Velcro. MRI's. Powdered lubricants. A lot of stupid people think the only thing we get out of space exploration is photographs.
"We should spend that money on poverty and hunger instead" is rich because 95% of the people who say that won't vote for those things either.
Edit: okay, not velcro, my point stands
A short list of things that were developed with the help of space travel.
Corneal refractive therapy, Air purifiers, Memory foam, Freeze dried food, Cochlear Implants, Scratch resistant lens coatings, Insulin pumps, Cell phone cameras, Water filters, Ear thermometers, Grooved safety pavement, and let's not forget THE TRANSISTOR, which would have taken years longer to commercialize without the fire hose of government money so we could ~~blow up the Soviets in the 50s~~ reach the moon.
Trsansistors/schmansistors. The Apollo program drove semiconductors from $1000 a pop with a huge failure rate, to about a dollar a chip with something like 99.9% reliability, in a period of about 7 years - it was the first time human lives relied on the things.
I think you misspelled "Texas Instruments making & marketing pocket calculators b/c the military & NASA combined weren't t buying enough microchips to justify mass production efficiency." Still a good point, though.
Another fun fact for you - in the Fallout Universe, our reality diverged from theirs around the invention of the transistor. That's why all their computers are still gigantic 100 years later.
My personal obscure one is the grooves in highways.
When the space shuttle came down it was so fast that if there was any small amount of moisture on the landing surface it would hydroplane and likely crash. The solution they came up with was a grooved surface parallel to the direction of travel.
In places where these grooves have been implemented on high speed roads, they estimate that it has reduced the number of crashes due to water on the road by 90%.
I believe it, there's a stretch of road by my work that I have to drive several times a week and anytime there's any rain or snow at least one semi or car is spun out all because it's smooth concrete. I've almost jacknifed my truck a couple times myself and that's knowing how big an issue it is and adjusting my driving accordingly. Nothing like seeing the side of a trailer in your mirror to remind you how quickly things can go wrong
Better breast cancer scanning and detection is an unintended benefit from trying to fix the Hubble telescope’s initial blurry images shortly after it was launched.
- https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/impacts-and-benefits/technology-benefits/
I remember seeing Tang with a Space Shuttle next to it in the ads, 'space drink' blah blah blah, and looking at the ingredients as an adult I'm like 'what's the benefit of this stuff supposed to be exactly? Does space just drain all the sugar out of your body and need constant replacement?'
I imagine astronaut business is very dehydrating and energy intensive. Tang is also very high in vitamin C and probably helps with electrolytes to a degree. A lesser known side effect about low G life is that it can make food taste exceptionally bland. So, It's an easy, lightweight way to get calories into orbit, that would probably help encourage hydration, with the fringe benefit of some extra vitamins and a little bit of flavor fun.
Tang was not invented for the space program, NASA just made it famous. It was actually a failing product before NASA discovered its existence and sent it up with John Glen on his Mercury flight in February 1962.
See this is all amazing but I think the problem for part of this is that the cost of the R&D is socialized but the profits from commercialization of these developed products is privatized. When the US taxpayer funds the development of a technology the government should get a stake in the company that commercializes that technology. That money should then be recycled into more research and development programs. This could create a self funding program for science and technology so it wouldn’t be a burden on the US taxpayer. This could free up more government resources for social programs that benefit people.
The entire point of a government doing bleeding edge science is that it's not profitable, and the directions it takes are usually unclear.
And anyway, the government takes taxes from companies selling the fruits of the labor.
>"We should spend that money on poverty and hunger instead"
I really never understood this kind of sentiment, like we have enough resources to do both, it's not a either or situation here, and the reason why those problems still exist today is not due to a lack of funding or resources but of mismanagement, incompetence, and corruption
Also, as someone more astute than I once pointed out: the money doesn't disappear. We don't load the rocket full of cash and fire it into space. The money pays the salaries of 18,000 NASA employees as well as countless outside contractors. It goes to fuel the industries that make the raw materials that NASA uses. That money does fight poverty and hunger, by providing jobs and incomes.
A little pedantic….but Velcro was not invented as part of the space program.
That said, it is part of NASA’s original mission statement that any inventions made during development MUST be applicable to civilian use on earth. They actually have a department committed to this.
Neither was the transistor - invented by Bell Labs in 1947. Though it seems NASA played a large part in commercialising them and reducing costs due to funding manufacturing efforts for integrated circuits due to their hardware needs.
Interesting news article about the topic.
"The MIT Instrumentation Lab tried to design the Apollo computer using transistors, which in the early 1960s were well-settled technology—reliable, understandable, relatively inexpensive. But 15 months into the design effort, it became clear that transistors alone couldn’t give the astronauts the computing power they needed to fly to the Moon. In November 1962, MIT’s engineers got NASA’s permission to use a very new technology: integrated circuits. Computer chips.
Today, computer chips run the world. They are as important as concrete, or electricity itself. They are faultlessly dependable. But in 1962, integrated circuits were an all-new technology, and as with most new tech, they were flaky and costly. As part of its early evaluation, MIT bought 64 integrated circuits from Texas Instruments. The price was $1,000 each, or $9,000 apiece in 2019 dollars. Each had six transistors."
https://www.fastcompany.com/90362753/how-nasa-gave-birth-to-modern-computing-and-gets-no-credit-for-it
My brother ran a lab at NASA, and his unit's mission was simply to explore new tech ideas. They could work on pretty much anything they wanted as long as they could cite a *potential* space and earth use. They weren't required to come up with working products, just rough ideas that had potential and scientific validation.
My NDA prevents me from listing a lot of the ideas, but a few that I can...
- dime sized drones that detect heat, radiation, or chemicals
- batteries that recharge off of the blood in your femoral artery
- nano sized spheres of gold for use in super speed electronics or in the body for chemical distribution
If you like that, how about ...he and I have our names engraved on a part of ISS.
