[Closed] Space Exploration...... Is it really worth the cost?

The money would only end up going into offshore trust funds and the like anyway

That aside, it's the same principle as renaissance countries funding exploration of the new world or Victorian expeditions to the poles or Australia etc

Humans migrate and colonise, we've been doing it since we left the rift valley

It might not benefit you directly but it will benefit humanity and your genes

It pushes technology forward in many area and ultimately.

“Either we’re a multi-planet species and out there exploring the stars, or we are a single-planet species waiting around for some eventual extinction event.”
- Elon Musk

No. Lots of useful stuff done remotely/automatically but putting humans in space is a hugely extravagant ego-trip.

I'd say the opposite... It's vital to procure new sources for minerals and potentially build off planet outposts.

Just look at the global energy crisis or population issues if you need inspiration!

Lots of useful stuff done remotely/automatically but putting humans in space is a hugely extravagant ego-trip

https://spinoff.nasa.gov/

Beyond the benefits at home as a result of technologies developed for space exploration, it's also about learning about our own existence, which is more than just curiosity. It helps in understanding physics we don't understand which can benefit mankind.

Then there's the urge to explore. We could have just not bothered finding the Americas, though many would argue we'd have a safer world if we hadn't 😉

It's massive way off when we'll actually benefit from moving out into space, and short of developing warp drive it's going to be generational trips and even the nearest stars likely have nowhere to support life. However if we don't consider it, we could be extinct just living on this planet within a few thousand years. If we have a plan to try to colonise places some day then when that fatal asteroid strike occurs, we might find someone survives out there.

Then again, does it really matter? We're infinitesimally small and insignificant on the scale of the universe and a pinprick on the lifespan of the Earth so why should we survive for long?

Wot TheBrick said

It is hard to quantify, who knows if the research being done with something from missions like "lisa pathfinder" which was launched a couple of weeks ago, might form the bedrock of understanding that creates new energy technologies for future generations.

Missions like Rosetta and the philae lander may provide less technological advancement in the same way, but should we as a society spend less on scientific "awe and inspiration" than we do on sports or movies?

Rosseta cost around 1 billion, The 2014 world cup cost around 15 times that much, sky's new deal for the premierships tv rights is around 1.6 billion a year, even as a football fan I know which I find greater value and more amazing.

I just don't get the whole 'colonising new planets' thing.
So, we find a planet a million miles away whose atmosphere we could possibly survive in.
Who gets to chose who goes, and isn't it a bit of a large operation basically starting human existence all over again?
You can't transport a million people there, so surely it would be a few who would be in charge of populating it? How long would this then take, another couple of hundred thousand years? I'm not talking about the ISS being a waste of money as it doesn't take long to get there and they obviously do some important experiments which will benefit humans on this earth right now, its the explorations into galaxies far far away.

Am I missing something really obvious?

I'm not talking about the launching of satellites which are obviously essential for the world today

and

Am I missing something really obvious?

erm...How d'you think the technology for satellites was developed?

Here's one though; the universe is filled* with an energy source we can't measure, or identify. Given that we're burning our planet to charge our mobile phones, it might be useful to know what that is.

* literally, most of it.

This question keeps coming up, and though some of the replies above cover my views, this wouldn't be STW if people didn't pile on their own opinions.
Science if freekin cool. Though the cutting edge of space travel may not benefit us today, as a species we need to look to the stars. As a planet we need to understand our place in the cosmos. This is what makes us human, we look beyond our basic needs and act on curiosity. This curiosity and need to be more than we are today is what makes us special as a species, otherwise we are just monkeys with clothes on.

Exactly.. There's no unified vision or effort.. Even our own government (all parties it seems) can only think in 4 year blocks.. We need to be thinking in 4 million year blocks.

Space, the Final Frontier.

Earthlings are inherent explorers, It's in our genes (or even your jeans if you carry a map in your pocket)
We have to do it, It's natural. I just wish the world wasn't hell bent on destroying itself/ourselves with pointless wars & poisonous emissions then we'd have more money to explore!

It's worth it up to a point, I think it's way too early to start actually spending money researching and planning a manned mission to Mars though - plenty of things closer to home that the money should be prioritised for.

