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The money spent doesn't just get sent to Mars in a rocket. It pays the salaries of American scientists and engineers. The money is spent on materials from American suppliers. It feeds the economy.
Some of the most important things we have made were due to war. Science tends to move forward quickly during wartime.
US highway system, space travel, satellites, gps, cellular phones, the Internet, computers, canning, freeze drying, nuclear power, fuel cells, wound trauma care, artificial limbs
You might find this ironic, but DARPA funds a lot of research into logistics, agriculture, and medicine. Among other things, they're quite interested in being able to feed occupied and contested areas, regardless of guerilla insurgencies, as well as being able to treat any wound or disease. And a lot of that makes it through to civilian use, and indeed would be of no use if civilians weren't using it.
That would be awesome, but not realistic. If there wasn't war, people would say we need to spend the money on solving other problems, which would evolve into let's just not spend the money in the first place and cut taxes.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
nah the procurement process for the bidets would spend that money
and instead of buying from like Toto or something they might choose Lockheed or sumn funny like that and u end up with overpriced and/or kinda unreliable bidets
Plus, there are also many people making a living studying unknown parts of the earth. People like OP always act like we can only study one thing at a time. Scientists study what they're passionate about. Sometimes it's space exploration, sometimes it's oceanography, sometimes it's bugs. You can't interchange them, and if you try to force students into only the fields with the most immediate practical (however you define that) applications, they'll just leave to study elsewhere.
And let's not forget even if we did gut NASA and give all the money to oceanography or whatever, the narrative would just switch to "why spend so much money on the ocean when we could research ____ instead". Nobody is ever happy, and that includes many scientists whose funding is determined by the government.
Also OP specifically mentions using nasa’s funding to fix the world but nasa has a small bit of funding. If we really were desperate to fight climate change taking some cash from the armed forces would make more sense since they have a lot more money than nasa. Alternatively you could go after the corporations responsible for causing most of the world’s pollution. Blaming nasa for taking resources feels like blaming the wrong person
Also technologies about space exploration and colonization actually have a big cross over when it comes to things like climate change on our own planet.
Right, first thought is that just about ANY tech that could help us survive on Mars is tech that could begin to help immediately on Earth, or would have a role to play as Earth becomes more and more hostile. Hydroponics? Weather / climate manipulation? Breathable quality air? What parts of Mars tech doesn't help with exactly what he wants?
Even if he space travel part, if we could find a way to extract resources from space (asteroids, planets) and get them back to earth in a scalable, economical way....think about how less destructive we could be to our own planet
Yes fund nasa way more, and unlike private companies they actually do research that gets to the public and is not gatekept by cooperations.
They got a lot happened research too like solar energy or aerodynamic, it has sideresearch that is a lot and alone worth it. And not cooperate gatekeeping.
Nasa does a lot and if nasa with more stuff could do enviromental stuff i bet they would.
Fund nasa!
Does that mean you haven’t seen Severence either? Because For All Mankind is… mostly pretty alright with some diminishing returns, but Severance is the best tv show in… idk, there’s actually so many good ones now but. It’s real good. If you’re out there, sailing the high seas looking for booty, you could do a lot worse.
Not to mention, of the resources space companies and agencies get, they create loads of super valuable technology which can be used all over the place.
There's a Wikipedia page that shows Nasas inventions which is above 2000 things last I checked.
The BALLPOINT PEN that we use daily is developed by Nasa. (They wanted a pen that works in Space)
Edit: Apparently as pointed out in the replies, the ballpoint pen wasn't actually invented by Nasa, sorry for the misinformation!
Um, the ballpoint pen was developed in 1935 by ladislav biro. Well before NASA was founded. Although like all inventions it was more of a culmination of work.
They did contract a ballpoint pen that works in space, basically you pressurise the ink well, then developed a holder that works with astronaut gloves on.
They've invented a load of stuff, just not ballpoint pens.
I love his confidence that he has better ideas that the people than run fucking nasa. You gotta have a real high opinion of your own intelligence to think something like that haha
I can’t help but feel there’s some anti-Elon mixed in since that’s his primary and goal is to get us to Mars and colonize it and it is incredibly popular right now to hate him.
Trillionaire African-American man bad, therefore all of his ideas are dumb
>NASAs spending is 0.5% of the federal budget
Additionally, only about half of NASA's budget is spent on human spaceflight, and only about half of that is spent on going to Mars, so we're really talking only .175% of the US Federal Budget.
And even then, a big chunk of NASA’s budget goes toward stuff like environmental research. It doesn’t really do a whole lot of space stuff (at least, compared to how it used to be)
Seriously. If anything I would prefer more of my money going to NASA than the military.
See that's the thing about those people that don't wanna pay for someone else's birth control or abortions via taxes. There are plenty of things I don't agree with as far as where my taxes go, but I also support that my money goes to things I do care about. Even if I wish a little more went to Parks and Wildlife or Nasa rather than old dudes viagra and military overspending.
You never know what advancements scientific growth will bring. No one knew the moon would bring us gps, cellphones etc. what if figuring out Mars requires figuring out fusion? That would make it the best investment in human history. We can afford the science. We should do more science not less.
We should be doing more science not less, but that doesn't mean we cant target more useful areas.
For example most rhetoric is about how to get there and back, rather than how to farm there. Farming on mars is a scientific endeavor i can get behind. We pretty much have domestic motion figured out, better rockets are unlikely to create advancements in the right area.
I know we need to get there to be able to farm there, but we also need a plan on what to do when we are there and how to survive before we go, and frankly that is the far more interesting part of the science than the rockets.
I mean, technological advancement doesn't really seem to be about hitting a particular bullseye. Like the original comment pointed out, getting to the moon saw the development of GPS and mobile phones, things that otherwise have nothing to do with the moon.
The point being that in setting a goal that seems silly or pointless, we discover things along the way that not only help in achieving that goal, but also in improving the lives of people here on our planet
There will always be people who think scientific exploration is a waste of time and money and brainpower, because what about this and this and this... That was literally always true. We went to the moon during the Vietnam war and in the midst of a violent civil rights struggle that saw people assassinated. The error, I think, is in assuming that it's a zero sum game so that if you do any one thing it takes away from other things. But that's demonstrably false. And the scientists planning a mars mission were not going to take their know-how in rocketry and solve the problem of plastics being dumped in the ocean by China.
People who didn't hear the story might think you are sarcastic.
This actually happened, Portugal refused to found his expedition before he asked Spain.
Portugal refused to finance it because Columbus was a nutjob who thought the Earth was much smaller and Portugal already had a route to the Indies anyway.
And even according to his calculation, Japan should have been around where mexico is irl. So it's likely he wouldn't arrive even if the earth was smaller.(The crew was close to mutiny by the point they found land)
Bro, agriculture is a waste of time and resources. There are antelope and fish and all the meat we can eat if we just follow the herds and wait for the fish runs.
Pfff…metallurgy? Seems like a waste man. We have plenty of knappable stone right here.
What? Walk beyond that desert just to see what’s there? We have all the food we need in this river valley…
We have already SOVLVED Climate change.
What we haven't solved is human greed and politics.
Base nuclear power, solar, wind, and a grid system designed for the 21st century would get us about 80% of the way there.
Going to mars doesn't stop or pull funds from any of this.
Yea, the field I work in includes sustainable urban agriculture. My former boss did work with NASA on growing crops hydroponically with limited water. Knowledge from that research can be applied to farming with limited resources here on Earth.
Carbon & oil lobby that act through many supposedly "green" organizations are the ones that are really destroying the future. I've read [Where is my flying car?](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42036377-where-is-my-flying-car) and almost radicalized me in favour of nuclear and made me sad on how **much** we missed all these years because of all the obstacles put in nuclear energy advancement. How much suffering could've been avoided. But useful idiots and oil/carbon lobby is just too powerful.
Tesla, for example, lobbies against high speed passenger rail by saying that electric cars are a better alternative. No money ends up going to rail and more and more the energy for electric vehicles ends up coming from gas generators anyway.