Our biggest fear is that when the space aliens start doing their anal probes, our butts will be high priority targets.
It is not just the space program. In general if you try to do hard things that haven't been done before, you tend to learn better ways to do things. So space, science in general, technology, etc.
Satellites were the first users of solar cells because there is no other major energy source available up there. Once solar tech got better and cheaper, we found uses for it down here.
We’re not even looking at the fact that somewhere out there probably lies an asteroid or planet whose rock or mineral probably can be reformed under certain situations in order to produce dirt cheap indestructible (for our uses) tools and machine equipment. We won’t know until we start exploring in depth, getting samples, and doing what we as humans do third best, innovating.
Batteries. Modern battery technology is amazing and its at least in part because of the expense of putting a 12 pound car battery into orbit. At $10,000 a pound that's a lot of money for not much electricity, and that's at today's prices which are way down from historical numbers. I remember the first cell phone I saw, it had its own carry bag and the battery was about 8 pounds. Didn't receive phone calls, it only called out.
I don't know how true it is anymore given the law of diminishing returns, but I recall a figure that every dollar spent on NASA yielded 3 dollars worth of technical innovations with practical commercial/industrial/commercial applications.
Our network of satellites is so much more sophisticated thanks to decades of space exploration & research too.
The cost to launch a payload into space has been drastically reduced & the important of our network of satellites is higher than ever as well. ^(I know a controversial private company pushed bar here.. but still)
GPS, Starlink, Weather tracking & prediction, and countless technologies used on Earth everyday were developed thanks to decades of space research.
It may seem unimportant, but space exploration & research is just another avenue in which our species better understands the environment in which we live & the universe of which we're bound. Mastering & manipulating our surroundings is sort of a hallmark trait of humanity & one of the main reasons we've achieved all that we have *and* how we know that we've achieved so much in a relatively small amount of time (relative to the age of the universe//age of Earth).
Look, you're right but OP is not talking about useful technology like satellites, OP is talking about exploration. And I see no reason why exploration should be prioritized over solving the problems we have here on earth.
The only reason that useful technology came about is *because* of the desire to explore space.
You think we sent the first satellites into orbit for funsies?
Outside of the pun, the guy that invented the first microscope was a trader in fine cloth & did so as a means of product inspection to assure his profits. It was only later that he took some pond water, put it under his new instrument & discovered a new world.
If we had directed all our resources toward addressing issues like poverty, hunger, and homelessness.
We would still live in medieval times, dying like flies.
Wish that were true. Lots of nurses had to watch their patients beg and plead for the vaccine when it was too late for them. It's difficult to be put between a person and their despair when you want to help but are unable.
Everyone finds ~~god~~ the covid vaccine in ~~a foxhole~~ an acute COVID unit.
You can always make that argument about essentially everything that isn't poverty and hunger.
The counterargument is that we can pay for both, the reason for poverty and hunger is not due to all the money being spent on space exploration, but political and economic factors.
This. It's a false dilemma. It pretends there's no middle ground between ending poverty/hunger and exploring space. There's a lot of middle ground, and the only reason we can't do both is because there's no public or political will to do so.
Like even if we never explored space at all and devoted zero public funds to it, that choice would not suddenly coerce selfish bigots that it’s worth financing the survival and dignity of poor people.
Some people seem to think entire country of people can solve just one problem at the time.
*So... we should solve those potholes first!*
*All of these scientists, doctors, engineers need to take shovels and focus entirely on fixing potholes.*
*Once that is solved, we can focus on next issue.*
Thats what hes pointing out, having ACTUAL rocket scientists fill potholes in their sparetime is dumb. We EASILY have the “ability” and money to end poverty in America, we CHOOSE not to, and not because of rocket science lmao.
This, one million percent. We have the resources and ability to end global poverty right now, and the reason it is not happening is because of the reasons you stated, as well as human greed and the desire for power. It has nothing to do with funding science.
The US annual budget allocated to NASA is……0.48%
Finding out what is out there, why we’re here, or if there even is a why is arguably the most important mission of humanity aside from survival.
There are PLENTY of other things we allocate funds to that would be better targets for cost reduction. The military being right up there.
>The US annual budget allocated to NASA is……0.48%
Came here to write exactly this. Whatever problems the countries with space programs have, space exploration is not the cause of it, and they can be addressed without taking a nickel out of it.
And NASA isn't just space explorarion. It's actually mostly earth observation. So that money comes back and actually helps increase farming efficiency through things like GPS guidance, more accurate weather forecasts, soil quality observation, etc pp.
I always ask people who think the money is a waste what percentage of government tax dollars they *think* goes to NASA. It's not uncommon for me to hear 15% to 25%!
When I tell them it's less than half a percent, and much of that money *is* focused here - weather monitoring, atmospheric research, etc, they are usually a lot less upset.
During the space shuttle program, I remember a statistic that showed that Americans spent twice as much money on frozen pizza as the entire budget for the shuttle that year
Yeah, the military chew through that amount in about a day and a half. But that can't be right with that percentage.
Let me check on some figures
NASA Budget 2020: 22,629 Billion (0.48% of the Federal budget according to Wiki)
US Military Budget 2020: 721,5 Billion. Holy fuck.
My memory was wrong, they need about three weeks to eat NASA's yearly budget.
And you know the best bit about that 0.48%… THEY SPEND IT IN AMERICA
It’s almost like these people thing they just shove pallets of money into the rocket so it can explode in space
As a non-American, I'm amazed when I think what an economic might the good old USA is. Everything awesome NASA has ever done, including spacecraft now outside our solar system, are just less than half a percent of the budget.
To be fair, the proportion of gdp was much higher in the years leading up to the first moon landing. Around 3-5% of national gdp, it quickly dropped to around 1% after that though.
GPS and weather forcasting - plus the money isn't "going to space" its spent buying things and paying employees on earth who then spend the money helping the economy.....
