estimated to be around 300 million USD, that is, only three planes would pay for the whole (European, please note, financed by the tax of Europeans!) Rosetta mission. The US plans to buy 2443 such aircraft (of course, financed by the tax of US citizens). Do they really need so many of them? The military budget of the US was recently around 660 billion USD per year, that is, the US could finance some 600 Rosettas (each a multiple-decade project) every year with its military budget. Approximating the Rosetta life to 10 years, in these 10 years the US spent 6000 Rosettas for military. Or 18000 of F-35 fighter jets.

return0 12y ago

I 'd dare you to specify what's more important where your money should be spent.

throwit99 12y ago
Health, welfare, lowering taxes, employment.... y'know, things that enrich real peoples lives. Space toys and exploration are fun for those working on them, but will this event transform civilisation? Nope. Did the moon landing really transform civilisation? Nope.
- bennyg 12y ago
  Not sure if you're trolling... http://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/benefits.html http://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/benefits.html for some. A comment above has many others listed.
- dwild 12y ago
  Does space exploration has the potential to transform civilization? Yeah it actually does. It represent funding in research, it represent dreams, it represent our future. It's also an amazing collaborative project between countries. Also let not forget that NASA only represent 0.5% of the US federal budget. Do you really want to lower your federal tax by 0.5%? Seriously? Please lower your entertainment budget, stop alcohol and coffee consumption and donate all that money to a charity. If you actually believe that 0.5% should be put somewhere else because you doesn't believe they really transform civilization, then all that money that you use would probably be better somewhere else too.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    I'm in favor of the space exploration spending, but your argument is terrible. (S)he could just as easily reply that if you believe that space exploration has so much potential to transform civilization, why don't you donate all your entertainment budget & etc to NASA?
    - dwild 12y ago
      He said that it wasn't worth it because it doesn't really transform civilization. That's his point. If it's the criteria to fund something, then how his expense can be worth it too? Why don't I donate all to NASA? Because I never said that it was worth our money more than something else that worth more than what my entertainment is worth. (Sorry if it a little hard to understands, english isn't my first language, I'm still working on it). Also I never said that it has so much potential, I'm curious to know where you found this in my comment. What I said is barely enough to said that it can actually compete against his alternative, I was really counting on the fact that it was only representing 0.5% of the budget to make it seems worthwhile. EDIT: Hopefully you still haven't read this comment, I found a better way to explain what I said. He said that it wasn't worth it because it doesn't really transform civilization. I said that it was clearly worth its 0.5% of the funding. I also said that if it's not worth it because it doesn't really transform civilization, how could his own budget can be justified (and to avoid him answering that in a way, his job does transform civilization enough to be worth his salary, I only included expense that could be avoided without affecting too much his job).
      - icebraining 12y ago
        If it's the criteria to fund something The point is that the criteria for the State/government doesn't have to be the same as the criteria for personal expenses.
      - icebraining 12y ago
        Also I never said that it has so much potential, I'm curious to know where you found this in my comment. What. The first two sentences of your comment: > Does space exploration has the potential to transform civilization? Yeah it actually does.
- antimagic 12y ago
  You're kidding right - this would have lowered my taxes by about 20 cents a year, or 3E50 total. Careful not to spend it all at once. So much for lowering taxes. Simply put, Rosetta's budget was about 70m Euros per year over 20 years. That's like funding maybe two schools, or one hospital ward, spread over the whole EU. None of these enrich humanity as much as Rosetta is. As for employment, well, the project is creating exactly the right sort of jobs for the European economy - that money is being spent in Europe, helping to usefully occupy the European aerospace industry, and thereby keeping engineers and scientists in work.
  - johndevor 12y ago
    >That's like funding maybe two schools, or one hospital ward, spread over the whole EU. None of these enrich humanity as much as Rosetta is. Really? You're basically saying you'd prefer a robot on a comet over thousands of healthy and educated peers. Who are you to decide this?
    - acqq 12y ago
      It's much better to compare the cost of the whole Rosetta mission (cca 1 billion EUR) to the cost of the just one type of fighter jets, just for the UK: cca 30 billion EUR. Apparently the fleet is only around 100 planes at the time, giving the cost of the Rosetta for the whole Europe equal to the cost to the UK for just three planes in the UK military fleet of a 100 of such planes. It's mind boggling.
