Exploring Mars A Waste Of Money?

[rainbow]

...but unlike English beer, doesn't taste like it.

[Clinton Huxley]

...but unlike English beer, doesn't taste like it.

How do you know what horse piss tastes like? No, don't tell me.....

[Pensioner]

...Is exploring Mars worth the investment?...

If you're a libertarian - No.

If you're human - yes.

Now if they spent some money on finding out why British Beer tastes like dishwater, then there might be some point to it.

[rainbow]

...but unlike English beer, doesn't taste like it.

How do you know what horse piss tastes like? No, don't tell me.....

I don't need to know, I've tasted English "beer".

[Clinton Huxley]

...but unlike English beer, doesn't taste like it.

How do you know what horse piss tastes like? No, don't tell me.....

I don't need to know, I've tasted English "beer".

Dear boy, you have failed in both logic and discernment. Go to the back of the class.

[rainbow]

Not bloody likely.

I've heard about what goes on in your Public Schools.

[Tyrannical]

I sometimes wonder why you Luddites even bothered to climb down from the trees.

[rainbow]

In the case of the English, it was to try to brew beer. They might as well have stayed up there for all the good it's done.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Poor Crumple, so disappointed there was no fiasco.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

...a manned trip to Mars (or even back to the moon) would be a waste of resources at the moment...

But that argument could always be made. If you wait around 'till the time is "right" to send humans to other worlds than humans will be doomed to never leave this planet.

At the end of the day it all comes down to whether you believe space colonisation is a worthwhile endeavour or not. If like me you do, than the best time to get such a project underway is always... ..well.. ..yesterday to be honest, but failing that, today.


Yes I'm sure there's technology yet to be developed that could make it easier - but once we have that technology there would still be yet more technology around the corner, and once we have that there'll be yet more technology... (and so on...)
At some stage we have to stop waiting around for tech we've yet to possess, and just go with what we've got, and that stage may as well be now. Also, nothing helps actually develop the required tech quite like having the project actually underway.

The same kind of logic goes for the economic arguments as well. Sure we're in the shit right now, and sure we might be better placed later-on, but what if we're not and we blow our last chance of doing this before our civilisation collapses?
Or what if our economic fortunes do recover? There will still be people arguing that it would be best to wait 'till the economy is even stronger, and if we pay heed to their arguments they'll still be saying the same thing right up 'till the next time things go apocalyptically pear-shaped yet again. So with the economics the logic is still the same, regardless of whether the economy is weak or strong the best thing to advocate is always - go now.

There is also the argument that spending money on manned spaceflight diverts resources from these important unmanned projects, but that argument goes away if we had properly appropriately funded space agencies to begin with. For such agencies the answer to the question "shall we put a colony on Mars or explore it with rovers?" would be "why not both?"

Of course, for anyone who doesn't believe that space colonisation is a worthwhile endeavour, everything I've just written is irrelevant, but that doesn't matter since I have absolutely no time at all to give to their opinions on the matter anyway.

[laklak]

OF course it's a waste of money! Why , we could have run the entire welfare system for at least a week with all that cash. Michelle Obama could have taken Oprah and the rest of her mates on a month long European holiday.We could have given an extra 100 minutes each to all the gummint sponsored cell phone owners. Just what they could have discussed in that time! What earth-shaking revelations would come out of that, what incredible scientific advances in fields like materials and robotics? At approximately 2.5 billion, Curiosity cost just over half our government deficit for one day! How irresponsible, eh?

It's all a hoax by the Reptilian overlords anyway.

[Coito ergo sum]

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.

The constant refrain of the Luddite.

It's not a waste of money, because it constitutes a monumental, unprecedented advancement of human knowledge, technology, ingenuity, and represents the earliest steps toward getting humanity partially off of this single, tiny, speck on which we as a species live. What we learn on the quest for other worlds is what will save humanity. Without it, our species will likely be gone in some relatively small number of thousands of years, maximum.

The dinosaurs went extinct because they did not have a space program. - Larry Niven.

[Coito ergo sum]

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

Very true, and that is a crying shame. If only we could use 1/2 of the military budget for space exploration. There would be an astronaut driving that rover right now....and we'd have regular space travel to and from a Moon base.

[Coito ergo sum]

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.

Aren't there bigger wastes of money in government spending?

Why do these "waste of money" folks always focus on the very productive, inspiring, and educational space program, but no real focus is on the billions flushed down the toilet on ridiculous "stimulus" programs, green energy boondoggles, and like $50 billion a year in Medicare fraud that is left unaddressed, year after year after year....

To start with the space program is ludicrous. Let's look at the budget and I guarantee we can eliminate $100 billion in wasteful, useless programs without breaking a sweat. http://www.cagw.org/

[Clinton Huxley]

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

Very true, and that is a crying shame. If only we could use 1/2 of the military budget for space exploration. There would be an astronaut driving that rover right now....and we'd have regular space travel to and from a Moon base.

Aye, in a less depressing world, NASA would have a larger budget than the military (same for ESA etc etc)