It compels us to look up. Especially in these inexplicably negative days when we seem to be dedicating all our efforts to not being [i]too[/i] awful and to telling our kids they can't have things we had. If you don't believe humans can be something bigger and better than why even bother getting out of bed? We decide where the rising ape meets the falling angel. And especially now that the angels have fallen it's good to have something to draw the eyes up.

Also, **** it, we can afford it. We can afford anything, all the numbers are made up bullshit. We're not foregoing anything else in order to have space tech, we're foregoing those things because we choose to

choppersquad - Member
So, we find a planet a million miles away

A million miles is not very far away, and we've got a satellite out there anyway.

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/noaas-dscovr-going-to-a-far-out-orbit/#.VnhPio_XJaQ

The moon is about a quarter of that distance. Nearest planet is more like 40 million miles, depending where planets are in their orbits around the sun at the time. Nearest habitable planet in another system is god knows in miles. Talking hundreds or thousands of light years away.

It's basically a case of if we don't think about it now, the human race is doomed if this planet becomes uninhabitable. Even then we may not have enough time as it could take tens or hundreds of thousands of years to get to a habitable planet.

Yes.

It's basically a case of if we don't think about it now, the human race is doomed if this planet becomes inhabitable.

yes

"I'm not talking about the launching of satellites which are obviously essential for the world today, but more about sending probes to Mars and other far flung planets."

You have this the wrong way round, as do many governments and private enterprise.

There is way too much junk in near earth orbit telling us nothing but costing billions and very little fired off into deep space which would give us a lot more bang for our buck.

I completely fail to see the need to consider the future. Some/most here would see the value in considering the future for their children or grandchildren but do we really care/worry/know about what will happen in 200 years or more?
Actually I suspect that we won't be around to benefit from any new worlds etc.
I can see that some things have come from space exploration but I am not aware of anything that's really made a significant difference to our lives.
Please enlighten me though.

I can see that some things have come from space exploration but I am not aware of anything that's really made a significant difference to our lives.

New ways to preserve food?

Do you ever use google maps? Sat nav?

Do you care if your plane gets lost, or the national grid goes down because of an undetected solar flare?

The weather forecast?

Looking toward the near future...autonomous cars? Automated inspection of hazardous areas?

CAT scan in a hospital?

i assume someones referenced it but the Elon Musk articles on Wait But Why are very good

http://waitbutwhy.com

A million miles is not far at all.. There's a million mile club within a club on the Volvo owners forum!

Some/most here would see the value in considering the future for their children or grandchildren but do we really care/worry/know about what will happen in 200 years or more?

“Either we’re a multi-planet species and out there exploring the stars, or we are a single-planet species waiting around for some eventual extinction event.”
- Elon Musk

^ thebrick's post sums it up for me...find it all rather sad & pointless if i thought human life was going to start and end on this rock. I like to think the human race has potential: we've evolved a long way from the primordial ooze and, although we've along way to go, I'd hate for all that progress to be wasted 🙁

yes

I'm all for space exploration and the technology and knowledge that results from it but there's no way we should be colonising other planets until we learn to look after our own.

Edit: To answer your question directly: Yes, it is worth the cost. The day we stop exploring and discovering new things is the day the human race officially becomes a waste of a good opportunity.

Also, "worth the cost" begs the question of "what is the cost?" and how does that compare to other things....

I remember doing the maths a couple years ago, and roughly 3 months of iPhone profits = 1 mars rover....

We tend to learn quite a lot about our planet by looking at others. We tend to learn an awful lot about ourselves by having humans in space.

it's also really good cost-wise too: when you look at all of the spinoff technologies that were either given a major boost or resulted from it ( eg. computers, communications, medicine, materials tech etc) , the Apollo programme had a return on investment of 8 dollars for every dollar spent for a ten year long project. That's why Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen, Richard Branson etc. are getting into developing and building rockets and putting people into space...it's not a vanity project, there's money in it.

The Elon Musk quote above is right , but doesn't go far enough.

