Do we spend enough on space exploration?

[drz]

I voted no, but while reading through the thread, I believe we are throwing plenty of money at space, just not in the right areas. For instance, I do not understand why we don't have a moon base. If we would have been dedicating our resources to setting up a moon base, which could design/house/repair and launch craft into space, our costs would drop alot, since we would have to overcome Earths gravity to launch.

 

I also believe that we need to get man off this planet before some crazy fundie blows the place up, or an asteroid wipes us out. I mean, we are the first species that has been able to leave this planet, we should be in a position to avoid complete destruction of life.

 

Going to mars would be cool, but I believe we need to have bases on the moon before we do much of anything else. Imagine building an observatory on the moon, the clarity of the images?

 

And for as much as we've spent on space exploration, we spend entirely to much on war. We should quit fighting, start building big Death Stars ala Star Wars to house people in space.

[paganinio]

I'm pretty sure we could do all that without spending more.

Me too, Aliens would find us so we needn't spend any

But on the way of Science, there's never 'enough'.

[Sayonara]

Me too, Aliens would find us so we needn't spend any

Given that I don't say anything I can't back up, that sarcasm just makes you look like you didn't spend a single second thinking about it.

[5614]

i think that we spend enough money on space exploration. my reasoning for that is because i believe the...

amount of money the world has : the amount spent on space exploration

ratio, is sufficient for what should be satisfying results. however, obviously we are not getting very good results in the way that have we landed on the moon since [cant remember! ages ago? no. have we done a manned mission to mars? no. is hubble being abandoned? yes. these are all space things which are not getting good results. (by good i mean useful to our civilization)

 

so whilst i think that there is enough money in it, we dont get results, so what this whole argument is about is, should we spend more money to get more and/or better results?

[Thales]

The level of bureaucracy in most space oriented institutes is amazing. I would even go so far as to say that a large majority of the cash spent goes to wages of unnessercary employees. We also have maintained competative approach to a common goal, as someone already stated, is a hangover from the cold war. Sure there will be applications society will implement, applications which have the potential to make money, but these are a byproduct of the process and shouldn't be the reasoning that drives it. International cooperation on space research would bring countries together, bind them on a basis that doesn't rotate around money. Reinstill confidence in humanity, that goes missing when we start trying to blow each other up.

 

I think that we can never spend 'enough' on the pursuit of knowledge. I grow weary of the thoughts for economic viabilty that hinder real human progress. That said, I am aware of the reality in which we live, aware but morose no less.

[5614]

i think that all the major countries in the world should join together; you know, UK, USA, Russia, Japan, anyone who has any space technologies, each country would throw in a few million/billion, which they already are doing at the moment, but it would result in sooooo much money it would be unbelievable.

 

then we would get somewhere with the whole 'explore space' thing!

 

we need co-operation. one country can't do it all by themselves, we need co-working AND co-funding...

 

(but sadly that will never happen, or at least, not on a scale of which i speak. but i hope it does, it just seems highly unrealistic.)

[J'Dona]

One major problem in the way of international efforts in space is that some major countries are quite interested in the military prospects. I don't think they'd want to share progress in that area one bit.

[coquina]

"Manned space exploration" wasn't specified, so I'll offer another thought. More money does need to be spent in identifying potential earth colliders, and more money needs to be spent on figuring out how to intercept them and deal with them, rather it be by changing their trajectory enough to avoid collision, or pulverizing them.

 

We know that the Chixulub impact ended the reign of the dinosaurs, the Chesapeake Impact occured at the end of the Eocene, and other craters have been found that may have caused the other great extinctions, the Permian, for example.

 

Although strikes were more frequent in the past, we know that it is still possible for a strike to occur - Jupiter got smacked by the pieces of Shoemaker-Levy in 1994.

 

All the nations of the world should be working on this problem - they are all equally at risk.

[5614]

One major problem in the way of international efforts in space is that some major countries are quite interested in the military prospects. I don't think they'd want to share progress in that area one bit.

 

agreed, i would never expect countries to share military space technology, i think most countries are interested in space-military stuff, all the same.... the basics could be discovered together... such as a man to mars, possibly inhabbitting another planet... anything like that, its more than what we are doing at the moment and they all need a lot of funding which we could get from international co-operation.

[YT2095]

it`s pathetic that we should need to waste resources on finding out how to kill each other better, that old chestnut should have ended with the 1`st nuke!

 

congratulations mankind, you can wipe out your entire planet 7 or 8 times over in less than half an hour, Well DONE!

 

now can we move onto something CONSTRUCTIVE instead?

[Guest Unanswered]

we spend a lot of money

 

and probably explored less than 1% of space

 

it's limitless if your talking about $$

[NavajoEverclear]

I said too much. The money used on space crap should be used for services that actually benefit the public.

[bloodhound]

i voted we spend too much, With the current state of earth.