    - jarek 12y ago
      > Really? You're basically saying you'd prefer a robot on a comet over thousands of healthy and educated peers. Who are you to decide this? Coming from an American this is pretty ironic. The choice in ESA-funding countries isn't between two schools and illiterate children, it's between further improvement to two good schools already affording excellent social mobility and a comet landing. As for who decides this, the voters do as part of the democratic process.
- TaylorAlexander 12y ago
  How do you know the moon landing didn't transform civilization? Did you try living in an alternate timeline where it did not happen and find things to be the same? What about all those scientists who learned to build rockets, who would later go on to help NASA launch the first weather satellites? What about the work done that led to the formation of the global positioning system? Are you sure it would have happened in the same timeframe by some other actors if NASA hadn't gone to the moon? Where would the scientists have gotten their training? What would have been the economic rationale for doing it? Remember, too, that the moon landings were not scientific exploration. It was a military operation to prove supremacy. The russians put a man in space one month earlier, so Kennedy basically said "Yeah? you put a man in space? well we'll drop one on the Moon and then bring him back!" It was an insane commitment to proving our supremacy. We sent fighter jet pilots on the first several missions, and didn't send a single scientist until several missions in. Meanwhile, exploring the origins of comets helps us understand how the early solar system formed, which helps us understand how the universe formed, which helps us understand physics at a fundamental level, which helps us make better microchips, solar panels, and superconductors that make the tech in our world better at serving our needs. It has nothing to do with "fun for those working on them", though I'm sure they have fun. Truck drivers probably have some fun too, but that doesn't mean delivering goods isn't worthwhile for legitimate economic reasons. Hard science is the same - it costs relatively little and the payoff, while abstract, is huge. If you want to complain about spending, complain about military spending. In the US it is 70X NASA's budget, and 2x the military budget at the beginning of 2001. THAT is bloat. We know how to manufacture bombs. Making more doesn't do much for innovation. Funding science does.
  - lentil_soup 12y ago
    WOW! the best answer by far in here, thanks for your comment it really proves all the benefits the ENTIRE human race gets from this (relative) small investment.
  - ButchDriveshaft 12y ago
    I had to create an account just to thank you for this response. I always recommend anyone wondering about whether or not space exploration is worth it to view the following amazing video compilations. "We Stopped Dreaming - Episode 1": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc "We Stopped Dreaming - Episode 2": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFO2usVjfQc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFO2usVjfQc
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  It's how a large chunk of your fellow citizens want their money spent. And that's more than enough reason in itself. Welcome to democracy.
- return0 12y ago
  Sure i could point out that this mission could indirectly advance health technology (landing a robot on a comet is no small technological feat. The side-benefits of big research projects, such as the WWW that allows us to argue here, are no small thing) But most importantly it bothers me that you think that risking a relatively small amount of money to expand our limits is not important. IF it were a "showoff" mission or a re-enactment of the moon landing, i would agree with you but this is about going into unknown territory. When Columbus set off to find a short path to the Indies, i bet someone would think the money was frivolously spent, but this guy never made it to the history books. If you insist that we shouldn't take risks like this, you are literally asking the civilization to stop.
innguest 12y ago
Why is the criterion importance? How about, governments shouldn't require protection money from its citizens? The way it used to be before 1913.
- ameister14 12y ago
  The way it used to be...in the United States, as regards solely taxes on income in peacetime?
- rmc 12y ago
  There were taxes before 1913
  - johndevor 12y ago
    Not really though. Microscopic compared to today.
    - return0 12y ago
      Then undoubtedly they correlated with better life standards by a large margin.
      - johndevor 12y ago
        Are you being sarcastic? Because that statement is not an argument at all.
- mikeash 12y ago
  I was unaware that taxes were such a recent invention. Clearly I've been misinformed about history. What other insights can you provide?

sbarre 12y ago

Ok I'll bite. Do you really believe space exploration has "no benefit whatsoever", or are you just trolling? A cursory Google search returns all kinds of counter-points to your claim. If you really do believe this, perhaps some brief research of your own will change your mind..