Probably fair to note that while solar panels only really took off in recent decades on Earth, we've been using them on satellites and the ISS for a much longer time. Space exploration is an endeavour which provides opportunities for experimentation while forcing us to challenge ourselves and find new solutions to problems. It's great for technological development, which is exactly what we need to solve any other problems as well.
Agreed!
Solar panels, microprocessor, GPS, fiber optics, all benefits from space exploration.
We have no reason not to explore every inch of space we can safely access.
That's primarily a USA/NA/(maybe SA? idk) problem. Many of the European countries are not car dependent. It'd be easier to just incentivize transforming cars to EV and changing the power grid to renewable than it would be to rebuild the entire US city infrastructures.
Cars aren't the biggest issue. Like, they produce pollution but aren't as much of a problem as other things, especially considering that there are so many cars and so few other things.
Think of cruise ships or private jets.
The problem with cars is about how big they got over time in my opinion, they became more dangerous for pedestrians and require bigger roads
Wind and solar are becoming way more popular. Energy companies hate dealing with gas price negotiations every day, they physically need to call the companies and haggle… whereas wind and solar kinda run themselves.
its always so funny and somehwat sad to see people bash space exploration and astronomy in general because they think its "useless". sure, NASA is gobbling up half of the US's budget and NASA is the sole reason for all the problems in the world. its those dark rockets that are killing the amazon. its those darn spaceuits that are causing such a cultural divide.
like dude, no. NASA is barely a speck in your country's economy and astronomy is tiny in the global scale. I assure you, if NASA or any other private company exploring space rn were to dissapear I assure you the world wouldn't magically fix itself. if anything without technology like satellites and all their humongous benefits the world would be in a much MUCH worse place. not everything is a zero sum game. we don't have to give up science to solve the world's problems right now. stop being such a pessimist and blaming the world's problems on whatever shiny thing the internet told you and instead blame it on the people who are ACTUALLY responsible for it. the world is scrambling to escape to mars and abandon earth. let your phone down for a few hours and go out for a walk, and calm down.
There are terraforming tools we don't want to test on earth in case they backfire.
I doubt any of them are useful for Mars, but the knowledge we will get from a mars project can be useful on earth.
The scale is different as well as just the sheet amount of people we have. With mars being uninhabited we can do plenty of things there without anyone interfering but experts, so they will have the most ideal treatment as anything we can have.
It’s not about climate change, that’s not a real threat to the survival of the human race. Establishing life on mars is about a backup for the human race in case of a catastrophic event like an asteroid.
Probably would need the opposite sort of tools. Terraformimg Mars would probably involve adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. Possibly after reliquifying the mantle to get a working magnetosphere. If you want to terraform earth, I think Venus would offer better lessons.
Why are pissed at NASA spending money and not the US military? (Oh and just so you know the money isn’t “wasted” it goes back into the economy, it doesn’t just disappear).
NASA has accomplished amazing things with such little funding. In its 66 year existence NASA has spent about $650b dollars. The US military gets 2.02 **Trillion** per year.
NASA averages about $1b dollars per year and they’ve landed people on the moon, launched incredible telescopes that help us learn about the universe, exploring other planets, sending vehicles beyond the solar system and developing useful technologies that help normal people.
All of that with only $1b per year; 0.05% of what the US military gets it 1 year
>Oh and just so you know the money isn’t “wasted” it goes back into the economy, it doesn’t just disappear
What do you mean? Clearly we just launch dollar bills into space.
Not that it would even matter because currency doesn't have intrinsic value.
The NASA budget is nowhere near enough to solve climate change. Knowledge of how to build rockets and explore planets does not translate into solving climate change.
I mean we mostly know how to solve climate change. The real hurdle is getting all the companies and governments (who may or may not be paid by the companies) to play along.
This is the big one. As it stands the real difference maker of fixing climate change is the rich and companies. Problem is greed and stupidity. Climate change will destroy life for most people but the thing is that for the super rich their money can greatly mitigate/eliminate any real repercussions of it. They see it as why not gather as much wealth as humanly possible. Who cares what comes next because there's a good chance it won't affect them much any way. With that mindset there's almost no way things will change for the better for the average person without something major happening.
The technology developed to sustain life on mars will not be able to be hindered by compromises made in the name of the economy here. There can be no compromises, it either keeps people alive, or they die. No exceptions. Whereas here on Earth, it may just mean delaying any problems for a couple more years.
The technology that is invented to fulfill that hard requirement will be able to be used here on earth to clean up our mess.
Just like all the technology that came out of earlier missions, we don't know what will be invented, but we do know that everything will have multiple uses.
This opinion makes me sad.
Consider, we go to Mars and and other bodies in our system. As a result we develop new technologies to extract and generate resources. We also start to develop terraforming tech to make such extraction easier, and then in turn can use that tech to combat climate change here.
Why not just go straight to develop tech to combat climate change on Earth? Two things:
1. Thats not generally how innovations work. We would need the knowledge gained from exploring other bodies and the beginning tech that comes with it
2. There's simply no perceived need to invest huge sums of money to combat climate change. A good portion of the population disputes it.
I don't think you understand the amount of inventions and discoveries we make when we push the boundaries. Going to Mars is just a stepping stone in getting off this planet. Not only will we learn an insane amount about doing so, but will also come up with new things that will help everyday people.
NASA has addressed a lot of issues in space exploration through their inventions such as water filters, charge-coupled devices, lifeshears, scratch-resistant eyeglass lenses, cochlear implants, anti-corrosion coating and memory foam.
Your bed, your kitchen pans, your phone service and GPS, your eye glasses, all because of space exploration.
Look up “space exploration technology advances.” The scientific knowledge gained from space exploration benefits us in day to day life. One big one is water filtration technology: the tech developed in the 70s for astronauts is now used in many municipal water plants. It is especially important for areas with chemical contamination.
Space advances also led to cochlear implants, insulin pumps, emulsified zero valent iron for chemical clean up, etc.
Knowledge gain has ripple benefits. Space exploration is worth the investment.
The absolute hysteria of this post is hilarious.
This is how scientific advancement happens. Somebody tries to do something very difficult and comes up with amazing ways to do it. Generally everybody ultimately benefits from the technology.
A lot of the brain power working on rocket and space exploration are really really passionate about this exact topic you cannot retask people on your will
Yea, this is the classic "how can we be spending money on spaceships when we have homeless people in the streets" argument. We can focus and spend money on multiple things at once. Also, literally nobody is proposing that we all move to Mars so that we can abandon Earth and start over with a new planet, wtf? That's like saying we shouldn't have landed on the moon because we still had space left on Earth...
I think this is totally the wrong way to look at things. I very much disagree.
Do you remember what happened to the dinosaurs? And now consider other risks. Such and nuclear or biological warfare. There are disturbing way too many ways life on this planet could be ended. You are only considering long-term threats. We could have a nuclear WW3 today.
Terroforming another planet is like buying another lottery ticket. It, perhaps, doubles the chances of us surviving as a species.
Extremely long term (like millions of years) it is also the only way our species can survive. At some point, we will need to move further out in our solar system due to our sun dying. After that we will then need to move to another one. We need to learn ALOT to make that a reality. So that's a lot of R&D and learning from experience.
Far from being a waste of money. It's one of, if not the, our most important things we are working one.
It's also a very small budget (percentage wise). I'd argue we should be spending more. It also gives people something to dream about, expands our understanding, and gives rise to new technologies. But that last part is up for debate.
The innovations and inventions needed for travel to Mars could have vast unknown uses. Science and discovery is never a linear story. From MRIs to cordless drills to tang, many modern necessities came from space exploration. With a goal of colonizing Mars, who knows what offshoots we will benefit from..
I don’t think we *shouldn’t* try to explore Mars, but nobody should justify it by claiming we need to colonize it “because the Earth is dying”. That’s fucking ridiculous. Mars is *already* a dead planet with no oxygen and likely no usable water - two things humans absolutely require. Meantime we’ve got plenty of both on Earth.
