Exploring Mars A Waste Of Money?

[Atheist-Lite]

http://phys.org/news/2012-07-exploring- ... tment.html

Is exploring Mars worth the investment?

Humans have launched 40 spacecraft to the Red Planet, lured by the prospect that life might once have existed in what is now dry rocks and sand. The latest machine to make the journey is NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, a hulking, souped-up lab-on-wheels that will plunge toward the Martian surface next week. But even as excitement builds, some wonder: Is Mars exploration a good investment? It certainly doesn't come cheap. It's hard to calculate a total price tag, but over the 48 years that NASA has been launching missions to Mars, Americans have spent a significant sum. The Viking missions alone cost nearly $1 billion - in 1970s dollars. The twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity cost a total of about $1 billion to build and operate as well. Curiosity, as the Mars Science Laboratory rover is known, is over budget at $2.5 billion. Some in the federal government have suggested it's time to roll back the spending. President Barack Obama's fiscal plan for 2013 would cut NASA's funds for Mars exploration from $587 million to $360 million. Proponents insist Mars science is vital for the U.S. More visits to our next-door neighbor could answer lingering questions about Earth's history, reinforce U.S. prestige and get more children interested in science. It also could bring humanity closer to answering the ultimate question: Are we alone in the universe? "It's the search for the meaning of life," said Alden Munson, a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, a science and technology think tank based in Arlington, Va. America's love affair with Mars can be traced to astronomer Percival Lowell, who turned his telescope to the Red Planet in the 1890s and thought he saw an intricate system of canals that must have been built by intelligent beings. He never found them, of course, but Martians became a science fiction mainstay.

(continued)

Even if they discover fossil plants or something what is it going to prove? Yeah. Nothing. Big deal that life is everywhere it can find somewhere to be. Shouldn't money be spent on poverty and education? especially education in America? Seems a few Mars obsessed geeks have cornered the surplus money for science education over there. I don't buy the inspiration angle when computer visualization is so advanced no kid today is going to be amazed by a endless sandpit.

[rainbow]

Of course it is a waste.

[Atheist-Lite]

Of course it is a waste.

I'm not saying it will always be a waste of money. Just the way things stand today it seems rather incongruous considering the financial state of the nation.

[Clinton Huxley]

As a fraction of GDP, it's peanuts. The US spends more on ammo than on space exploration. Maybe.

[Atheist-Lite]

As a fraction of GDP, it's peanuts. The US spends more on ammo than on space exploration. Maybe.

Yes but it is all unsustainable with a sixty trillion overhang and a absolutely unavoidable fiscal cliff only six months away? It is like the prisoner on death row enjoying his last meal with gusto and rather sad watching this spectacle today.

[Rum]

It is a waste of money, hard to justify, but a damned good thing to do.

[Clinton Huxley]

As a fraction of GDP, it's peanuts. The US spends more on ammo than on space exploration. Maybe.

Yes but it is all unsustainable with a sixty trillion overhang and a absolutely unavoidable fiscal cliff only six months away? It is like the prisoner on death row enjoying his last meal with gusto and rather sad watching this spectacle today.

That financopocalypse has always been 6 months away according to you

[Atheist-Lite]

As a fraction of GDP, it's peanuts. The US spends more on ammo than on space exploration. Maybe.

Yes but it is all unsustainable with a sixty trillion overhang and a absolutely unavoidable fiscal cliff only six months away? It is like the prisoner on death row enjoying his last meal with gusto and rather sad watching this spectacle today.

That financopocalypse has always been 6 months away according to you

This six months is closer than those Crumple discussed. Crumple was running simulations. I report data.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Proof that life exists elsewhere than on Earth, a waste of money? Fuck that! It ranks second only to an advanced, intelligent race with no concept of religion on my list of kicks in the eye to worn-out, antiquated belief systems!

Money is an illusion anyway - the genuine resources and necessary human ingenuity to sustain the human race for centuries, even milennia, to come exist right here, right now - and sending lumps of metal, or even lumps of flesh, to Mars won't change that by a fraction of an iota!

So pay them dollars to collide hadrons, explore the universe and split the quantum! Money is nothing but a negotiable form of human effort anyway - and humans making efforts can ALWAYS get shit done!

[pErvinalia]

I refuse to accept that Science has to take the cut because of the financial crisis. That's the lazy way out. I'd prefer to go over the cliff with science well funded, as at least then we have better resources available to deal with the shit that we have brought on ourselves.

[Thinking Aloud]

Anything done for the furtherance of understanding and knowledge can be considered a 'waste of money' when there are other large-scale problems.

On a project of this scale, which was conceived in 2004 and mostly developed by 2008 (when the current financial crisis became apparent), most of the money would already have been spent - cancelling on the basis of other financial catastrophes, would truly have been a waste of money.

[charlou]

aye, good point, TA.

What will the expenditure matter in a hundred years time, anyway? And I don't ask that question dismissively.

[Atheist-Lite]

Cancelation would have given a clear signal to other finance resource hungry 'white elephants' and so kept a lid on things a little longer.

[Thinking Aloud]

Cancelation would have given a clear signal to other finance resource hungry 'white elephants' and so kept a lid on things a little longer.

You think they'd have paid attention?

[pErvinalia]

Cancelation would have given a clear signal to other finance resource hungry 'white elephants' and so kept a lid on things a little longer.

science isn't a "white elephant". Attempts by fashionistas to tell us what is and isn't valid science will be rightly dismissed. But having said that, deferring all space exploration for 100 years (say), wouldn't make any difference in the advancement of knowledge over the future span of humanity. Just as long as that money was spent on other scientific endevours, and not spent on wars, redistribution to the top end of town, or other wasteful activities.