innguest 12y ago
Have you searched the other side of the argument? Perhaps then you'll understand why we're against this.
- kamaal 12y ago
  I've never understood the 'this OR that' argument. For the budgets nation states have, the spending is so diversified, one side can hardly complain that they are being treated unfairly or others are getting greater share of the budget. You can do two or more things at one time, especially when they are totally unrelated. I've heard this argument over and over during India's Mars mission on News debates, where people come on prime time television and complain health care, education or other sectors aren't doing enough progress so why go to Mars. So what should those people do? If others don't do their job properly should they stop doing theirs? If there are other aspects of society not doing enough progress, lets fix that instead of stopping hardworking people from making progress else where.
- crocowhile 12y ago
  Just trying to see your perspective, here: the LHC costed $15B of tax payer money; the NIH invests ~$30B every year in medical research. Do you also think those are example of how to waste money?

vdaniuk 12y ago

This opinion is short-sighted. There may be zero practical attributable scientific or engineering benefits, though I am sure there will be plentiful. However, such epic events are extremely inspiring! It is massively televized, broadcasted, discussed on social media and news aggregators. This may be a single trigger that will send many curious young guys and girls towards STEM professions. And we need them inspired, motivated and engaged to build a better world for all humanity. So yeah, it has at least ONE benefit.

fsloth 12y ago

It depends. What's your definition of 'benefit'?

crazypyro 12y ago

Because it has huge benefits and one could argue that the money that was funneled into NASA during the moon landings gave tax payers much more bang for their buck than all kinds of other research, social programs, bank bailouts, etc. These sorts of human achievement defining missions are really hundreds of thousands of hours of engineering dedicated to solving some of the hardest problems we can dream up. You are way too short sighted if you cannot imagine the enormous benefits of having dedicated engineers, scientists and researchers working on difficult problems that don't have model-able, short-term returns. The exact types of problems that people only concerned with short-term balance sheets avoid like the plague. The exact types of problems that propel our entire civilization into new ages of discovery and technology.

throwit99 12y ago
So effectively, you want to subsidise scientists working on some arbitrary aim (Space exploration), in the hope they'll invent cool stuff you can spin off... I don't think you need to subsidise science like this. Did we really get "propelled" into new age of technology half a century ago? Did the moon landing really change anything here on earth? Technology would have advanced just fine without it.
- charonn0 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies
- bennyg 12y ago
  What other arbitrary aims would you rather scientists work on, since all aims are arbitrary anyways? I don't think you really understand how scientific research works at all. The engineering effort of NASA took a bunch of disparate scientific discoveries and pieced them together to land humans on the moon. Don't tell me you don't think that sparked major economic development in this country for decades. One of the largest reasons America is an international economic powerhouse is the space race and the need for technological innovation during the cold war. The entirety of humanity has been involved with exploring our curiosities. Exploring our curiosities tends to lead towards societal/scientific progress. Space is one of those.

stellar678 12y ago

Here is a nice long list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

throwit99 12y ago
Do you really think that firstly, those technologies only exist because of NASA, and secondly that the cheapest way to innovate is to pick some arbitrary aim (Space exploration) and then spin off lots of innovation from it? You could do a better job just taking the money spent on space exploration, and opening some innovation/invention centers. edit: banned now, so I can't add any comments. It's really surprising just how extreme the religion of science is sometimes. Scary.
- sondr3 12y ago
  Well, they do now and from what we've seen funding space research leads to loads of technology. We already have innovation/invention centers, but having loads of people focused on one incredibly hard task will bring out lots of awesome stuff.
- csallen 12y ago
  Space exploration isn't all about side-effects. Humanity cannot survive on the Earth for eternity. Eventually we will have to move on to other habitable worlds. Doing so is an almost unimaginably difficult engineering task. This reason alone is sufficient to justify space exploration in my mind. On a shorter time scale, there are massive amounts of resources in space that, with better technology, we could theoretically harvest for our use here on Earth. Once again, this is incredibly difficult to accomplish and won't happen without learning from experiments. In the present, satellites are extremely beneficial to humanity, and factor into our everyday lives. In addition, space telescopes and space stations facilitate research that couldn't be done on Earth.
  - ommunist 12y ago
    Yeah, m8. With Musk to Mars!

matthewmacleod 12y ago

why should taxpayers fund space toys? They're scientific research, not 'toys'.