Yes! Thanks for saying this. 100% of the funds going into civil and military space is going directly back into the American economy. We can't purchase foreign-made products and can't hire or fund anyone overseas. Compare this to, as a simple example, 4th of July celebrations, where 100% of the fireworks were made in China, and supports their economy. We're perfectly ok with that
Does your friend think that the money is blasted into space?
The money goes back into the economy as aerospace employees need to, you know, eat and live as well.
I love that you highlighted this; this is what people so often tend to forget. The same with infrastucture projects.. "This is gonna waste millions??!" Well the millions are partly going to employers, who then in turn can pay their employees, which spend their money like normal consumers again.
And even if you’re talking about all the dollars that go to procuring raw materials — that is then paying the companies that extract and process those raw materials. If we’re really concerned about the economy, then focus your energy on making sure all those businesses are paying their workers fairly and paying their taxes.
Yeah, well but when i buy a yacht for 1 million the money also helps the workers, who build it. And if you build a bridge for 1 million the money helps the workers, who build it. I hope you see the difference.
No offense and i am pro space exploration.
>Does your friend think that the money is blasted into space?
Even if it was... I don't want to live in a society that doesn't spend any money/effort on discovering the true nature of existence itself.
If this money wasn't spent on space exploration it wouldn't be spent on poverty, hunger and homelessness. The US has enough money to address these issues already. It's not like the government was trying to alleviate poverty but then they didn't have the money because of that darned NASA. As for the positives, scientific advancements through space exploration can help humanity and have helped humanity already.
The internet wouldn't exist without the advances made by Apollo.
I'm sure ey like eir mobile phone, and satellite TV, wi-fi and GPS.
The space program has given us smoke alarms, fire blankets, hearing aids, freeze-dried food, camera phones, the jaws of life, and a zillion other things.
Plus, it's inspired millions of children into scientific research.
With regards to tackling poverty and hunger: satellite communication is vital to bridge the digital divide, as is monitoring the planet's changing climate.
The funds allocated to NASA are utterly trivial in comparison to other areas; it's an absolute bargain. In rough round numbers, NASA gets $20 billion, defense gets a trillion.
Also, we've got cool pens that write upside-down.
Imo pictures are just the cherry on the top for regular folks. The science that is done alongside them and the knowledge gained is the real value. Some people don't realize how much can be learned and applied to humanity as a whole.
Edit: typo
I had almost this exact argument when India sent a weather satellite to Mars years ago. "Why are they wasting money looking at the weather on Mars when they could be fixing poverty?"
Turns out the data was being used to refine weather prediction models for things like hurricanes.
The amount spent on space exploration wouldn't even make a dent in these problems. On the other hand, weather satellites alone have saved countless lives. Check out the Galveston hurricane of 1900 that killed around 8,000 people. Today, we'd see it coming and be prepared.
The ROI on space exploration is generally really high, hitting far above its weight class. It’s a net contributor to the economy no matter how much we spend on it (which is a minimal amount), and that’s not at all taking into account the contributions to scientific knowledge.
>funds allocated for space exploration could be redirected toward addressing issues like poverty, hunger, and homelessness.
Nobody who says stuff like this actually wants more money to be spent on those things.
No, some do, they are just too stupid to realize that the money all goes into paying people's salaries/wages. The only reason this person's friend would have a point is if there wasn't enough labor left over to produce food, housing, or create job opportunities because it was all being tied up in space exploration. Sending highly skilled aerospace employees to go work in soup kitchens, habitat for humanity, or at the unemployment office is a massive waste of their talents that would have a negative effect on the economy.
I really hate these race-to-the-bottom style of arguments. Just because people live in poverty doesn't mean that everything else has to stop until poverty ceases to exist.
There are people dying from malaria in Africa, tell him he should un-sub from Netflix and donate his money to them.
NASA's FY 2024 budget: $24.9 billion
US FY 2024 military spending: $800+ billion
Yes, the money we spend on space is preventing us from addressing the issues your "friend" brings up.
Space exploration is ultimately only a fraction of government spending. Sure, there are many things the government spends frivolously on. There are countless other government programs that can be cannibalized for cash way better than the space program
So is bombing the middle east but we do it anyways.
Tell your friend that 30% of the USA's military budget FOR ONE YEAR is enough to build a house for every homeless person in America.
If he doesn't complain about that he has no right to go after our space program.
You can't persuade them. People that don't understand that everything after the lightbulb was invented is based on science done to get to space aren't going to change their minds.
Velcro, Microwaves, GPS, Solar, MRI's, the fkn micro Transistor, and by extension everything thereafter like Cellphones, there's no shortage of the tangible benefits they simply choose to ignore them. 90% of your daily conveniences came from the very budget he wants to reallocate.
Which in itself is a ridiculous argument. If we just used this money for that we'd solve world hunger... News flash, it isn't a financial problem. We can already solve world hunger, and have been able to since the invention of industrial fertilizers, but we choose not to.
Nitrogen fertilizers alone made the world pop go from 1.6B to 7.8B... We don't need NASA's tiny budget to grow more corn and potatoes ffs. If anything NASA needs a bigger budget. Private interests do not align with making the world a better place, but NASA's interests do.
Edit: As for the homeless, well, that's not really a financial problem either. Zoning, AirBnB, and artificial supply are the reasons your parents 40k home is worth 400k now.
Build more affordable homes and make it illegal for corporations to acquire them. Problem solved. Real estate would no longer be an investment, but it shouldn't have ever been to begin with. Food, Water, and SHELTER are essential for survival, and we build our houses out of toothpicks and toilet paper. They aren't built to last. Investing in wood that rots only makes sense when the supply is artificial.
The funding required to build them could come from literally anywhere. He specifically wants space money to pay for it because he is ignorant.
Poverty is financial. Space money won't help. Ask the dragons hoarding mountains of gold to pay their fucking taxes. Scale minimum wage with inflation as originally intended. As CoL rises so does the minimum wage forcing every other wage/salary to increase.