All life, Gaia, exists to reproduce, multiply and increase the land which it can colonise, from the Arctic to the equator to the oceans. Man is Gaia's chance to leave this world and move onwards. We are the earth's one chance to spread its life to other places in the universe. Space exploration is the m ost important thing we can do.
(Signed, several glasses of wine)

The waitbutwhy link has it, mainly [url= http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html ]this[/url] one. See page 2 for the 'why', but frankly it's all good.

There's a very good chance that the lifetime cost of four ballistic missile submarines for the Royal Navy will exceed £100bn.

Those subs will never, ever be used for their intended purpose.

The lifetime cost of the International Space Station is £100bn...it's a no-brainer really.

I think most of the posts are missing my point (but I'm not sure?).
I do agree with the knowledge gained from satellites/experiments on ISS etc, but how much do we learn from far flung unmanned missions that is of actual use to us today or in the near future?
The sums spent are massive, and as for the idea that we've got it so why not spend it, I'm not sure I agree with that?
I think the thing I find most hard to swallow is countries like India spending $600 million on sending a man to the moon when they have far more urgent problems that could be addressed with that kind of funding. We're going to give them another half a billion in the next five years in aid so I can't help thinking they're rather getting their priorities a bit skewed?
It is interesting reading everyone's views though.

Nearest habitable planet in another system is god knows in miles.

I'm going with 76,420,000,000,000 miles. Life at destination not guaranteed 😀

The sums spent are massive

According to that fella on the telly the other day, they've spent £100 billion on ISS. (I'm guessing that's not including development costs launch vehicles and a bunch of other stuff.

Which is less than we are likely to spend renewing the ability to nuke a medium sized country.

Am I the only one who doesn't think it's necessarily a good idea for the human race to spread to other planets? To do what exactly - mess them up like we have this one, then spread to the next, and the next? And the reasons people have given in this thread so far like "because we can", "because we can afford it", and "because it's in our nature to expand" sends a shiver down my spine honestly.

I'm reminded of this quote from the Matrix,

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I try to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively creates a natural equilibrium with it's surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.

If there was some higher being looking down on us at the moment I think it'd do well to keep us quarantined on this planet, at least until we've learned to be a good universal citizen by clearing up the mess we've made of the earth, social inequity, greed, wars and all our other unpleasant traits.

Am I the only one who doesn't think it's necessarily a good idea for the human race to spread to other planets?

There is a fairly vigorous strain of utilitarianism amongst the guys who think about this stuff (Yudkowsky especially, but certainly including Musk). They apply a [i]very[/i] small discount to future people's utility, and because they believe that near-light-speed travel is theoretically feasible and that the heat death of the universe is a [i]very[/i] long way off, they see the possibility of a vast spread of humanity across a vast span of the reachable universe, what is referred to as the "cosmic endowment", (everything that you can travel to, limited by the fact that it isn't static but rather receding from us).

So they think of uncountable billions of people, over the next 200 billion years or so, doing human (or successor advanced intelligence) stuff. Taking that stuff as a good (which it is, in the only terms of reference that we have) and applying very minor discounts to it for the fact that it takes place millions and billions of years into the future, the upside to an expansion throughout the "cosmic endowment" is colossal. Once you've settled on a fairly low discount rate on future utility, anything that facilitates that expansion is more-or-less a moral imperative.

I do agree with the knowledge gained from satellites/experiments on ISS etc, but how much do we learn from far flung unmanned missions that is of actual use to us today or in the near future?
The sums spent are massive, and as for the idea that we've got it so why not spend it, I'm not sure I agree with that?

55 years ago no human had left the atmosphere
In 1900 the wright brothers made their first flight
The first car came about in 1886

So if the technological advances of the last 150 years are repeated then who knows what will be possible.

The Elon Musk quote is nicked as well.

If there was some higher being looking down on us at the moment I think it'd do well to keep us quarantined on this planet, at least until we've learned to be a good universal citizen by clearing up the mess we've made of the earth, social inequity, greed, wars and all our other unpleasant traits.

I do agree but we're way off venturing off to colonolise other planets certainly outside of our system; we got some time to evolve to be better...i really hope when we are we've lost the traits you mention. As i said in my previous post, we've evolved a long way so its a shame to right us off just yet.

a large part of it is studying the effect of spaceflight on humans !