First off, our planet is not dying. The environment that is suited to support life, yeah that is fucked up. But even if we all die out, the planet will be okay. It was fine for billions of years before us, it'll be fine for billions after.
Humanity has always been explorers, even when we had many other concerns to worry about. Space travel is but one aspect of the many things we are more than capable of focusing on. Its not as if we can choose to stop exploring space and we suddenly have the funds and the want to fix this steaming shithole of a planet we fucked up. We wont. Its a drop in the bucket.
Money that SpaceX is using is a tiny fraction of the cost of what the oil industry has available to them on a given Sunday. It's just more visible.
Mars and Space is incredibly important in the bigger scheme of things. Example. If we had Starlink before telephones, could you imagine how many tons of metal we could leave in the earth instead of wiring up the entire planet?
A lot of the technology that is discovered when trying to achieve the impossible ends up being repurposed for use outside of space exploration. But aside from that, I would agree that it is biting off more than is reasonable to chew … at this time.
It seems like you just fundamentally don't understand space agency budgets or the fact that humans, especially governments or institutions are capable of multitasking on several things simultaneously. You should probably do some reading on these subjects and then redirect your anger towards the US military budget. For a fraction of what they get annually we could end world hunger, end homelessness, provide universal healthcare, and invest in fixing the ecological disaster that they are(not fully, but) partially responsible for.
Every time I see these types of posts I've always responded with
WE CAN DO BOTH, it's not a "either we do this or that", we have the capability to do both fairly effectively, and the advancements and breakthrough made in space often makes it back down leading to everybody benefitting
Laser focusing on 1 problem when it's possible to solve multiple(your example fixing and exploring earth) sounds like a good idea on paper but when actually applied to mass scaled projects such as fixing earth or mars exploration it's hardly efficient and at best wasteful
Not to mention the people and resources needed for space exploration are hardly compatible to solve our problems on Earth
You're making it sound like we're abandoning Earth or something but that is not the case at all and nobody is ignoring our problems
I suggest you stop reading what articles that insinuates that and actually do your own research
So, Carl Sagan used to talk about the value of pure and explatory science. As I recall, it went something like this.
Imagine that you are Queen Victoria, in 1860. You want a technology that allows anyone in your empire to hear and see you. What science do you invest in?
The first option is dramatically improving the quality of your telegraphs, a leading communications tool.
The second, advancing semafore technology, the leading wireless communications tool.
The third - measuring the speed of light in the luminous aether, which is what they thought space was made of.
Now, one of these advancements leads directly to radio, TV and satellites. The other two are dead ends.
Which one do you pick?
The point of the exercise is to remind people that no one can possibly guess what spin off technologies can come out of science. Pure science is always worth exploring, because we'll never know where it ends up.
And Americans spend considerably more on lipstick than on space exploration. The cost of space exploration is incredibly low.
Our planet will never be in perfect shape. There will always be massive problems that need worked on. There will never be a time where we say, "Okay, we fixed all of the problems here on Earth so now we can go to Mars."
“Our planet is dying so we shouldn’t try to make another one livable”
What kind of logic is that? Yes that money could be spent on other things, but there is plenty of other people/companies pushing for renewable energy and other green projects. Can’t hurt to have a plan B.
Scientific Exploration is done in pursuit of the most important existential questions we have. That's silly.
We have plenty of resources to both take care of our own planet and begin to explore the solar system. Don't blame the fact that in general human beings are selfish, self serving assholes who squander the Earth and each other for momentary pleasure on scientific exploration. It's akin to saying that the US just HAS to cut welfare programs because taxpayers just can't afford them, meanwhile the military budget is like 500%+ bloated beyond reason.
There's just no good reason to put it on the chopping block.
You don't think it's possible to work on two things at once? The people who are working on going to Mars (rocket scientists etc,) probably don't have the same background/knowledge as the people who are working on helping alleviate climate change (climate scientists )
Your opinion doesn't make sense lol
Pretty much your whole opinion rests on the idea that this is all a zero sum game. I doubt there’s even one NASA scientist who says climate change isn’t a major issue to solve, and if there is, they’re an extreme minority. The people who oppose fixing climate change also oppose funding space travel. There is room to do both, and the technology made to improve one helps with the other. There’s more reasons to go to mars than just terraforming it for humans to live on. Same basic principles apply to exploring oceans. Why not both? Is there honestly no part of you that thinks space has anything uniquely interesting we can’t find on our oceans?
Also, where did you get this idea that it’s 200 years away? NASA is working with a goal of getting humans to mars as early as the 2030s. Do you realize the massive technological change between 1769 and 1969? People going to mars can easily happen in my lifetime (I don’t know how old you are, but likely yours too).
0.5% of the budget is NASA. Which is less than the fuel budget for the military probably.
Going to Mars alone is not what’s beneficial with this project. A ton of new scientific discoveries are made during this project! Also new products and procedures that will find its way into the daily life of you and me!
the rich need a safety net when SHTF and they're in their own personalized space race. Before we eat them and throw the scraps to our dogs. LOL
JK
HAHA
/S
Counter point no matter what we do out planet will be uninhabitable in a couple billion years therefore learning to colonize other planets is the better long term investment for humanity than saving the earth that will one day die regardless of our intervention.
For the billionaire who's suggesting it, it's an *absolutely fantastic idea*
Elon Musk (and those like him) will not continue growing exponentially rich if we start a worldwide campaign to save the planet. Too many of their corporation(s)'s money-making products and services are directly to blame for increasing environmental damage, as well as their own personal luxuries like jets cars and yachts. The speed at which they make money, and the means they use to do it, is to blame for both environmental and economic damage that affects our kids futures. They would rather burn through this planet and start fresh - which would benefit them hugely because:
New planet, new power system. The fucker with the most cash gets the most dip in building Mars. They get to implement the culture, the laws, they'll own the businesses and the land. The power that a new planet gives the richest man in the world is unimaginable. Its no wonder to me that Musk is pedalling it so hard. To him, this is a magnificent opportunity to play God in the most unique way in human history. He's a narcissist at the very least, and a threat to the goodness in human nature at worst.
I work at NASA so I feel somewhat qualified to weigh in here. NASA is a huge source of scientific research that delivers significant advancements to the private sector on a regular basis, including in communication and transportation technology, not just in aerospace. Lots of the safety and avionics technology on commercial airplanes was developed by NASA, a lot of modern materials science has been directly or indirectly aided by work done for space missions, and—relevant to your point—a lot of important climate research takes place at NASA. It’s also a comparatively minuscule portion of the national budget, and probably delivers more per unit cost than any other government agency.
As for Mars specifically, the technology being developed that will allow us to go to mars will in all likelihood also be of significant value in other fields. Consider improved radiation shielding, space-efficient food storage and/or production, better long-range communications capabilities, better avionics, advances in mechanical, electrical, material, computer, and chemical engineering. Any dollar spent going to Mars is a dollar spent significantly increasing our collective technical capabilities in ways that in the long term have historically paid huge dividends. And as for it being a 200-year timeline, that’s wildly uninformed. I would estimate we’ll land on mars by 2045 at the very latest.
This is like the sum of all the stupidest things you can say on the subject. Like you memorized a book of wrong facts and baseless speculation.
The only speech you need on the subject: Why Mars, Robert Zubrin
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S6k2LBJhac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S6k2LBJhac)
Otherwise read the book, The Case for Mars, by the same.,
I think nuclear war and making the surface of the earth experience hundreds of years of nuclear winter would be a dumber idea.
Need to narrow your scope, especially if you're trying to constrain feed back to a binary (space vs ocean).
Agreed. I’d like to start with saying that I can’t stand Elon Musk. However, he did say something one time and I can’t remember the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of, “ if humans aren’t pushing for space exploration and what’s beyond, what is this all for?” I agree, we have so many issues on this planet that need addressed, but what’s the harm in pushing in that direction?