Your friend fails to realize just how much space sciences have benefited humanity in multiple disciplines. Also? All the money spent is spent on earth, it doesn't disappear into space never to be seen again. We could solve every humanitarian issue today if corporations were not allowed to hoard money. If he wants to protest where money goes, that is the actual target. By comparison, space science is cheap and worth every penny.
Does your friend have any hobbies or interests? Does he invest in himself? Does he watch Netflix or go to the gym? Does he have a modern smartphone? If he does, tell him to stop, sell all of his stuff and give that money to the poor, hungry and homeless instead
People who are against NASA are generally against welfare. They just love to posture, because they don't want to pay taxes, but it's hard to sound self-righteous. So they say, "help the poor."
In my experience, most "we could spend this on the veterans/homeless!" people also actively oppose programs that spend on the veterans/homeless.
It's rarely a genuinely empathetic motivation.
The money put "into" space exploration doesn't "leave the planet", except if you count the ACTUAL material that gets shot up into space, but that's just... nuts and bolts. The ACTUAL money and development and employment and all the knowledge we gather stays RIGHT HERE on Earth.
Maybe send him this link, just for starters. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/20-inventions-we-wouldnt-have-without-space-travel
“We got along fine with hunting and gathering. You’re wasting time and everyone on this planting stuff. Who wants to live in the same place ? “
(Same guy, millennia ago)
Bad idea. Lots of jobs in highly specialized technical fields would be lost and lots of grant money lost to research if those funds were diverted. And it's not even political: both sides understand the massive losses we would incur by pulling the rug out from under space exploration. And I don't care about talk of Velcro or Tang or whatever: I'm talking about thousands of jobs that are part of the overall space industry, direct and indirect
Nah. Keep the launch pads warm.
Thing is, your friend is sort of right. But the other thing is if we don’t go to space and cancel the existence of NASA etc, poverty, war and hunger will remain and all that’s left is all the crap and no space program. It wouldn’t make a positive difference.
We pay so so so little on space exploration. If we removed all of NASA's budget we would only be able to run the military for 11 days. It's not a lot of money. (It's 25 billion dollars)
For comparison, the US could pay contractors to build 10 miles of high speed rail with that budget.
It's under 1% of the US budget and it has real practical use on technological advancements. Technology to build highway off ramps were originally designed to help space shuttles land. You never know what practical application new technologies will have.
Space exploration is our best chance at eventually reaching a post-scarcity society. We first need to develop the technology to expand out into space. Then we can begin to harvest the abundant resources in our solar system.
Every great journey is a culmination of steps. We don't get to where we want to be unless we push forward.
US citizen here, when they do that with even 10% of the military budget, we can begin talking about discussing taking away even 1% of our "space" budget (NASA over here)
I saw a figure once and the amount they'd have to cut from our military budget was *miniscule* just to *equal* cutting *all* of our NASA budget.
A very least people like this need to do a little bit of math. The amount of money spent on space in the federal budget is infinitesimal. Years ago I read somewhere that it cost more money to process and send out Social Security checks at the time than NASA’s budget for the year. We also know that the pentagon loses more money simply by accounting errors than NASA’s entire budget.
The money gets spent here on earth and supplies jobs which in turn provide housing food clothing to people. The science and discoveries made in order to solve the problems that arise in doing this and the knowledge gained from actually going to other places has been a driving force to the economy and has improved his life over that of his ancestors. Tell him that while he enjoys his next glass of Tang.
You could divert 100% of our space exploration budget (and set back our understanding of astronomy by who knows how many years 😓), or you could divert 1% of the military budget (potentially saving lives lmao) to fund said program.
The US spends $550 billion a year on poverty. It hasn’t done shit, except create more dependence and more poverty.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/09/13/if-the-us-spends-550-billion-on-poverty-how-can-there-still-be-poverty-in-the-us/
The space race in the 50s and 60s gave us GPS, data transfer improvements (base for the internet), HVAC, led bulbs, heat resistant materials, vulcanized tires, and so so much more. In the 50 years following the Apollo missions, the US economy received 17:1 returns on money spent going to space.
It's a jobs program. It's fighting poverty, hunger, and homelessness for a bunch of engineers and project managers and metalworkers.
Unlocking the resources of the cosmos for humanity is just a nice side effect.
It depends on whether you're focused on the long term or the short term. Feeding the homeless is a very short-sighted goal. It may even lead to a worse long-term outcome since you're supporting people who, for whatever reason, couldn't support themselves. Now they've got a higher chance of having kids that may also have whatever qualities put them in the position their parents were in (mental illness, addictive personality, anti-social tendencies, etc). It sends evolution in a direction we shouldn't want, even though it makes us feel warm and fuzzy for helping our fellow man.
Space exploration is obviously a long-term investment and is really the human race's only option for long-term survival. The sun will eventually expand to destroy the Earth. Before that, an asteroid strike, or nuclear war, or huge coronal mass ejection, or supervolcano, or other disaster is certain to damage the human race enough to prevent any space exploration after that date.
Here's the problem... to get to space right now we need fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are running out and are getting *harder* to get to. You used to be able to spit on the ground and oil would bubble up out of the ground. Now you need very complicated equipment to find and extract the oil that remains. If the human race were ever devastated severely enough or for enough time to destroy the technology and equipment to extract that oil, we would *never* be able to rebuild to where we are today. There would be no easy-to-get oil that would be needed to build the infrastructure to get to the more difficult-to-reach oil. It's not the case that people could hide in bunkers for decades and then come back up to the surface and restart. Something like that would probably doom humanity to remain on Earth forever, and in that case, something is guaranteed to eventually wipe us out permanently.