Thats such a ridiculous argument its funny. Just think how much we could learn about humans standing on their heads in buckets of sewage, if we spent billions studying humans standing on their heads in buckets of sewage.

^^^^^ Very good point.

If there was some higher being looking down on us at the moment I think it'd do well to keep us quarantined on this planet, at least until we've learned to be a good universal citizen by clearing up the mess we've made of the earth, social inequity, greed, wars and all our other unpleasant traits.

Have you seen how nasty aliens can be! There's some proper wrong 'uns out there! 😀

No, no its not a good point: the effect of space travel on humans has high relevance to not only future space exploration, but also relevance here on earth (materials, propulsion systems, computer technology, communications etc etc). Studying standing on your head in a bucket of sewage only has one result: how to survive standing on your head in a bucket of sewage.

No, no its not a good point: the effect of space travel on humans has high relevance to not only future space exploration, but also relevance here on earth (materials, propulsion systems, computer technology, communications etc etc).

Yeah yeah, that old one! Think of all the beneficial side products of space exploration - like Teflon!

Trouble is the gaping (black) hole in that argument is that the beneficial things that come out of the space programme are just that - coincidental side products. If instead we took the space budget (and all the industrial might and brainy people it absorbed) and directed in solely on developing new products for the benefit of humanity, we'd have come up with a lot more than a non-stick coating for frying pans! We could have advanced renewable energy by decades, developed new antibiotics that bacteria aren't resistant to, and maybe even solved third world hunger through advances in agriculture.

I say it again - let's put the effort and money into solving the problems we have created here on our own planet, before we have the audacity and arrogance to reach out and start populating other worlds!

how much do we learn from far flung unmanned missions that is of actual use to us today or in the near future?
The sums spent are massive, and as for the idea that we've got it so why not spend it, I'm not sure I agree with that?

Need to unpick this a bit:

What do you mean by near future? It's only in living memory that anyone even orbited the earth with anything, let alone further exploration. That was far flung exploration once (recently!). And you agree satellites are useful? Other far flung human exploration includes the Americas....

Are the sums massive? They're massive for an individual (even then, I could argue), but for a government, really?

Look at EU or US funding on space [b]exploration[/b] (not the "useful" stuff like satellites etc) and compare it to total spending. What would massive be? 10%? 50%? 1%? 0.001%? Which of those is it [b]actually[/b].

600 million for india.... sounds like pocket change down the back of the sofa to me. And it's money spent employing indians in high tech industry, driving demand for well educated population etc.*

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30137334 - wonder how many spacecraft that would pay for? Oh wait, I can check... http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities ok that's buying them privately, but that's about 50 rockets. And I'm sure Elon would give us a bulk buy discount 😉

*ponders firing politicians into space for the same cost as re-doing the houses of parliament*

Next you'll be advocating we cut funding for the arts... ( i leave it to an interested party to look up and compare those numbers, here are some old ESA ones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Space_Agency#Budget_appropriation_and_allocation but bear in mind that's all of europe)

*just checked, 2015 spending about 200 billion, assuming all that 600million is in one year (it won't be) their space spending is about a quarter of a percent.

Well that quotation from The Matrix may be good theatre but it's inaccurate. Any mammal (well any lifeform) will multiply unchecked given enough resources and few predators. Eventually the population will level out when there is a limit on resources. I would suggest our population has reached the unsustainable point.

Coming back to the why of unmanned missions - as I said before it's acquisition of knowledge. How can you possibly not want to know stuff if you have the means to find out? Or is whatever form of "Woo" is currently en vogue adequate to explain everything?

Think of all the beneficial side products of space exploration - like Teflon!

Don't forget those pens that can write underwater as well 😀

perthmtb - Member

Trouble is the gaping (black) hole in that argument is that the beneficial things that come out of the space programme are just that - coincidental side products. If instead we took the space budget (and all the industrial might and brainy people it absorbed) and directed in solely on developing new products for the benefit of humanity, we'd have come up with a lot more than a non-stick coating for frying pans!