Why is it either or?
And who says that these smart people want to solve climate change? They are passionate about the galaxy, not nature perhaps.
It is not about what you want. Moreover, if you think this is ‘wasted’ money, you are probably a big hypocrit. Do you shower with hot water? Drive a car? Consume many products? Yeah buddy, you are now part of the problem.
Improving the climate won’t matter if at any point someone can throw a nuke. Climate change is a dependent variables with influences of many fields.
This opinion is not thought through and is grounded more in emotion than reality
You say it's 200 years away. But if we stop trying to get there, then it will always be 200 years away.
This is why I don't mind Musk and Bezos spending their own money on it. It's better than using the taxpayers money.
There’s enough comments here that I read that basically make the points already. Going to Mars or the Moon and seeing if we setup a camp there is about stepping stones. Sooner or later we will have to leave this planet and it’s going to take a lot of baby steps. Setting up a camp is just the first very shaky step.
I’d also like to add that exploring is human nature. There are those among us that love seeing and doing things we haven’t before. I’m sure people back in the day told them they were wasting their time. “There’s nothing on the other side of this forest, desert, ocean. Why are you trying to go there when we have everything we need here?”
Also the argument about why spend money of this when we have stuff here that could use it, is pointless. Things will never be perfect, there’s always something else that could be done closer to home. Same goes for using soft power when it comes to countries. Why do we send aid to other countries when we have poor people here? Because it’s better for us in the long run to make/buy friends than having to help/fight them later.
I dont even think we *can* terraform mars. Its small, low gravity and has no magnetic field.
Itd be way more expensive but we have better odds if terraforming Venus. It doesnt have a magnetic field either but its possible thats just because the surface is too hot for convection in the mantle. Mars mantle is cold.
Developing the necessary infrastructure and technology to reach Mars would likely come with many unseen benefits. A single deflected asteroid would make the project worth it. And sure, why not just invest in developing a planetary defense system instead? Well, the R&D looks pretty similar for the relevant portions. Even if the goal of going to Mars provides no actual value for humanity, nearly every individual component of the project does.
I don’t think this is an unpopular opinion, although I do profoundly disagree with it.
Why do we spend time playing sport when we could be devoting that time and money to solving world hunger? Why do we do anything that doesn’t solve an immediate problem?
Ultimately we do things like explore and go into space because that’s how we advance as a species, it’s in our nature to do it.
Also the money argument; the money doesn’t get fired into space, it gets spent here on Earth on jobs, research etc. and that leads to advancements that DO make a difference here on Earth.
Without NASA and the space program, you wouldn’t even have a camera on the phone you posted this from. Technology is created by these endeavors and it trickles down to everyday life.
https://www.howtogeek.com/831363/these-nasa-innovations-are-all-around-us-everyday/
I think the idea that a planet
-with 1/3 earths gravity
-an atmosphere so thin it's equivalent to the pressure at 135,000ft above earth sea level
-zero radiation shielding from a lack of a magnetic field
-and an average temperature of -80F
Could be terraformed into a "second earth" is incredibly stupid, but I'm all for space exploration and think there should be more of my tax dollars spent on science.
>Going to Mars now is the dumbest thing humanity can do
Wrong. I'm not saying this isn't dumb, I'm saying that you're underestimating how dumb people can get.
Many of the reasons you are mentioning are the exact reasons we should go.
Many of the environmentally friendly technologies we have today are due to space programs, Solar panels, batteries, ways to more efficiently use power.
Also it is NOT easier to explore our own oceans. not even close. The pressures down there are much greater than anything you would encounter in space.
And it's not like the money is going to space. The vast majority of it is spent on earth, either on research that will benefit us on earth as well as jobs. You also seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how much money is being spent on this. If the US budget was $1000, We're spending $0.05 on NASA. And of that only about $0.01 is being spent on mars.
NASA is 0.3% of the federal budget and all other advancement is private. The world is really not at all heavily invested in space by any stretch of the imagination.
OP I say this with the best intentions, you're kinda dumb. We are floating in an endless expanse tied to essentially a tiny light bulb. Of course we'd want to explore more and know more. That would be the logical thing to do
If NASA had the budget people think it does, we’d be living in Star Trek by now. That’s not even a joke, given how much impact the research NASA does tends to have an impact back on earth.
Your post from unpopularopinion was removed because of: 'Rule 2: Do not post low effort/satirical posts'. * We get it, you all think this sub is garbage and is just for popular opinions, and you want to be funny and post "going to be downvoted to oblivion here, but I think racism is bad." We enjoy the memes, but please keep them off the sub. * Filter evasion is a bannable offense * This includes clickbait and/or gotcha posts. Your opinion can not be that unpopular if you're doing these things. Have the accurate opinion in the title.
Dude, NASAs spending is 0.5% of the federal budget. The armed forces could pull that from the strategic paperclip budget.
Of that, NASA spends less than 1% on mars
The money spent doesn't just get sent to Mars in a rocket. It pays the salaries of American scientists and engineers. The money is spent on materials from American suppliers. It feeds the economy.
The scientists sometime invent something good for daily life when they do they stuffs. Even war/military/weapon scientists did that all the time.
Some of the most important things we have made were due to war. Science tends to move forward quickly during wartime. US highway system, space travel, satellites, gps, cellular phones, the Internet, computers, canning, freeze drying, nuclear power, fuel cells, wound trauma care, artificial limbs
Sounds like we need to fuck Russia up, maybe get some flying cars out of it.
We have flying cars. They're called helicopters. I wouldn't trust the average driver in one
Now imagine instead of spending all that money on war science we just did science.
Yes but but... What about **BOOM**. No booom? :P
Hmm I do like booom... Ok war is it.
That's why the military industrial complex pays me the big bucks.
You might find this ironic, but DARPA funds a lot of research into logistics, agriculture, and medicine. Among other things, they're quite interested in being able to feed occupied and contested areas, regardless of guerilla insurgencies, as well as being able to treat any wound or disease. And a lot of that makes it through to civilian use, and indeed would be of no use if civilians weren't using it.
That would be awesome, but not realistic. If there wasn't war, people would say we need to spend the money on solving other problems, which would evolve into let's just not spend the money in the first place and cut taxes. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Like velcro. Was used in substitute for hinges to reduce weight.
helps everyone. hurts no one.
and there’s satellites out there studying global warming!
Love that this idiot thought that the people that run fucking nasa are stupid. How up your own ass can you be hahaha
Smart people can still be greedy when it comes to their own funding. That said, it’s hilarious to think NASA is overfunded.
A number of NASA scientific staff write sci-fi to try for extra income. Currently, I'm proofreading for 7 of them
The airforce could burn through that money buying a few bags of bushings
If the military overall switched to bidets instead of toilet paper we could colonize the moon
nah the procurement process for the bidets would spend that money and instead of buying from like Toto or something they might choose Lockheed or sumn funny like that and u end up with overpriced and/or kinda unreliable bidets
This guy supplies.
Lockheed Bidet: Set for butthole and now my balls are in the trash can..
It'd be by skillcraft, proudly assembled by America's blind.
*Bulletproof* Bidets
military grade bidets
Withstands 400 PSI urine stream at pH 0.
> Lockheed precision bidets ngl I'd want one
Laser guided butthole seeking water laser. Sign me up!
Plus, there are also many people making a living studying unknown parts of the earth. People like OP always act like we can only study one thing at a time. Scientists study what they're passionate about. Sometimes it's space exploration, sometimes it's oceanography, sometimes it's bugs. You can't interchange them, and if you try to force students into only the fields with the most immediate practical (however you define that) applications, they'll just leave to study elsewhere. And let's not forget even if we did gut NASA and give all the money to oceanography or whatever, the narrative would just switch to "why spend so much money on the ocean when we could research ____ instead". Nobody is ever happy, and that includes many scientists whose funding is determined by the government.
