joeman098 said:
Gluzzbung said:
I just don't care for NASA. Rage at me all you like, it's a massive waste of money and this should not be news.
Very tempting to rage. But I just fail to see how any one does not see the value in space exploration and advancement, Earth can not sustain humanity forever. Just look at the time lapse videos ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPj8D5KaPVU ) from the International space station look at how little our atmosphere looks. That is the only thing keeping us all alive that small blanket of air. And if we don't Destroy the atmosphere, The earth will eventually run out of resources, or the population will get to big to support, or an asteroid or comet can come and destroy all of us.
Space exploration is one of the only things worth spending money on and NASA's budget should be increased 100%, from its 4/10th of 1 penny of a tax dollar it gets now. We stopped dreaming of the feature ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc ) people that say NASA is a waste are not thinking of tomorrow. Even if you personally have no interest in space there is no way NASA can be considered a waste. How do you put a price on our continued existence and advancement as a species.
here is a small list of some of the technologies devolved as a side effect of NASAs research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies
That "Pale blue dot" in this picture is the farthest picture of earth ever taken, 3.7 billion miles away from home voyager 1 sent this picture home. Carl Sagan had these amazing thoughts about the picture, it is my personal favorite quote.
Carl Sagan said:
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there ? on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity ? in all this vastness ? there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Oh dear, I'm almost physically hurt from all the stupid in this, but you didn't rage so neither will I.
You see, the thing is, WE caused those problems to begin with. Destroying the atmosphere, first of all, is fixable, what with replenishing Ozone levels and, with luck, a general trend towards green energy and Nuclear power which don't pollute the atmosphere with CO2 or carcinogens or sulphides or other such disasters which we have only ourselves to blame for. An asteroid hitting the earth? Ummm, asteroids hit the earth every day, in their millions in fact. The Earth gains about 160 tonnes of mass each day and we're still here. You're talking about an enormous piece of space debris which has a miniscule chance of hitting Earth, or even coming into our atmosphere, but it's that sort of fear mongering that leads people to believe that NASA is somehow worthwhile. Also, just talking relatively here, should we discover, with a decent amount of time before it impacts, an asteroid that was large enough to wipe out all life on Earth heading our way, what do you think we're going to do to stop it. Is NASA working on that?
More to the point, any sort of relocation program, whether it be on a massive scale or only a few people, aimed at relocating human being to another inhabitable planet would be astronomically expensive, as in it would cost more money that there exists on the Earth today. The same with terraforming. Also, have you considered that, actually, it would be impossible to live for any long amount of time on another planet or in space? And when I say 'long amount of time' I mean more than a few years. First of all; gravitational and pressure differences would cause begin to cause huge changes in our bodily systems like blood pressure, bone structure. Even in the six months that people spend in the ISS they could suffer permanent bone degradation. Then you have things like disease and bacteria. In a tiny space capsule they would spread like wildfire and on another planet, not only would human bacteria begin destroying any local animals, if there were any, but also the local bacteria would then attack our bodies and our systems and, because we have effectively no immunity for it, we'd perish.
The inventions, I grant you, may not have happened without NASA, the key word there being 'may.' Artificial limbs probably wouldn't have taken long to develop without NASA, there were already crude ones in development and production before any sort of Space Program. The developments they made to how runways are made would likely have been implemented by another air company, a government or aircraft manufacturer. But the real reason NASA was invented was, of course, Rockets. The 'Space Race' was just a farcical show so the USA and Soviet Union could turn their minds more towards a more peaceful competition while still developing long-range and efficient aircraft and missiles, pincibly ICBMs.
Also, if we are to prioritise our survival, which is what your suggestion, perhaps you should make it clear that human beings deserve the life they are given "Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity - in all this vastness - there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."