ommunist 12y ago
Because taxpayers are able to pay that much taxes today, because Newton and Leibnitz were playing toys like that some time ago.

rybosome 12y ago

Nations have a long history of funding exploratory ventures. It is generally understood that the process is useful for a variety of reasons: it creates jobs, there is a small chance that something practical could be discovered, and most importantly it satisfies a basic human need to know more. With this mission in particular, we may be able to answer some very fundamental questions about the arrival of organic compounds (or even life) on Earth...surely that's worth spending some money on? You have the right to feel however you want, but a world without curiosity would be pretty sad; the internet wouldn't even exist for us to have this discussion.

tedks 12y ago
Hijacking the top comment in this subthread to make a meta-complaint: The comment-parents viewpoint is perfectly valid, but has been censored because of disagreement within the broader HN community. For all the talk about "free speech" that HN does when the topic is, say, not objectifying women, or making racial minorities feel included in tech, it certainly seems to perform an about-face when confronted with... objecting to space science as a policy. 1. Doesn't it seem a little outlandish to have your priorities so far out of whack with respect to the number of non-whites in the world, versus the number of space scientists in the world? 2. Why should the comment-parent be flagkilled for expressing an unpopular opinion?
- incision 12y ago
  >"Why should the comment-parent be flagkilled for expressing an unpopular opinion?" A comment shouldn't be killed for expressing an unpopular opinion and I don't think this one was. That comment is a perfect example of how not to state an opinion, unpopular or otherwise. It states an opinion as absolute and demands proof otherwise while providing none of its own. This is recognized as awful, trollish behavior on any forum. Further, the opinion stated is derisive and emotional. Finally, the it begs for downvotes repeatedly. This is exactly the sort of thing that should be killed regardless of the view expressed.
- tim333 12y ago
  I think it's being flagkilled for hijacking the top comment which seems bad from and probably deserves it. re "free speech" a corollary is that those reading said speech are free to call it dumb

ajuc 12y ago

Roseta mission is 1 400 000 000 euro. London summer olympics costed almost 10 000 000 000 euro. Consider the benefits. Landing on comets and knowing what materials are there (and how to detect that from distance) will eventually let humanity explore solar system. In next 10000 years it's almost sure there will be at least one global cataclysm (huge asteroid impact, ice age, global warming, methane-producing bacteria boom, some supervulcaon could go off). It's just statistics, we're in borrowed time anyway. How much would you pay to save human race?

jafaku 12y ago
How can one care about what will happen within the next 10,000 years?
- prawn 12y ago
  How can you not? We are not talking about throwing away everything to insure ourselves against future catastrophe, we're putting a small portion towards a bit of futureproofing. Seems smart to me.
  - bdamm 12y ago
    Ah, that's just your DNA talking. Otherwise we could be immensely pleased with the amazing experience of being alive, and when our time is up allow Mother Universe to move on without us. Perhaps after we are wiped out, another better form of life will take hold and really do amazing things, fueled by our decay. Besides, it looks like our own behavior is going to do it for us, so might as well "love the bomb".
    - prawn 12y ago
      I guess that speaks to the dichotomy of urge in humans. We are equally as likely to sit on our butts staring mindlessly at something on a screen as we are to strive for extending the reaches and hopes of our species. I hope it could be us that will do those amazing things you mentioned.
    - 12y ago

pessimizer 12y ago

Good luck pushing that opinion amongst elites who are more likely to be the beneficiaries of space program spending than the victims of austerity. Space exploration for it's own sake is a self-perpetuating relic of the cold war.

icebraining 12y ago
How is space exploration categorically different from other kinds of scientific exploration?
- pessimizer 12y ago
  In any number of ways, just as other types of scientific exploration are different from each other, and some seem to be worth spending billions on, and others are not. Do you have a more specific question?