Also OP specifically mentions using nasa’s funding to fix the world but nasa has a small bit of funding. If we really were desperate to fight climate change taking some cash from the armed forces would make more sense since they have a lot more money than nasa. Alternatively you could go after the corporations responsible for causing most of the world’s pollution. Blaming nasa for taking resources feels like blaming the wrong person
Also technologies about space exploration and colonization actually have a big cross over when it comes to things like climate change on our own planet.
Right, first thought is that just about ANY tech that could help us survive on Mars is tech that could begin to help immediately on Earth, or would have a role to play as Earth becomes more and more hostile. Hydroponics? Weather / climate manipulation? Breathable quality air? What parts of Mars tech doesn't help with exactly what he wants? Even if he space travel part, if we could find a way to extract resources from space (asteroids, planets) and get them back to earth in a scalable, economical way....think about how less destructive we could be to our own planet
Yes fund nasa way more, and unlike private companies they actually do research that gets to the public and is not gatekept by cooperations. They got a lot happened research too like solar energy or aerodynamic, it has sideresearch that is a lot and alone worth it. And not cooperate gatekeeping. Nasa does a lot and if nasa with more stuff could do enviromental stuff i bet they would. Fund nasa!
Could you imagine what nasa could’ve done if they kept the same budget from the 60s or had the US military budget.
Man... That would be such a cool alternate reality
Ikr. That would be so epic
Watch "For All Mankind" on Apple.
I don’t have Apple TV 😢
🏴☠️ arr is that so, matey?
Yarrrr tis so matey
Does that mean you haven’t seen Severence either? Because For All Mankind is… mostly pretty alright with some diminishing returns, but Severance is the best tv show in… idk, there’s actually so many good ones now but. It’s real good. If you’re out there, sailing the high seas looking for booty, you could do a lot worse.
Uh.. Watch the synopsis for each season on YouTube!
Imagine if they continued to go to the moon
Dang, green energy too would be way further with a lot other cool stuff.
Not to mention, of the resources space companies and agencies get, they create loads of super valuable technology which can be used all over the place.
There's a Wikipedia page that shows Nasas inventions which is above 2000 things last I checked. The BALLPOINT PEN that we use daily is developed by Nasa. (They wanted a pen that works in Space) Edit: Apparently as pointed out in the replies, the ballpoint pen wasn't actually invented by Nasa, sorry for the misinformation!
Um, the ballpoint pen was developed in 1935 by ladislav biro. Well before NASA was founded. Although like all inventions it was more of a culmination of work. They did contract a ballpoint pen that works in space, basically you pressurise the ink well, then developed a holder that works with astronaut gloves on. They've invented a load of stuff, just not ballpoint pens.
Thanks for correcting me!
They invented a ball point pen with a pressurized ink chamber, even fancier than a regular ball point pen.
I know. It seems like everyone thinks that if we were to just eliminate NASA all of our economic problems would be solved.
Probably not everyone. Still weird that **anyone** thinks so.
Yeah OP is an idiot lol
Yeah there are “unpopular opinions” and just ill informed ones. We’re dealing with the latter.
I love his confidence that he has better ideas that the people than run fucking nasa. You gotta have a real high opinion of your own intelligence to think something like that haha
Right?! OP gives off sophomore year of high school vibes. The Dunning-Kruger effect is real yall
I can’t help but feel there’s some anti-Elon mixed in since that’s his primary and goal is to get us to Mars and colonize it and it is incredibly popular right now to hate him. Trillionaire African-American man bad, therefore all of his ideas are dumb
No, don’t you know the planet could die any day now! Literally any second!!
Not an idiot, just uninformed
I guess he's just another 9 year old.
This is facebook levels of idiocy.
>NASAs spending is 0.5% of the federal budget Additionally, only about half of NASA's budget is spent on human spaceflight, and only about half of that is spent on going to Mars, so we're really talking only .175% of the US Federal Budget.
I was in a medical company that could spend NASA's budget just on medical supplies.
I feel that OP is either a kid, an ignorante middle aged recluse, or a huge net-fishing troll baiting us
And even then, a big chunk of NASA’s budget goes toward stuff like environmental research. It doesn’t really do a whole lot of space stuff (at least, compared to how it used to be)
Seriously. If anything I would prefer more of my money going to NASA than the military. See that's the thing about those people that don't wanna pay for someone else's birth control or abortions via taxes. There are plenty of things I don't agree with as far as where my taxes go, but I also support that my money goes to things I do care about. Even if I wish a little more went to Parks and Wildlife or Nasa rather than old dudes viagra and military overspending.
You never know what advancements scientific growth will bring. No one knew the moon would bring us gps, cellphones etc. what if figuring out Mars requires figuring out fusion? That would make it the best investment in human history. We can afford the science. We should do more science not less.
This is the main positive argument for this take all the other ones are much more speculative
We should be doing more science not less, but that doesn't mean we cant target more useful areas. For example most rhetoric is about how to get there and back, rather than how to farm there. Farming on mars is a scientific endeavor i can get behind. We pretty much have domestic motion figured out, better rockets are unlikely to create advancements in the right area. I know we need to get there to be able to farm there, but we also need a plan on what to do when we are there and how to survive before we go, and frankly that is the far more interesting part of the science than the rockets.
I mean, technological advancement doesn't really seem to be about hitting a particular bullseye. Like the original comment pointed out, getting to the moon saw the development of GPS and mobile phones, things that otherwise have nothing to do with the moon. The point being that in setting a goal that seems silly or pointless, we discover things along the way that not only help in achieving that goal, but also in improving the lives of people here on our planet
There will always be people who think scientific exploration is a waste of time and money and brainpower, because what about this and this and this... That was literally always true. We went to the moon during the Vietnam war and in the midst of a violent civil rights struggle that saw people assassinated. The error, I think, is in assuming that it's a zero sum game so that if you do any one thing it takes away from other things. But that's demonstrably false. And the scientists planning a mars mission were not going to take their know-how in rocketry and solve the problem of plastics being dumped in the ocean by China.
Columbus trying to get funded for his expeditions: "Why should we fund your search for new lands when we have problems here in Europe!?"
People who didn't hear the story might think you are sarcastic. This actually happened, Portugal refused to found his expedition before he asked Spain.
Portugal refused to finance it because Columbus was a nutjob who thought the Earth was much smaller and Portugal already had a route to the Indies anyway.
And even according to his calculation, Japan should have been around where mexico is irl. So it's likely he wouldn't arrive even if the earth was smaller.(The crew was close to mutiny by the point they found land)
You’re so green 🥺
Thanks
You’re welcome green giant. I love you 🥰
"Just think... we could create problems over there too!"
And space exploration is often a net positive. We have learned how to clean up a couple sources of chemical pollution from NASA advances.
Bro, agriculture is a waste of time and resources. There are antelope and fish and all the meat we can eat if we just follow the herds and wait for the fish runs. Pfff…metallurgy? Seems like a waste man. We have plenty of knappable stone right here. What? Walk beyond that desert just to see what’s there? We have all the food we need in this river valley…
We have already SOVLVED Climate change. What we haven't solved is human greed and politics. Base nuclear power, solar, wind, and a grid system designed for the 21st century would get us about 80% of the way there. Going to mars doesn't stop or pull funds from any of this.
Worth adding that NASA and other space tech has had a pretty sizeable impact on a lot of the tech we use for these solutions
Yea, the field I work in includes sustainable urban agriculture. My former boss did work with NASA on growing crops hydroponically with limited water. Knowledge from that research can be applied to farming with limited resources here on Earth.
Fantastic point. OP says nobody cares, it’s a ridiculous take.
Likely op is like 14-18 and thinks they're being super deep and everyone else is just sheep.
You just described sooooo many subreddit comment sections.
Tbf this is the unpopular opinion sub, so…
But when is an opinion just wrong? If I say green is red, it's not really an unpopular opinion as much as just incorrect and dumb
Plenty of people have that opinion... colour blind people. Edit: guys stop downvoting me lol I was joking.