That's not really how it works. For one thing, the developments weren't "coincidental", they were absolutely integral. Essentially the space programmes become massive directed research programmes with huge amounts of spinoffs and spinouts, and very little of it's pointless outside those fields. But more importantly, it's hard to sit down and go "let's invent this". Studying materials leads to novel discoveries on their properties which then leads to "hey, this thing we discovered can do this". Which is why you design spaceships and get frying pans (and teflon is a hell of a lot more useful than that).

The other is that if you subtract funds from space programs, chances are you don't end up spending it on your now-directionless large scale research program, you spend it on bombs or tax cuts or MP expenses. Or, 500 small research programmes without the scope to produce big results (and which often get saddled with "discover X using Y" and end up doing nothing much)

perthmtb - Member
I say it again - let's put the effort and money into solving the problems we have created here on our own planet, before we have the audacity and arrogance to reach out and start populating other worlds!

Space travel helps to inspire us in solving these problems too.

Space travel helps to inspire us in solving these problems too.

I wonder how we measure global climate, monitor receding ice caps, provide timely information in the event of floods, extreme weather or other natural disaster? When we spill oil (deepwater etc.) I wonder how we monitor that?

Do any of those count as solving this planet's problems? Guess not 😉

I say it again - let's put the effort and money into solving the problems we have created here on our own planet, before we have the audacity and arrogance to reach out and start populating other worlds!

I completely agree. However, we should still explore space and benefit from all the knowledge, perspective, and technology that goes with it.

I say it again - let's put the effort and money into solving the problems we have created here on our own planet, before we have the audacity and arrogance to reach out and start populating other worlds!

The biggest problem we have on our own planet is over population - a cull would be a very cheap and quick option.

Space exploration is fine and dandy...

If we really want to solve problems on this planet, we have to take a long hard look at the arms industry, as not only does it swallow up vast sums of money, but it also [url= http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/06/whats-the-environmental-impact-of-modern-war ]spreads pollution on a global scale[/url], both physical and spiritual.

Imagine for a moment if instead of being radicalized by being bombed and left homeless/injured/fatherless/motherless/childless etc as a result of corporate pursuit of resources and power, people were being encouraged to reach their full potential in exploring alternative sources of energy and advancing space travel technology for the benefit of us all.

Then maybe we could ship off all the nasty pasties who start wars for profit on a gleaming space cruiser called something majestic like 'Titanic' or something.

Technology development may be a nice by product but surely space travel is the acceptable, if expensive, by product of war.

So what we need is better weapons development of course we may not survive to turn it into space travel.

Where does all this money they spend go? On wages. They don't burn tenners to get these things in orbit. So the money just goes back in to the system.

We don't even spend that much on space exploration. Single digit percentages of national budgets (at most). The costs have been returned as profit many times over. Sending 'robots' to Mars, and probes to Pluto (and beyond), is a small part of the overall (profitable) budget.
If you ask me, we're *too* focused on research with expected outcomes and quantifiable return, there's not enough blue sky research.
Countries with advanced technology economies, like south Korea, spend waaaay more than we do on R&D, including space research.

If the beauty of discovery doesn't inspire you, then just think of the basics. We spend a little bit of money researching valuable technology, and we get to learn about the universe beyond our atmosphere as a spectacular bonus. And make lots of profit too.

So, we spend a little bit of money on space research, we make lots of profit from the new technology needed (because space is hard), and some people think we spend too much money on space?

FFS.

Look how far we have come since Wright brothers.
How far could we be in the next 150 years?
[img] /revision/latest?cb=20090319165201[/img]

We could have advanced renewable energy by decades, developed new antibiotics that bacteria aren't resistant to

A lot of renewable or eco friendly tech is developed for space exploration. Resources are highly limited in space so we need to recycle and reuse as much as we can. The machinery also needs to be highly efficient to harness as much energy as possible into what ever useful job it's doing rather than convert it to heat.

There have been some major advances in antiviral and antibacterial medicines from experiments done in the ISS. Viruses seem to thrive in microgravity a lot more than on Earth and can become a lot more aggressive as a result we've been able to do experiments and gather data which could be very hard to do on Earth.