ISL 12y ago

Your point is not unfounded, and it's our duty as research scientists to justify the value you receive for your money. There's a famous example where a US Senator asked a similar question of a research physicist prior to the establishment of Fermilab, specifically tailored toward defense application [1]. SENATOR PASTORE. Is there anything here that projects us in a position of being competitive with the Russians, with regard to this race? DR. WILSON. Only from a long-range point of view, of a developing technology. Otherwise, it has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about. In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending. To address your concerns more directly: Basic and exploratory research pushes scientists to extract the very highest performance one can get from known technology. On occasion, that technology can do something exceptional (precision timekeeping, GPS, vaccines, medical imaging, etc.). The highly-motivated people who do this work tend to be willing to do it at low salaries and with limited chance for advancement, simply because they love the field. You can think of it as a low-cost government-run VC fund that aims for the occasional spectacular payoff at multi-decade timescales. Another key benefit is education: research funding underpins the post-graduate education of most people in the physical scientists. Funding basic research, which companies won't usually touch, furthers the continuous supply of a top-notch skilled workforce for industry nationwide. Furthermore, in many fields, retaining a trained and knowledgeable corps of scientists is an efficient way to retain the capability to respond to sudden and important societal needs (Manhattan Project, Ebola, asteroid mitigation, Fukushima, etc.). I'm biased, as taxpayer dollars pay for my work, but I think you're getting a reasonable-to-excellent return on your investment. [1] http://history.fnal.gov/testimony.html http://history.fnal.gov/testimony.html

eastbayjake 12y ago
Fun Fact: Sen. Pastore was the grumpy committee chairman when Mr. Rogers gave that famous speech about the value of public television for children. I don't know if Dr. Wilson swayed Pastore to support more funding, but after listening to Mr. Rogers for six minutes Pastore switched from wanting to cut PBS funding in half to cheerleading for increased funding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q

dang 12y ago

> looks like I'm banned from commenting For anyone who's wondering, we haven't banned this account. What happens is that when karma gets low enough to be in outlier territory, comments get auto-killed. This is a longstanding anti-troll measure. In the future, we plan to have a "moderated" status for comments, rather than "dead", so that the community will be able to fix cases where the commenter is not a troll or has corrected their ways. In the meantime, if you ever notice something being [dead] unfairly, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is usually enough to correct it. (Edit: but do please allow for the variable latency of our email stack. We will get back to you, but there's no SLA on when.)

foxylad 12y ago

Once upon a time, long long ago, the most powerful dinosaurs got together to consider the proposal of a young pterodactyl. The pterodactyl had come up with the strange proposal that the other dinosaurs should bring her food while she concentrated on devising ways to fly higher. "Why should we all work harder so you can learn to fly higher?" roared a huge tyrannosaurus, and bit the pterodactyl's head clean off. So their kind never discovered ways to fly higher, and out of the atmosphere, and all the multitude of skills required detect comets and fly spacecraft to them to find out what they were made of. And then a comet hit them and they all died.

tripzilch 12y ago
You weren't there. This is not how it happened at all. The strong and mighty individualist T-Rex was enslaved by the communist mammals. The once idealistic Pterodactyl was forced to evolve into a chicken, bereft of its flight, today kept in captivity by the trillions, bred by robots, for meat and eggs. Their feathers fill our pillows. How ironic that Mankind's dreams are birthed atop their crushed wings. What gives us the right to land on this comet? Weren't the dinosaurs there first? What about our robots? Who fills their pillowcases? Or, as Eddy Lizzard once wisely said, "Do you have a flag?!!"
- foxylad 12y ago
  +1 for Eddy Izzard!

kbart 12y ago

Wasted taxes? Are you serious? The outcome of this mission might be immense considering what possibilities are open if we manage to perfect such technologies. I'd say it's the greatest our race achievement after the Moon landing. Besides, the whole mission budget is only 1 billion euros (~1.2 billion dollars). If talking about wasting tax money, consider F-35 project which cost 1 trillion dollars and still counting, that's 1000 more than this mission.

acqq 12y ago
The unit cost of one single F-35 jet was in 2011 estimated to be around 300 million USD, that is, only three planes would pay for the whole (European, please note, financed by the tax of Europeans!) Rosetta mission. The US plans to buy 2443 such aircraft (of course, financed by the tax of US citizens). Do they really need so many of them? The military budget of the US was recently around 660 billion USD per year, that is, the US could finance some 600 Rosettas (each a multiple-decade project) every year with its military budget. Approximating the Rosetta life to 10 years, in these 10 years the US spent 6000 Rosettas for military. Or 18000 of F-35 fighter jets.