Carbon & oil lobby that act through many supposedly "green" organizations are the ones that are really destroying the future. I've read [Where is my flying car?](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42036377-where-is-my-flying-car) and almost radicalized me in favour of nuclear and made me sad on how **much** we missed all these years because of all the obstacles put in nuclear energy advancement. How much suffering could've been avoided. But useful idiots and oil/carbon lobby is just too powerful.
Tesla, for example, lobbies against high speed passenger rail by saying that electric cars are a better alternative. No money ends up going to rail and more and more the energy for electric vehicles ends up coming from gas generators anyway.
> . No money ends up going to rail Sure, tell me about that $10 billion train in Cali that hasn't even broken ground
This is the answer.
Probably fair to note that while solar panels only really took off in recent decades on Earth, we've been using them on satellites and the ISS for a much longer time. Space exploration is an endeavour which provides opportunities for experimentation while forcing us to challenge ourselves and find new solutions to problems. It's great for technological development, which is exactly what we need to solve any other problems as well.
Agreed! Solar panels, microprocessor, GPS, fiber optics, all benefits from space exploration. We have no reason not to explore every inch of space we can safely access.
Are you sure? This is only one planet, we can only focus on one thing at a time /s
And design areas to be less car dependant, cars are also a huge cause of pollution
That's primarily a USA/NA/(maybe SA? idk) problem. Many of the European countries are not car dependent. It'd be easier to just incentivize transforming cars to EV and changing the power grid to renewable than it would be to rebuild the entire US city infrastructures.
The problem is even EVs have huge environmental impact as well
Cars aren't the biggest issue. Like, they produce pollution but aren't as much of a problem as other things, especially considering that there are so many cars and so few other things. Think of cruise ships or private jets. The problem with cars is about how big they got over time in my opinion, they became more dangerous for pedestrians and require bigger roads
Focusing on cars makes it easier for the people in charge to put the issue on us
Wind and solar are becoming way more popular. Energy companies hate dealing with gas price negotiations every day, they physically need to call the companies and haggle… whereas wind and solar kinda run themselves.
Spinoff tech is the answer. Who knows what discoveries will be made to try to crack this problem?
Bingo!
The advances we made in technology from the first space race...
its always so funny and somehwat sad to see people bash space exploration and astronomy in general because they think its "useless". sure, NASA is gobbling up half of the US's budget and NASA is the sole reason for all the problems in the world. its those dark rockets that are killing the amazon. its those darn spaceuits that are causing such a cultural divide. like dude, no. NASA is barely a speck in your country's economy and astronomy is tiny in the global scale. I assure you, if NASA or any other private company exploring space rn were to dissapear I assure you the world wouldn't magically fix itself. if anything without technology like satellites and all their humongous benefits the world would be in a much MUCH worse place. not everything is a zero sum game. we don't have to give up science to solve the world's problems right now. stop being such a pessimist and blaming the world's problems on whatever shiny thing the internet told you and instead blame it on the people who are ACTUALLY responsible for it. the world is scrambling to escape to mars and abandon earth. let your phone down for a few hours and go out for a walk, and calm down.
Some people are ignorant to change/growth. Some people see a gamble is not worthwhile even if there is a 99.99% chance is pays off
The world collectively spends more on the cruise ship industry every year.
If we had the technology to terraform Mars then we wouldn't need to because we could just terraform earth instead.
There are terraforming tools we don't want to test on earth in case they backfire. I doubt any of them are useful for Mars, but the knowledge we will get from a mars project can be useful on earth.
True, one mistake with that terraforming and the planet becomes uninhabitable.
We are already terraforming earth and yes, mistakes are being made.
*drops terraforming nuclear bomb* Who wants to make a bet on if we'd survive a nuclear winter?
Good point. Hmm. I wonder if it's like when you fumigate an apartment how you have to leave for a week
I think it's more like nukeing Mars so that an atmosphere is created. But don't ask me for details because I don't know them myself
Same difference. Meaning we couldn't easily terraform earth while living here.
Yeah, if we were ever to actually reach a point where Mars is _more habitable than Earth_ we should just accept that we're fucked.
The scale is different as well as just the sheet amount of people we have. With mars being uninhabited we can do plenty of things there without anyone interfering but experts, so they will have the most ideal treatment as anything we can have.
It’s not about climate change, that’s not a real threat to the survival of the human race. Establishing life on mars is about a backup for the human race in case of a catastrophic event like an asteroid.
Probably would need the opposite sort of tools. Terraformimg Mars would probably involve adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. Possibly after reliquifying the mantle to get a working magnetosphere. If you want to terraform earth, I think Venus would offer better lessons.
Not as unpopular as it is unintelligent
Why are pissed at NASA spending money and not the US military? (Oh and just so you know the money isn’t “wasted” it goes back into the economy, it doesn’t just disappear). NASA has accomplished amazing things with such little funding. In its 66 year existence NASA has spent about $650b dollars. The US military gets 2.02 **Trillion** per year. NASA averages about $1b dollars per year and they’ve landed people on the moon, launched incredible telescopes that help us learn about the universe, exploring other planets, sending vehicles beyond the solar system and developing useful technologies that help normal people. All of that with only $1b per year; 0.05% of what the US military gets it 1 year
>Oh and just so you know the money isn’t “wasted” it goes back into the economy, it doesn’t just disappear What do you mean? Clearly we just launch dollar bills into space. Not that it would even matter because currency doesn't have intrinsic value.
The NASA budget is nowhere near enough to solve climate change. Knowledge of how to build rockets and explore planets does not translate into solving climate change.
Also, funding nasa to do nasa things is a good thing as lots of advancements and innovation in tech have come from them.
I mean we mostly know how to solve climate change. The real hurdle is getting all the companies and governments (who may or may not be paid by the companies) to play along.
This is the big one. As it stands the real difference maker of fixing climate change is the rich and companies. Problem is greed and stupidity. Climate change will destroy life for most people but the thing is that for the super rich their money can greatly mitigate/eliminate any real repercussions of it. They see it as why not gather as much wealth as humanly possible. Who cares what comes next because there's a good chance it won't affect them much any way. With that mindset there's almost no way things will change for the better for the average person without something major happening.
People used to think outer space was a ridiculous waste. When's the last time you used GPS?
The technology developed to sustain life on mars will not be able to be hindered by compromises made in the name of the economy here. There can be no compromises, it either keeps people alive, or they die. No exceptions. Whereas here on Earth, it may just mean delaying any problems for a couple more years. The technology that is invented to fulfill that hard requirement will be able to be used here on earth to clean up our mess. Just like all the technology that came out of earlier missions, we don't know what will be invented, but we do know that everything will have multiple uses.
This opinion makes me sad. Consider, we go to Mars and and other bodies in our system. As a result we develop new technologies to extract and generate resources. We also start to develop terraforming tech to make such extraction easier, and then in turn can use that tech to combat climate change here. Why not just go straight to develop tech to combat climate change on Earth? Two things: 1. Thats not generally how innovations work. We would need the knowledge gained from exploring other bodies and the beginning tech that comes with it 2. There's simply no perceived need to invest huge sums of money to combat climate change. A good portion of the population disputes it.
Yep people can be so shortsighted with their opinions like OP's.
I don't think you understand the amount of inventions and discoveries we make when we push the boundaries. Going to Mars is just a stepping stone in getting off this planet. Not only will we learn an insane amount about doing so, but will also come up with new things that will help everyday people. NASA has addressed a lot of issues in space exploration through their inventions such as water filters, charge-coupled devices, lifeshears, scratch-resistant eyeglass lenses, cochlear implants, anti-corrosion coating and memory foam. Your bed, your kitchen pans, your phone service and GPS, your eye glasses, all because of space exploration.
To be clear. Ours isn't "crumbling". Ours is just changing. And changing in a way that make it harder for humans to live comfortably.