There are also studies being performed on growing plants in space. If we could use the moon or other bodies for agriculture it would reduce the impact farm land has on natural habitat. There are also many other rare minerals in space which could stop us from digging up the planet.

But I understand the point you are making ie why not just focus on fixing these things in first place rather than using spin off ideas.

I think this is because ideas thrive more when there is a real goal or problem to solve. i.e. "We need to make a person survive in space for 1 week with only 20 litres of water ... How do we do this?" I think this type of situation usually creates better advances compared to "lets figure out how to use water more efficiently". The resource limits put on engineers for space exploration in terms of mass, available power etc .. makes them think out of the box a lot more giving better solutions.

If you ask me, we're *too* focused on research with expected outcomes and quantifiable return, there's not enough blue sky research.

FFS

makes them think out of the box a lot more giving better solutions.

But does the over reliance on our existing academic structure prevent them doing this? Being taught how to think conventionally is arguably the biggest challenge to being able to think outside the box.

Starlite anyone?

Most of the deep space missions are relatively cheap as there are so few of them, and manned missions are non existent. Unmanned they are very cheap. Manned missions so far have been low orbit and the one bunch of moon missions long ago now.

The majority of our exploration of things "out there" are done from observatories and satellites back home.

Unmanned deep space missions have generally been to understand the rocks that surround us. Far more interesting recently has been to look at things other than the main planets, but smaller bodies and asteroids. These are things that benefit us in understanding geology back home. Could even help us predict earthquakes. Places with atmospheres can help us look at our own climate. Mars and Venus in particular are examples of what may happen to Earth in the future.

Looking at asteroids and even landing on them, is vital as we could easily be wiped out by one. It's easy to dismiss as it will never happen just because we haven't had a major extinction size asteroid in millions of years, but doesn't mean we won't get one tomorrow. Smaller scale, enough to wipe out a town or city, that happens more frequently. Just we've been lucky they've been in remote areas.

Understanding all this could save us.

Besides all this, cost of space exploration is shifting to the private sector which unlike costly wasteful government funded space programmes, are competitive and look for the biggest return for lowest cost.

At present private missions are commercial satellite launching ventures, but they're getting cheaper and the results are cheaper technology for longer missions. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35157782

Space exploration pays for itself.

[url= https://theconversation.com/space-research-pays-for-itself-but-inspires-fewer-people-23549 ]https://theconversation.com/space-research-pays-for-itself-but-inspires-fewer-people-23549[/url]

There has been a lot written about the effect of the Apollo missions upon the USA, including the huge leaps in tech and the inspiration of the next generation of scientists and engineers.

Being as the mariana trench is likely to be more livable than any of the planets we yet know about (at least it has water) I really don't get the colonization aspect of space travel. The technology advancement/because it's there/s**ts and giggles aspects are perfectly acceptable reasons but personally I'd rather the Billionaires used their money and influence to help us stop sha$$ing the planet in the first place rather than finding us somewhere to live once we do.

Being as the mariana trench is likely to be more livable than any of the planets we yet know about (at least it has water) I really don't get the colonization aspect of space travel. The technology advancement/because it's there/s**ts and giggles aspects are perfectly acceptable reasons but personally I'd rather the Billionaires used their money and influence to help us stop sha$$ing the planet in the first place rather than finding us somewhere to live once we do.

Of the things we could cut spending on, space research and exploration is way down the list. In both terms of how much would be "redirected" and the effect of not funding it in the first place.

I'd rather the Billionaires used their money and influence to help us stop sha$$ing the planet in the first place rather than finding us somewhere to live once we do.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

not to mention that the job of trying to work out how to live on another planet DOES feed back into more renewable, sustainable and resourceful ways of doing things on this one, and that's before you look at all the other myriad of benefits, but the big one about working out how to reliably move beyond this chunk of rock is to ensure the continuation of our species, an admirable goal no?

Space exploration pays for itself

Having read the source for your statement (and the source of the source) I think that is a spurious argument.

Their logic is that the billions of dollars the US Government pours into NASA has beneficial knock-on effects for society as a whole, because every dollar invested creates ten dollars of 'goods and services' circulating in the wider economy - therefore it "pays for itself".