[NavajoEverclear]

my reason exactly

[HAL]

Back when the Soviets were still in the game they were holding a joint news conference for one of the Soyuz – Apollo missions.

 

They asked the American scientists what benefits were expected from the missions. They replied with the usual prattle about spin-offs, the general increase in knowledge, etc.

 

When they asked the Soviets the same question the reply was much more straight forward. As I recall, it was something like, “You must be joking. We must explore because we are human. We must always explore because it is an essential part of being human.”

 

Well good riddance to the Soviet Union. It was a corrupt rotten system, but there were some things they did very well.

 

Something I learned from teaching: If you concentrate on getting all your ducks lined up in a row, discipline, management, materials, etc., before you start to teach, you never get around to teaching anything. The way to be really productive is just to jump in and start teaching, get the momentum going and don’t let anything divert you. The other things will fall in line if you are moving in the right direction.

 

Space exploration, or any productive activity is like that. If we fret about bureaucracy, terrorism, poverty, etc., before we get around to exploring, it will never happen. We need to get out there and explore space as if it were a global human activity. The other things will take care of themselves.

[Daveyboy]

People who vote no should say how much "enough" is, and justify it.

 

 

fair point. Dont know how you can put a price on knowledge though.

[Sayonara]

This is true, but you can certainly measure the costs of striving to attain it against the rate of success.

[Daveyboy]

This is true, but you can certainly measure the costs of striving to attain it against the rate of success.

 

 

True. Ive probably got a biased attitude towards the subject, due to my intersest in it. Is the Mars "outreach" program costing an estimated $Trillion.

Probably a fair argument to say there are more pressing causes on the planet worthy of that money.

[Aleph-Null]

Hubble is quickly becoming antiquated with ground based telescopes now becoming more useful than the Hubble. With future interferometric telescopes coming out soon, the astronomical community needs to decide if the cost of maintaining the Hubble is worth sacrificing the development of newer space-based interferometers.

[Thales]

“You must be joking. We must explore because we are human. We must always explore because it is an essential part of being human.”.....Space exploration' date=' or any productive activity is like that. If we fret about bureaucracy, terrorism, poverty, etc., before we get around to exploring, it will never happen. We need to get out there and explore space as if it were a global human activity. The other things will take care of themselves.[/quote']

 

I totally agree. We cannot unite the world unless we have something positive to unite about, such as manned exploration of Mars. There will always be political infighting but if we look to the future with hope and prosperity we everything else will slowly fall by the wayside.

 

Practical technologies such as improved self sufficient food and energy production will be needed to do this. If it was done under the guise of space research it would give such ventures more scope and most likely speed the process of developement. There will always be wars but if we spent as much on space as we on armourment then we'd probably be halfway to mars right now.

 

Terraforming technologies could also provide us with a tool to stave off global warming and if you want to look really far into the future as the sun cooks the Earth we are all going to have to move to Mars sooner or later so we may as well give ourselves a head start.

[HAL]

...We cannot unite the world unless we have something positive to unite about' date=' such as manned exploration of Mars....

 

Practical technologies such as improved self sufficient food and energy production will be needed to do this. If it was done under the guise of space research it would give such ventures more scope and most likely speed the process of developement.....[/quote']

 

Good points.

 

WWII was a black spot in history, but the technical innovations we were forced to come up with to defeat the Axis powers were unprecedented: radar, jet engines, nuclear power, etc.

 

The universe is our home. We are like children who have spent our entire lives living in just one room of a mansion. We’ve just learned how to open the door and are wondering whether it will be worthwhile to go outside and take a look around.

 

The first time you do anything new it is difficult and expensive. After you do that thing a hundred times you find easier and cheaper ways.

 

We just need to get out there and go…

[pfrimmdog]

I think that we do not spend enough money on Space exploration. I think that we should spend more time, and preperations before we actually launch the objects. It might also help if space exploration was privitized. There is a really good Dan Brown book about this. The problem is that if NASA screws up they won't go bancrupt. They are very careless with our money.

[MolecularMan14]

Do we spend enough on space exploration?

Space exploration is something that must be taken seriously. But if we are to make something useful, or worthwile, we have to make it a priority. Im not suggesting that we shift a huge multi-trillion dollar budget, but making a higher influence of it would bring new knowledge of what exactly is out there. And at this point, I would say, we need all the good knowledge we can get!

[Nalos Surith]

I have an idea shuv all our (USA) science research under NASA, use all the information we have from those groups to better space exploration raise the budgets, hire more people sec. Advantage: Brings Ecomomy up, easier management, easier to find things, all bound on helping for us to get to space is some way or another (or not; it just has to say so =P )

[Ophiolite]

I have an idea shuv all our (USA) science research under NASA, ......

all? all?? All???!!

Rather extreme don't you think. What happens to all those areas of research that have little bearing on space, yet are important? What happens to those areas of research that are currently managed with much greater efficiency than NASA?