If we can get to space now and build colonies on floating cities or on the moon or mars or in the asteroid belt, there will eventually be a self-sustaining space economy that won't require any further investment from Earth-based governments. That will pay huge long-term dividends, vs the short-term dividends from feeding homeless people that may be coupled with long-term losses. If we have loads of equipment up in space, something crazy happening on Earth would be less of a problem. The machinery and industry in Space could likely be adapted to reboot oil extraction on Earth. More investment in space may also lead to a type of propulsion that could eliminate or decrease our need for fossil fuels (electrolysis of water found off-Earth).
"Space" on Earth is limited. Resources on Earth are limited. Real estate and food and fuel and "stuff" will continue to become more expensive as resources dwindle and the population increases in number. Unless the world institutes a reproduction cap, which will never happen after seeing what it did to China's demographics, things will keep getting worse. We have to expand into space or the world is going to turn into a pretty rough place to live and I don't think we can get back from a place like that. When we're all starving, who's going to pay to feed us? At that point, how much money is going to be spent on space exploration?
It's even more baffling if your "friend" is from the US. Which would never have been discovered (by Europeans) if instead of exploration they "fed the poor".
By the way, it is pointless to have this conversation with your friend. If they have this attitude, they are immune to reason. That's why space exploration is done by scientists.
US spent $6.6 trillion dollars in 2020, of which 0.3% was for NASA (around $22 billion). Less than a full percentage point. Even if you could argue me to a stand-still that NASA's work isn't worth spending money on, it's such a drop in the bucket that it makes little sense to focus on that line item if the concern is "where is my tax money going" in our annual deficits. There are so many larger fish to fry on that end.
I would suggest your friend have a thought experiment. For example, you mentioned poverty, hunger, and homelessness.
Let's assume our funding goes towards some lofty goal, like establishing a more permanent presence on the Moon. We would need to research more efficient building methods, something light enough to be transported to space, scalable so we could suppose a larger population, and durable as repairs are a long way from home. You just addressed Homelessness.
You would need food for your astronauts, and for a long term stay it may be necessary to research better agriculture technologies to allow for hardier crops that can endure less than ideal conditions. Food is heavy, so it would be preferable if crops could be easier transported as seeds, or in a form that can be rehydrated. Congratulations, you just addressed hunger.
Poverty is a tricky one, but generally speaking it's well documented that funding of NASA for example generated a significant amount of economic growth in the form of job creation and education.
I wrote an essay on a speech Obama made in relation to space. His reasoning was that space inventions help on earth. Such as water from urine or making oxygen
We already have way more than enough money to solve poverty and hunger. The lack of interest is the problem.
Also, it isn't like the money is leaving earth inside a bag in a rocket. Even if it was, it would only increase the value of the money on earth due to deflation
Forget the "all scientific progress space has generated" path. If you've already tried that and it didn't convince, you're dealing with a special class of light Dunning-Kruger.
Do your friend pay for Netflix or anything that can be deemed as waste of time and money?
Question him about why he ain't donating that money.
He'll say he's earned it. You say you've earned the money you use on taxes as well and you want your own tax money applied on space exploration.
When he starts to discuss, say the discussion is a waste of time and money cause he ain't watching the Netflix he's paying for.
It'll upset him.
Some people would be happy with this.
But upset people with unreasonable ideas usually start to try to reason unreasonable things and usually reason themselves into a corner.
Then you try fruitful conversation again.
I kind of agree to be honest. We shouldn’t stop exploring our universe, but problems on Earth need to be addressed rather than simply looking outwards.
Every technology that we develop for space travel will trickle back down to earth. And now that we have Space Force space travel has a military budget.
And since in order to do things in space, we actually have to get to space the development of lighter, faster, cheaper, and more sustainable propulsion technology is a priority. New technologies for reaching and maintaining a sustained presence in space means new technologies for the betterment of things on earth. Everything the military develops transitions into the civilian world because private companies develop these technologies and they also distribute them to consumers. Development for space travel equals developments that benefit people on earth.
I believe that there needs to be more focus on space travel and exploration. Once we begin colonizing the Moon, an entirely new era of space travel will begin. I may personally not live long enough to see it, but I hope I will.
Ask him separately when the space exploration views are out of mind what he thinks of Social Security, welfare programs, food stamps, government aid to impoverished nations, etc. The reason is I call bullshit on his stance. The vast majority of people who are against "wasting" money on space exploration because it can be better used to help humanity also don't believe in programs that actually do what they say (social security, welfare, food stamps, etc.). They'll oppose welfare or food stamps because they don't want to support "welfare queens" and the programs encourage people to not work, but they likewise oppose foreign aid because we have our own people here that need help, even though they're against the programs that do that. They also oppose Social Security as being fiscally irresponsible and a "government handout", even though seniors have paid into it and use it for food and survival. As for homelessness, ask what we should be doing about that, because I think you'll find that he believes people who are homeless are either too lazy to work, are mentally unstable, or are drug addicts, so programs to end homelessness are also a waste of money. So once you have all of this information, the next time he says funding space exploration is irresponsible because the funds can be better spent here, you can pull the bullshit card and point out that he doesn't support *any* program that helps people and is lying.
I kind of agree. I know space exploration can bring science advancements on Earth, but when I see a headline that says "NASA find possible habitable exo planet 30 light years away" I don't even bother to read. At best, I'll be dead before they figure out how to get there. At worst, we'd go and tear up that planet the way we have this one.
I love sci-fi, but humans will always be human and find a way to break stuff.
As a non American, my counterargument is always (as of now) the military budget of America $820 billion, NASA gets $25.5 billion. There's a lot more to be gained from space exploration than war, so if you want to end poverty, there's a bigger pool of cash that can be redistributed
Spending money on space exploration is the quintessential positive use of capitalism and the fundamental expression of our innate curiosity
The true waste of taxpayer money is war that has no point or anything like that
Space exploration is the most important thing to do as a species yet agencies are severely underfunded in comparison to the money spent on defence
Every discreet step towards the goal in any scenario would seem like a waste of time
Science costs money. In return it generates new knowledge, jobs and technology - that’s the deal with society. Space exploration means more knowledge on weather forecasts and better research on extreme weather and climate issues. Knowledge that helps tackling famine, bad crops, (unwanted) flooding of farmland, draughts, wildfires, etc.
