While I love stuff like this, it always gets me into a bit of a mental quandary, which I have yet to satisfactorily resolve.
On the one hand, I have a great interest and appreciation for all things “astronomical”. This is in part due to one of my most respected mentors, who not only taught me to love learning, but also to see a glimpse of God in the wonders of creation. It’s also rooted in my understanding that, as in other areas of science, sometimes the most beneficial discoveries to mankind are uncovered in the process of looking for something else entirely.
The conflict for me is that I also know that this particular brand of science is very expensive, and I can’t ignore the many areas of need in our society as well as the larger world, which would seem to be a better candidate for such resources.
Perhaps you would expect the socialist in me to suggest that taxes could simply be raised to pay for both, and/or make cuts in other areas where we are overspending. That’s certainly one idea, but not a very likely one.
I guess the best case scenario would be Roddenberry’s vision of the Star Trek future, in which an encounter with an extraterrestrial species puts the whole planet on a fast track to unity (and thus putting aside petty international differences), spurred on by a dramatically shifted world view.
Oh well, I didn’t see any signs of pointy-eared distant neighbors in last night’s footage, but here’s hoping…
23 Comments
Its funny that you bring this subject up because I tease Nate that the NASA budget is the first thing I’d cut if I had any say in things.
see aliens of the deep.
i too am faced with a similar debate. one of my musical heros, larry norman, was and i assume is very against the “space race.”
i definitely see that argument. and i wanna say that our resources aren’t as limited as we’d like to pretend, but why shouldn’t we focus our resources to help the poor, then focus on exploration?
turn Nasa ( “oh look we found another rock in space ” ) into a museum and give the money to GM, Honda, Toyota to develop the fuel cell.
I don’t think that Nasa is worthless; as I said above, a lot of valuable inventions come about in the course of pursuing science that doesn’t necessarily have a direct monetary value.
Alternative fuel technologies are very important also, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the advances necessary for such technology came as a part of research done for space travel.
Rather than giving corporations more money to further such research, I would be more in favor of non-profit organizations which are more interested in scientific facts and public benefit than in making a profit. The corporations can motivate (and fund) themselves in this line of research, especially if you start penalizing them for continuing to use methods that increase pollution.
dave does bring up a good point…even in the field of research there are so much more important, less expencive areas to pursue than space travel. even underseas exploration is cheaper and more benefitial…and there’s a guarantee they’ll find life.
yes on undersea exploration and responsible development, there has to be a vast amount of resources available noting that 2/3 of the world is covered by water.
giving money to private companies ( Japan Inc works this way ) competitors in developing technology for the good of mankind is wise. Preventing them for colluding would keep the price down while each trys to out do the other in advancements. These three companies are already working on the fuel cell and with the big nasa budget could break out this tech. much quicker.
Cheap safe clean power that results in providing clean pure water - this is too important, cutting off the funding of terrorists and letting loose of the nutballs who have the US in a vise.
It should be a national priority in general and specifically for fuel cells. But no, we are going to nationally focus on BS.
There are many precedents for this too.
In order for the fuel cell to get to millions quickly someone has to invest and someone has to make money. Government has proven over and over and over again that it is too slow, too wasteful and too screwed up to get it right. It would take years just for them to decide on where to build their new building, then start having committees and meetings with the layers of admin. Why? IMHO - they have endless cash paid coming in from taxes, When it’s your own money or a companies it gets real efficient or they go out of business.
Profit accelerates research without the ivory tower/government interference, delay and bureaucracy.
i’ve seen plenty of companies get reeeal innefficient when they go public. investors like to chase after wind a lot.
yeah well, governments have the worst wind ……….
i know, just pointing out that captialism isn’t a perfect motivator. of course you can argue that the stock exchange is a detriment to capitalism, not an amplifier.
never said it was perfect, it surely isnt but it will do things much quicker than any new federal agency,
How else could Martha Stewart become a billionaire?
cheating? [as proven in a court of law]
and my definition of sucess isn’t “making a lot of money,” it’s fulfilling the objectives of the company.
Mr. S. is going to be for Mr.Silly soon,
MS made her money thru the issuance of stock in her own company before she cheated. In one day went she went public she made over 1 billion dollars. I cant beleive I am defending MS but she got the Billion before cheating for $50,000, are you a secret in the closet hippie?
remind me to kick you for the hippie comment.
the $50,000 was just the cheating she got caught doing.
the billion was what she made legally, do you have a pony tail now?
I think the point is that there is bureaucracy everywhere, whether it be the government or corporations. And the bureaucracy within most corporations (probably especially the ones mentioned above) is strictly concerned with making a profit for the stockholders - delivering a good product to the consumer is sometimes a necessary byproduct, but certainly not the focus.
To say that unless there’s big money in it no good work will be done on it is just false. There are tons of examples of people putting in a great deal of effort to produce superior products for little or no money (take Linux for example). There are plenty of very intelligent scientists out there who would happily work on such a project, and you could pay them very extravagantly for much less than it would cost to move it from one bureaucracy (government) to another (private enterprise).
The other problem with corporations doing this kind of thing is that they’ll try to cash in on it with patents, etc. That’s unfortunately the kind of world we live in, where there could be an invention that would produce free clean water and more food than anyone could ever eat, and they would probably try to patent it instead of making it freely available. I wonder if there’s some sort of imminent domain law that would allow patents to be canceled in cases like these.
I’m not sure what being a “hippie” has to do with any of this, unless it’s being used as a put down for someone who values the humanitarian goal of a project like this over the goal of making money, and if so, I don’t see how that can be a negative reference.
the hippie comment is just a joke
Ax NASA and you all will be screwed when a comet comes barreling for earth.
no arguments just discussion:
You wrote –
“There are tons of examples of people putting in a great deal of effort to produce superior products for little or no money (take Linux for example). ”
no offense but I dont see how linux has helped make the world better, if it is what you have used to enable me to blog ok that is something and I’m grateful for blogging and the free help.
What I see is many companies investing tons of money and taking risks and fighting the government money grabbers to help themselves yes, but to make something worthwhile also.
Again no malice — you wrote:
“There are plenty of very intelligent scientists out there who would happily work on such a project,” — Why dont they?
Could be it takes tons of money and risk and fighting off the government will their hand out trying to grub fees and taxes.
( happy tone, no anger here )
You wrote :
“…That’s unfortunately the kind of world we live in, where there could be an invention that would produce free clean water and more food than anyone could ever eat, and they would probably try to patent it instead of making it freely available.”
It hasnt happened that way yet.
And the scientists and the government professional job keepers all have ” let’s help humanity ” pure goals?
We pay for our food now. Do you expect farmers to work for free? We pay for water now. I pay the local government who raised my rates during the water shortage years ago and never relowered the rates after the shrotage was over. I think private enterprise could be less expensive for water.
Don’t have time (or patience, let’s be honest) to read all the comments but, wait for it… wait for it… I agree with your original post here. It’s a bitter sweet situation.
Nice editing job on my quotes. I didn’t say the scientists would work for free, I said they would be cheaper than privatizing it.
I’m not saying that the government does a great job managing things like this either, just that it could be done more efficiently, and that the answer to the problem of government bureaucracy, is not to hand it off to another bureaucracy.
This is what I hate about most arguments for privatization, they always assume that getting out from under the government red tape automatically results in a more efficient system with a better result - not true.
didn’t mean to edit at all,
some businesses are not open to doing things well and just slog along, others like apple and ms do it smarter, not perfectly,
at least if the business does fail it is done, the government keeps adding layers,
nothing is automatic