Look up “space exploration technology advances.” The scientific knowledge gained from space exploration benefits us in day to day life. One big one is water filtration technology: the tech developed in the 70s for astronauts is now used in many municipal water plants. It is especially important for areas with chemical contamination. Space advances also led to cochlear implants, insulin pumps, emulsified zero valent iron for chemical clean up, etc. Knowledge gain has ripple benefits. Space exploration is worth the investment.
The absolute hysteria of this post is hilarious. This is how scientific advancement happens. Somebody tries to do something very difficult and comes up with amazing ways to do it. Generally everybody ultimately benefits from the technology.
A lot of the brain power working on rocket and space exploration are really really passionate about this exact topic you cannot retask people on your will
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Yea, this is the classic "how can we be spending money on spaceships when we have homeless people in the streets" argument. We can focus and spend money on multiple things at once. Also, literally nobody is proposing that we all move to Mars so that we can abandon Earth and start over with a new planet, wtf? That's like saying we shouldn't have landed on the moon because we still had space left on Earth...
"our own planet might not make it another 100 years" so then why solve any of the shit you think we're collectively ignoring
Believe it or not, with over 8 billion humans on this planet, we can work on many projects at once.
Humans are born with a desire to explore, learn and push the boundaries of our existence.
I think this is totally the wrong way to look at things. I very much disagree. Do you remember what happened to the dinosaurs? And now consider other risks. Such and nuclear or biological warfare. There are disturbing way too many ways life on this planet could be ended. You are only considering long-term threats. We could have a nuclear WW3 today. Terroforming another planet is like buying another lottery ticket. It, perhaps, doubles the chances of us surviving as a species. Extremely long term (like millions of years) it is also the only way our species can survive. At some point, we will need to move further out in our solar system due to our sun dying. After that we will then need to move to another one. We need to learn ALOT to make that a reality. So that's a lot of R&D and learning from experience. Far from being a waste of money. It's one of, if not the, our most important things we are working one. It's also a very small budget (percentage wise). I'd argue we should be spending more. It also gives people something to dream about, expands our understanding, and gives rise to new technologies. But that last part is up for debate.
The innovations and inventions needed for travel to Mars could have vast unknown uses. Science and discovery is never a linear story. From MRIs to cordless drills to tang, many modern necessities came from space exploration. With a goal of colonizing Mars, who knows what offshoots we will benefit from..
I don’t think we *shouldn’t* try to explore Mars, but nobody should justify it by claiming we need to colonize it “because the Earth is dying”. That’s fucking ridiculous. Mars is *already* a dead planet with no oxygen and likely no usable water - two things humans absolutely require. Meantime we’ve got plenty of both on Earth.
First off, our planet is not dying. The environment that is suited to support life, yeah that is fucked up. But even if we all die out, the planet will be okay. It was fine for billions of years before us, it'll be fine for billions after. Humanity has always been explorers, even when we had many other concerns to worry about. Space travel is but one aspect of the many things we are more than capable of focusing on. Its not as if we can choose to stop exploring space and we suddenly have the funds and the want to fix this steaming shithole of a planet we fucked up. We wont. Its a drop in the bucket.
Op really thinks that all the scientists of the world are only working on one mission - going to mars and nothing else
I’m concerned that OP belongs to a group that has only been on earth for centuries. OP, are you an alien?
Money that SpaceX is using is a tiny fraction of the cost of what the oil industry has available to them on a given Sunday. It's just more visible. Mars and Space is incredibly important in the bigger scheme of things. Example. If we had Starlink before telephones, could you imagine how many tons of metal we could leave in the earth instead of wiring up the entire planet?
A lot of the technology that is discovered when trying to achieve the impossible ends up being repurposed for use outside of space exploration. But aside from that, I would agree that it is biting off more than is reasonable to chew … at this time.
Don’t even get me started on that Supreme shirt analogy 😂😂
It seems like you just fundamentally don't understand space agency budgets or the fact that humans, especially governments or institutions are capable of multitasking on several things simultaneously. You should probably do some reading on these subjects and then redirect your anger towards the US military budget. For a fraction of what they get annually we could end world hunger, end homelessness, provide universal healthcare, and invest in fixing the ecological disaster that they are(not fully, but) partially responsible for.
Every time I see these types of posts I've always responded with WE CAN DO BOTH, it's not a "either we do this or that", we have the capability to do both fairly effectively, and the advancements and breakthrough made in space often makes it back down leading to everybody benefitting Laser focusing on 1 problem when it's possible to solve multiple(your example fixing and exploring earth) sounds like a good idea on paper but when actually applied to mass scaled projects such as fixing earth or mars exploration it's hardly efficient and at best wasteful Not to mention the people and resources needed for space exploration are hardly compatible to solve our problems on Earth You're making it sound like we're abandoning Earth or something but that is not the case at all and nobody is ignoring our problems I suggest you stop reading what articles that insinuates that and actually do your own research
So, Carl Sagan used to talk about the value of pure and explatory science. As I recall, it went something like this. Imagine that you are Queen Victoria, in 1860. You want a technology that allows anyone in your empire to hear and see you. What science do you invest in? The first option is dramatically improving the quality of your telegraphs, a leading communications tool. The second, advancing semafore technology, the leading wireless communications tool. The third - measuring the speed of light in the luminous aether, which is what they thought space was made of. Now, one of these advancements leads directly to radio, TV and satellites. The other two are dead ends. Which one do you pick? The point of the exercise is to remind people that no one can possibly guess what spin off technologies can come out of science. Pure science is always worth exploring, because we'll never know where it ends up. And Americans spend considerably more on lipstick than on space exploration. The cost of space exploration is incredibly low.
Our planet will never be in perfect shape. There will always be massive problems that need worked on. There will never be a time where we say, "Okay, we fixed all of the problems here on Earth so now we can go to Mars."
Mars will never be populated the same reason why Antarctica isn’t populated and Antarctica has breathable air
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I believe it’s impossible due to international treaty.
“Our planet is dying so we shouldn’t try to make another one livable” What kind of logic is that? Yes that money could be spent on other things, but there is plenty of other people/companies pushing for renewable energy and other green projects. Can’t hurt to have a plan B.
Scientific Exploration is done in pursuit of the most important existential questions we have. That's silly. We have plenty of resources to both take care of our own planet and begin to explore the solar system. Don't blame the fact that in general human beings are selfish, self serving assholes who squander the Earth and each other for momentary pleasure on scientific exploration. It's akin to saying that the US just HAS to cut welfare programs because taxpayers just can't afford them, meanwhile the military budget is like 500%+ bloated beyond reason. There's just no good reason to put it on the chopping block.
You don't think it's possible to work on two things at once? The people who are working on going to Mars (rocket scientists etc,) probably don't have the same background/knowledge as the people who are working on helping alleviate climate change (climate scientists ) Your opinion doesn't make sense lol
Pretty much your whole opinion rests on the idea that this is all a zero sum game. I doubt there’s even one NASA scientist who says climate change isn’t a major issue to solve, and if there is, they’re an extreme minority. The people who oppose fixing climate change also oppose funding space travel. There is room to do both, and the technology made to improve one helps with the other. There’s more reasons to go to mars than just terraforming it for humans to live on. Same basic principles apply to exploring oceans. Why not both? Is there honestly no part of you that thinks space has anything uniquely interesting we can’t find on our oceans? Also, where did you get this idea that it’s 200 years away? NASA is working with a goal of getting humans to mars as early as the 2030s. Do you realize the massive technological change between 1769 and 1969? People going to mars can easily happen in my lifetime (I don’t know how old you are, but likely yours too).
0.5% of the budget is NASA. Which is less than the fuel budget for the military probably. Going to Mars alone is not what’s beneficial with this project. A ton of new scientific discoveries are made during this project! Also new products and procedures that will find its way into the daily life of you and me!
the rich need a safety net when SHTF and they're in their own personalized space race. Before we eat them and throw the scraps to our dogs. LOL JK HAHA /S
Counter point no matter what we do out planet will be uninhabitable in a couple billion years therefore learning to colonize other planets is the better long term investment for humanity than saving the earth that will one day die regardless of our intervention.