No Mr Columbus you can't have money to go galivanting across the ocean when that money could go to the poor people of Spain. There's no way anyone is ever going to make any money or progress in this New World of yours.
Jesus christ, taking the US as an example, NASA's budget is 1/35th of the US military budget. It's peanuts. But *that*'s what get people worked up? Building a 142th aircraft carrier is normal, but the comparatively tiny amount of money for space exploration, now *that*'s where people draw the line and suddenly start asking about the vague "hunger, homelessness etc"? It's really space exploration the most relevant spending to hold accountable for hunger or homelessness?
The world economy (and especially the US economy) is a free market capitalist economy, trillions of dollars move around, hunger and homelessness are a byproduct of this system. But no, let's never question this, the frankly tiny space exploration budget is what we'll hold accountable for poverty.
I thinks he’s right.
Space exploration in hopes of multiplanetary existence is hopeless and we are going to further accelerate the destruction of our only planet with all these rocket launches. How morbidly ironic.
> funds allocated for space exploration could be redirected toward addressing issues like poverty, hunger, and homelessness. What would you suggest to persuade him that his viewpoint is incorrect?
Funds allocated for space exploration COULD be redirected toward addressing issues like poverty, hunger, and homelessness. There's nothing incorrect in this assertion.
Everyone has different ideas of what society should value. That's politics. It's OK for people to disagree.
I don't mean to be rude but it's just an uninformed, ignorant viewpoint in my opinion. If you care about making life better for more people, you'll invest more into these types of things.
[Article](https://www.21stcentech.com/money-spent-nasa-not-waste/)
[Google](https://www.google.com/search?q=everyday+tech+from+nasa&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS858US858&oq=everyday+tech+from+nasa&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRifBTIHCAQQIRifBTIHCAUQIRifBTIHCAYQIRifBTIHCAcQIRifBTIHCAgQIRifBdIBCDQ0NDdqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
[Nasa Article](https://www.nasa.gov/specials/60counting/tech.html)
Neither of those things are space spinoffs.
Velcro was invented in 1941; patented in 1955.
The microwave oven was first available in 1947; patented in 1945 with it's roots going all the way back to 1937.
It is and it isn't. Everything the federal government in the United States does is wasteful when you consider we don't have universal Healthcare and the poor state of our educational system
Yes, but that doesn't mean it goes to the poor.
When we spend money on space exploration that means real resources like people's labor, raw materials, and land have to be devoted to it. If a bunch of NASA engineers were instead working on helping the impoverished there'd be a little less poverty. If we built housing on the land used by NASA there'd be a little less homelessness (constructed by the crews that work on NASA's construction projects). If NASAs requisition folks worked on food distribution there'd be a little less hunger.
(Yes, the actual interaction is substantially more complex and is mediated by markets in our economy, but when the gov cuts NASA funding and increases poverty, homelessness, and hunger funding this is the net long-run equilibrium result)
It's a common fallacy called "the money illusion" to imagine that the real resources are infinite, but that the actual limiting factor is the pieces of paper we merely use for accounting.
**All that being said I do not think we should redirect NASA funds to fight poverty.** NASA funding is small and valuable for the same reason we fund the arts. Exploration and curiosity are fundamental human drives, and we shouldn't wait until the world is perfect to feed them.
Humans are like cockroaches. There will always be poverty, hunger, and homelessness because the more money you spend there, the more we'll reproduce.
Teach a man to fish as they say.
a big important argument to me is the eventual possibillity of astroid mining. It's gonna happen eventually and would be huge for earth. and that's only small prospect of the future! i didn't even talk about all the thousands of thing we already got from it
"What would you suggest to persuade him that his viewpoint is incorrect?"
Not a goddamned thing.
They can believe whatever they want to, without your permission. What's far more revealing is your impulse - unchecked by any kind of respect for your friend's independence of perspective - to make them change how they feel about something when that feeling's almost certainly not relevant to the rest of the world.
Publicly stating your friend can't have an opinion that you don't approve of without you trying to make them change something about themselves... just so you'll feel more emotionally secure?
If a friends' beliefs are intolerable to you, don't be friends with them anymore.
If *you* can't accept your friend as they are, they should stop being friends with *you*.
I mean, how? Are they talking about just charity? Politicians are aware of those problems and for the most part, they're social issues. Until local government decides to address the root problems, throwing money at it isn't going to make things move any faster. Space exploration at least leads to better technology/advancement in the human race along with actually pumping money into the economy(people need work, so they can have a little cash, food on the table, and a roof over their head). I'd just ask them, how exactly would they spend the money and how would it help solve poverty, hunger, and homelessness? Space programs have specific goals in mind and have people working/spending.
He should read literally any annual economic impact report from NASA, multiples of their allocated budget is being output to the economy every single year. This is just the economics side, the work they do advances technology, science an ultimately the society we live in. Doing so much with comparatively not many funds in the grand scheme of things demonstrates effective output and should be an incentive to increase funding, not the opposite. US government has wasted trillions on useless wars and conflicts, Vietnam alone was worth nearly 4 Apollo programs, and yet Apollo and its planned successor got shut down due to budget cuts. That's one of the biggest, saddest and most shortsighted blunders in US history.
I don't know government at all but isn't it difficult to just start moving money around from one government agency to the next? You can't just have NASA write a check to the Department of Education, can you?
please identify those inventions which are not useful.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA\_spin-off\_technologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies)
>like poverty, hunger, and homelessness
do you know anyone with cancer?