The flaw in this particular argument is that the same would happen if the government poured the same amount of money into just about anything else - such as infrastructure, education, healthcare etc. It's called the 'multiplier effect' and is the basic economic principle behind all Government spending, used to good effect by a number of countries recently to 'stimulate' their way out of recession.

And if you add into the equation that the Government coffers aren't bottomless and so they have to pick and choose what they invest in, then the argument becomes which investment gives the better overall return for society.

My personal view is that space programmes have more to do with ego, posturing, and general willy waving by governments than economic stimulus, and that the economic multiplier effects and eventual trickle down of [u]some[/u] of the technology into the general economy is used as a justification, but isn't as much as would happen by investing the same money directly into things such as biotech, IT, or renewable energy.

Of course that totally ignores the more existential arguments about the search for knowledge and the future of mankind, but that's not what the article was saying, it was trying to justify the spend on space programmes by economic benefit alone.

Of course that totally ignores the more existential arguments about the search for knowledge and the future of mankind, but that's not what the article was saying, it was trying to justify the spend on space programmes by economic benefit alone.

Indeed, it's a distraction argument in itself as it's borne from the idea that something must have an economic benefit to be worthwhile, which is kinda the point that is being argued. There are benefits beyond the economic that make it worthwhile, some level of economic feedback is a side benefit, but the people that can't see the other benefits are the ones who tend to focus on the economic and want that element justified like it's all that matters.

but isn't as much as would happen by investing the same money directly into things such as biotech, IT, or renewable energy.

The amusing thing is that they (^) ARE an integral part of space tech and vice versa!

We can afford anything, all the numbers are made up bullshit

Where does all this money they spend go? On wages. They don't burn tenners to get these things in orbit. So the money just goes back in to the system

As stated most space missions ultimately only throw a few hundred pounds worth (scrap value) of aluminium, batteries and electronics. The money goes into making these incredibly strong, light powerful and resilient and eventually this knowledge will benefit us all (i't not just material science - it's certainly helped push the development of microelectronics and telecommunications. The missions by their very nature throw up a lot of difficult technological questions and the money is spent answering them.

Are there more important challenges? (yes improving female eduction in the developing world is well regarded as our best hope of a better future) and is it a little carbon intensive? (probably not comapered to something like videogaming). But it's sexy science, it attracts the best and the brightest, it certainly has its place.

natrix - Member
Think of all the beneficial side products of space exploration - like Teflon!
[b]Don't forget those pens that can write underwater as well[/b]

A common urban legend states that NASA spent a large amount of money to develop a pen that would write in space (the result purportedly being the Fisher Space Pen), while the Soviets just used pencils.[2][3] There is a grain of truth: NASA began to develop a space pen, but when development costs skyrocketed the project was abandoned and astronauts went back to using pencils, along with the Soviets.[2][3] However, the claim that NASA spent millions on the Space Pen is incorrect, as the Fisher pen was developed using private capital, not government funding. NASA – and the Soviets[3][4][5] – eventually began purchasing such pens.

NASA programs previously used pencils[6] (for example a 1965 order of mechanical pencils[7]) but because of the substantial dangers that broken pencil tips and graphite dust pose to electronics in zero gravity, the flammable nature of wood present in pencils,[7] and the inadequate quality documentation produced by non-permanent or smeared recordkeeping, a better solution was needed. Russian cosmonauts used pencils, and grease pencils on plastic slates until also adopting a space pen in 1969 with a purchase of 100 units for use on all future missions.[8] NASA never approached Paul Fisher to develop a pen, nor did Fisher receive any government funding for the pen's development.[7] Fisher invented it independently and then, in 1965, asked NASA to try it. After extensive testing, NASA decided to use the pens in future Apollo missions.[6][8][9] Subsequently, in 1967 it was reported that NASA purchased approximately 400 pens for $6 a piece.[8]

Money is arbitrary in the grand scheme of things. We should explore - because we can.

Lets also scotch the "teflon" rumour. Polytetrafluoroethene products were on sale in the USA in 1946.