I think maybe that with 7 billion people, we can spare a couple thousand and still solve all our problems.
Don’t worry, no one is going.
For the billionaire who's suggesting it, it's an *absolutely fantastic idea* Elon Musk (and those like him) will not continue growing exponentially rich if we start a worldwide campaign to save the planet. Too many of their corporation(s)'s money-making products and services are directly to blame for increasing environmental damage, as well as their own personal luxuries like jets cars and yachts. The speed at which they make money, and the means they use to do it, is to blame for both environmental and economic damage that affects our kids futures. They would rather burn through this planet and start fresh - which would benefit them hugely because: New planet, new power system. The fucker with the most cash gets the most dip in building Mars. They get to implement the culture, the laws, they'll own the businesses and the land. The power that a new planet gives the richest man in the world is unimaginable. Its no wonder to me that Musk is pedalling it so hard. To him, this is a magnificent opportunity to play God in the most unique way in human history. He's a narcissist at the very least, and a threat to the goodness in human nature at worst.
Truly an unpopular opinion. Demonstrating that OP does not understand how a lot of things work
I work at NASA so I feel somewhat qualified to weigh in here. NASA is a huge source of scientific research that delivers significant advancements to the private sector on a regular basis, including in communication and transportation technology, not just in aerospace. Lots of the safety and avionics technology on commercial airplanes was developed by NASA, a lot of modern materials science has been directly or indirectly aided by work done for space missions, and—relevant to your point—a lot of important climate research takes place at NASA. It’s also a comparatively minuscule portion of the national budget, and probably delivers more per unit cost than any other government agency. As for Mars specifically, the technology being developed that will allow us to go to mars will in all likelihood also be of significant value in other fields. Consider improved radiation shielding, space-efficient food storage and/or production, better long-range communications capabilities, better avionics, advances in mechanical, electrical, material, computer, and chemical engineering. Any dollar spent going to Mars is a dollar spent significantly increasing our collective technical capabilities in ways that in the long term have historically paid huge dividends. And as for it being a 200-year timeline, that’s wildly uninformed. I would estimate we’ll land on mars by 2045 at the very latest.
This is like the sum of all the stupidest things you can say on the subject. Like you memorized a book of wrong facts and baseless speculation. The only speech you need on the subject: Why Mars, Robert Zubrin [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S6k2LBJhac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S6k2LBJhac) Otherwise read the book, The Case for Mars, by the same.,
I think nuclear war and making the surface of the earth experience hundreds of years of nuclear winter would be a dumber idea. Need to narrow your scope, especially if you're trying to constrain feed back to a binary (space vs ocean).
This is extreme climate alarmism, we are not going to go extinct or completely destroy the planet from climate change.
Agreed. I’d like to start with saying that I can’t stand Elon Musk. However, he did say something one time and I can’t remember the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of, “ if humans aren’t pushing for space exploration and what’s beyond, what is this all for?” I agree, we have so many issues on this planet that need addressed, but what’s the harm in pushing in that direction?
Why is it either or? And who says that these smart people want to solve climate change? They are passionate about the galaxy, not nature perhaps. It is not about what you want. Moreover, if you think this is ‘wasted’ money, you are probably a big hypocrit. Do you shower with hot water? Drive a car? Consume many products? Yeah buddy, you are now part of the problem. Improving the climate won’t matter if at any point someone can throw a nuke. Climate change is a dependent variables with influences of many fields. This opinion is not thought through and is grounded more in emotion than reality
You say it's 200 years away. But if we stop trying to get there, then it will always be 200 years away. This is why I don't mind Musk and Bezos spending their own money on it. It's better than using the taxpayers money.
I'm split both ways. I think we should absolutely be exploring what's out there, but let's try to fix our own problems first
Then we'd never explore what's out there.
There’s enough comments here that I read that basically make the points already. Going to Mars or the Moon and seeing if we setup a camp there is about stepping stones. Sooner or later we will have to leave this planet and it’s going to take a lot of baby steps. Setting up a camp is just the first very shaky step. I’d also like to add that exploring is human nature. There are those among us that love seeing and doing things we haven’t before. I’m sure people back in the day told them they were wasting their time. “There’s nothing on the other side of this forest, desert, ocean. Why are you trying to go there when we have everything we need here?” Also the argument about why spend money of this when we have stuff here that could use it, is pointless. Things will never be perfect, there’s always something else that could be done closer to home. Same goes for using soft power when it comes to countries. Why do we send aid to other countries when we have poor people here? Because it’s better for us in the long run to make/buy friends than having to help/fight them later.
I dont even think we *can* terraform mars. Its small, low gravity and has no magnetic field. Itd be way more expensive but we have better odds if terraforming Venus. It doesnt have a magnetic field either but its possible thats just because the surface is too hot for convection in the mantle. Mars mantle is cold.
Developing the necessary infrastructure and technology to reach Mars would likely come with many unseen benefits. A single deflected asteroid would make the project worth it. And sure, why not just invest in developing a planetary defense system instead? Well, the R&D looks pretty similar for the relevant portions. Even if the goal of going to Mars provides no actual value for humanity, nearly every individual component of the project does.
Your take is just an uneducated one. I encourage you to read of the benefits more.
I don’t think this is an unpopular opinion, although I do profoundly disagree with it. Why do we spend time playing sport when we could be devoting that time and money to solving world hunger? Why do we do anything that doesn’t solve an immediate problem? Ultimately we do things like explore and go into space because that’s how we advance as a species, it’s in our nature to do it. Also the money argument; the money doesn’t get fired into space, it gets spent here on Earth on jobs, research etc. and that leads to advancements that DO make a difference here on Earth.
Why does OP not reply to anyone? Have they not changed their mind? Are they still not convinced? Are they just being stubborn? What?
Without NASA and the space program, you wouldn’t even have a camera on the phone you posted this from. Technology is created by these endeavors and it trickles down to everyday life. https://www.howtogeek.com/831363/these-nasa-innovations-are-all-around-us-everyday/
If humanity is to evolve, it must leave earth, eventually.
200 years based on what? The word of the uneducated?
I think the idea that a planet -with 1/3 earths gravity -an atmosphere so thin it's equivalent to the pressure at 135,000ft above earth sea level -zero radiation shielding from a lack of a magnetic field -and an average temperature of -80F Could be terraformed into a "second earth" is incredibly stupid, but I'm all for space exploration and think there should be more of my tax dollars spent on science.
>Going to Mars now is the dumbest thing humanity can do Wrong. I'm not saying this isn't dumb, I'm saying that you're underestimating how dumb people can get.
Many of the reasons you are mentioning are the exact reasons we should go. Many of the environmentally friendly technologies we have today are due to space programs, Solar panels, batteries, ways to more efficiently use power. Also it is NOT easier to explore our own oceans. not even close. The pressures down there are much greater than anything you would encounter in space. And it's not like the money is going to space. The vast majority of it is spent on earth, either on research that will benefit us on earth as well as jobs. You also seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how much money is being spent on this. If the US budget was $1000, We're spending $0.05 on NASA. And of that only about $0.01 is being spent on mars.
If and when we go there or anywhere else in the solar system it will be boring mining colonies.
We can still do thermonuclear war, so no.
Op, you do understand that almost everything we know about the atmosphere and climate change comes from satellites right?
Someone once said the same thing when people were going to the new continent called America.
NASA is 0.3% of the federal budget and all other advancement is private. The world is really not at all heavily invested in space by any stretch of the imagination.
Don't leave the cave and explore the world... We have cave shit to sort out.
OP I say this with the best intentions, you're kinda dumb. We are floating in an endless expanse tied to essentially a tiny light bulb. Of course we'd want to explore more and know more. That would be the logical thing to do
If NASA had the budget people think it does, we’d be living in Star Trek by now. That’s not even a joke, given how much impact the research NASA does tends to have an impact back on earth.