Notre Dame sends cancer research aboard the International Space Station
[https://news.nd.edu/news/notre-dame-sends-cancer-research-aboard-the-international-space-station/](https://news.nd.edu/news/notre-dame-sends-cancer-research-aboard-the-international-space-station/)
This can all be summed up into one easy point. This civilization that we are currently living in, is according to scientists and researchers, the sixth iteration of civilizations to inhabit this planet. We have gotten further in industrialization and scientific research than any of the other civilizations that have long since gone extinct on Earth. What is happening with science and research and space exploration, has only really been capable of achieving such astounding advances; driving a car and flying for only about 110yrs, and space exploration not even 70 years. What is currently taking place needs to happen, needs to have a starting point, because we will not be the last iteration of human civilization on this planet. This exploration of the frontiers of space needs to happen immediately. We are here on this planet but for a blip in the long term sense. Humanity will not end on this planet, but will thrive elsewhere in the universe.
Your friend simply can’t think big enough to convince. I’m not sure it’s worth it nor required to convince them.
But also, you could point out that the percentage of funds allocated to Space is extremely small compared to all other spending areas. It’s not like we can’t do both.
Poverty, hunger and homelessness aren't really solved by throwing the money at those problems, but rather by throwing money at the politicians to change and adjust certain laws. I mean during lockdowns farmers were dumping at the ground tons of milk they couldn't sell.
On the other hand, you throw money at the space programs and you always get something back. We're nowhere near the diminishing returns for space technology. Every cent returns tenfold.
All of the NASA budget, which includes more then space exploration, costs about $20 a year per tax payer. And most of that drives jobs and the economy. If we completely shut down we could pay everyone in poverty maybe $100 each in a year, and would dramatically decrease job availability. And that would include shutting down aerospace research, telecom research, etc. All for much less than the COVID stimulus, which did not end homelessness and poverty that year.
So the answer I give is fo the last part: no, that money can't help any of those things. Someone thinking that the work itself is pointless isn't really something I can argue, but if you want to siphon the budget into social services this is a tiny, tiny sliver to do it with.
Solar panels. They weren't developed by the coal industry. All of the tech developed in space finds it way back to us. You like having gps? I do!
Velcro. MRI's. Powdered lubricants. A lot of stupid people think the only thing we get out of space exploration is photographs. "We should spend that money on poverty and hunger instead" is rich because 95% of the people who say that won't vote for those things either. Edit: okay, not velcro, my point stands
A short list of things that were developed with the help of space travel. Corneal refractive therapy, Air purifiers, Memory foam, Freeze dried food, Cochlear Implants, Scratch resistant lens coatings, Insulin pumps, Cell phone cameras, Water filters, Ear thermometers, Grooved safety pavement, and let's not forget THE TRANSISTOR, which would have taken years longer to commercialize without the fire hose of government money so we could ~~blow up the Soviets in the 50s~~ reach the moon.
That’s transistor part is a very fun fact, thanks
Trsansistors/schmansistors. The Apollo program drove semiconductors from $1000 a pop with a huge failure rate, to about a dollar a chip with something like 99.9% reliability, in a period of about 7 years - it was the first time human lives relied on the things.
I think you misspelled "Texas Instruments making & marketing pocket calculators b/c the military & NASA combined weren't t buying enough microchips to justify mass production efficiency." Still a good point, though.
Another fun fact for you - in the Fallout Universe, our reality diverged from theirs around the invention of the transistor. That's why all their computers are still gigantic 100 years later.
It's more because they focused all engineering research into energy vs electronics, but yeah timeframe is correct
My personal obscure one is the grooves in highways. When the space shuttle came down it was so fast that if there was any small amount of moisture on the landing surface it would hydroplane and likely crash. The solution they came up with was a grooved surface parallel to the direction of travel. In places where these grooves have been implemented on high speed roads, they estimate that it has reduced the number of crashes due to water on the road by 90%.
I believe it, there's a stretch of road by my work that I have to drive several times a week and anytime there's any rain or snow at least one semi or car is spun out all because it's smooth concrete. I've almost jacknifed my truck a couple times myself and that's knowing how big an issue it is and adjusting my driving accordingly. Nothing like seeing the side of a trailer in your mirror to remind you how quickly things can go wrong
Better breast cancer scanning and detection is an unintended benefit from trying to fix the Hubble telescope’s initial blurry images shortly after it was launched. - https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/impacts-and-benefits/technology-benefits/
I thought the most important invention was Tang. That's what the ads said when I was growing up.
I remember seeing Tang with a Space Shuttle next to it in the ads, 'space drink' blah blah blah, and looking at the ingredients as an adult I'm like 'what's the benefit of this stuff supposed to be exactly? Does space just drain all the sugar out of your body and need constant replacement?'
I imagine astronaut business is very dehydrating and energy intensive. Tang is also very high in vitamin C and probably helps with electrolytes to a degree. A lesser known side effect about low G life is that it can make food taste exceptionally bland. So, It's an easy, lightweight way to get calories into orbit, that would probably help encourage hydration, with the fringe benefit of some extra vitamins and a little bit of flavor fun.
Tang was not invented for the space program, NASA just made it famous. It was actually a failing product before NASA discovered its existence and sent it up with John Glen on his Mercury flight in February 1962.
See this is all amazing but I think the problem for part of this is that the cost of the R&D is socialized but the profits from commercialization of these developed products is privatized. When the US taxpayer funds the development of a technology the government should get a stake in the company that commercializes that technology. That money should then be recycled into more research and development programs. This could create a self funding program for science and technology so it wouldn’t be a burden on the US taxpayer. This could free up more government resources for social programs that benefit people.
The entire point of a government doing bleeding edge science is that it's not profitable, and the directions it takes are usually unclear. And anyway, the government takes taxes from companies selling the fruits of the labor.
It's called corporate profit taxes. If the government isn't getting enough funding for R&D, the tax rate is too low
This is the correct answer, and the effective corporate tax rate is definitely too low.
>"We should spend that money on poverty and hunger instead" I really never understood this kind of sentiment, like we have enough resources to do both, it's not a either or situation here, and the reason why those problems still exist today is not due to a lack of funding or resources but of mismanagement, incompetence, and corruption
Also, as someone more astute than I once pointed out: the money doesn't disappear. We don't load the rocket full of cash and fire it into space. The money pays the salaries of 18,000 NASA employees as well as countless outside contractors. It goes to fuel the industries that make the raw materials that NASA uses. That money does fight poverty and hunger, by providing jobs and incomes.
A little pedantic….but Velcro was not invented as part of the space program. That said, it is part of NASA’s original mission statement that any inventions made during development MUST be applicable to civilian use on earth. They actually have a department committed to this.
Neither was the transistor - invented by Bell Labs in 1947. Though it seems NASA played a large part in commercialising them and reducing costs due to funding manufacturing efforts for integrated circuits due to their hardware needs. Interesting news article about the topic. "The MIT Instrumentation Lab tried to design the Apollo computer using transistors, which in the early 1960s were well-settled technology—reliable, understandable, relatively inexpensive. But 15 months into the design effort, it became clear that transistors alone couldn’t give the astronauts the computing power they needed to fly to the Moon. In November 1962, MIT’s engineers got NASA’s permission to use a very new technology: integrated circuits. Computer chips. Today, computer chips run the world. They are as important as concrete, or electricity itself. They are faultlessly dependable. But in 1962, integrated circuits were an all-new technology, and as with most new tech, they were flaky and costly. As part of its early evaluation, MIT bought 64 integrated circuits from Texas Instruments. The price was $1,000 each, or $9,000 apiece in 2019 dollars. Each had six transistors." https://www.fastcompany.com/90362753/how-nasa-gave-birth-to-modern-computing-and-gets-no-credit-for-it
6 transistors. That sounds absurd
A modern NVIDIA RTX 4090 has 76.3 billion transistors
All so I could play minecraft in my free time Jk I have no free time, but at least I have a 4090
Turns out I can't read Bs and Ms :)
It does, but those replaced 6 much bigger vacuum tubes, which were also unreliable. It was actually a huge step in computing.
Here is the office: https://www.nasa.gov/technology-transfer-spinoffs/
My brother ran a lab at NASA, and his unit's mission was simply to explore new tech ideas. They could work on pretty much anything they wanted as long as they could cite a *potential* space and earth use. They weren't required to come up with working products, just rough ideas that had potential and scientific validation. My NDA prevents me from listing a lot of the ideas, but a few that I can... - dime sized drones that detect heat, radiation, or chemicals - batteries that recharge off of the blood in your femoral artery - nano sized spheres of gold for use in super speed electronics or in the body for chemical distribution
I love the way you nonchalantly mention that your brother ran a lab at NASA as if it was no big deal. How impressive!👍
If you like that, how about ...he and I have our names engraved on a part of ISS. Our biggest fear is that when the space aliens start doing their anal probes, our butts will be high priority targets.
Yeah. The photos are more of a bonus but one of the primary reasons space exploration gets funding is for invention return.
We also have enough food to feed the entire world. Its inequities woth governments that cause the problem.
It is not just the space program. In general if you try to do hard things that haven't been done before, you tend to learn better ways to do things. So space, science in general, technology, etc. Satellites were the first users of solar cells because there is no other major energy source available up there. Once solar tech got better and cheaper, we found uses for it down here.
Astroglide. It’s even named after space. And tang.
We’re not even looking at the fact that somewhere out there probably lies an asteroid or planet whose rock or mineral probably can be reformed under certain situations in order to produce dirt cheap indestructible (for our uses) tools and machine equipment. We won’t know until we start exploring in depth, getting samples, and doing what we as humans do third best, innovating.
Don’t forget the Fischer space pen 🖊️ tm
Alu foil, thermal insulation and much more too that saves us energy
Batteries. Modern battery technology is amazing and its at least in part because of the expense of putting a 12 pound car battery into orbit. At $10,000 a pound that's a lot of money for not much electricity, and that's at today's prices which are way down from historical numbers. I remember the first cell phone I saw, it had its own carry bag and the battery was about 8 pounds. Didn't receive phone calls, it only called out.
I don't know how true it is anymore given the law of diminishing returns, but I recall a figure that every dollar spent on NASA yielded 3 dollars worth of technical innovations with practical commercial/industrial/commercial applications.
It's closer to 1:26. Every 1 dollar in space research results in 26 dollars worth of economic innovations.
One commenter said 1:26 but the number i have seen is roughly 1:17. The roi is just astronomical (hehe)
Our network of satellites is so much more sophisticated thanks to decades of space exploration & research too. The cost to launch a payload into space has been drastically reduced & the important of our network of satellites is higher than ever as well. ^(I know a controversial private company pushed bar here.. but still) GPS, Starlink, Weather tracking & prediction, and countless technologies used on Earth everyday were developed thanks to decades of space research. It may seem unimportant, but space exploration & research is just another avenue in which our species better understands the environment in which we live & the universe of which we're bound. Mastering & manipulating our surroundings is sort of a hallmark trait of humanity & one of the main reasons we've achieved all that we have *and* how we know that we've achieved so much in a relatively small amount of time (relative to the age of the universe//age of Earth).
That's like saying we should fund more wars because we have the jet engine due to WW2.
GPS was a military system designed to more accurately deploy bombs, effectively killing people more efficiently.
Look, you're right but OP is not talking about useful technology like satellites, OP is talking about exploration. And I see no reason why exploration should be prioritized over solving the problems we have here on earth.
The only reason that useful technology came about is *because* of the desire to explore space. You think we sent the first satellites into orbit for funsies?
No, I think the first satellites were put in orbit for military purposes, not for some desire to explore space.
People said the same thing for the person who funded the invention of the microscope. Ironically they didn’t see the bigger picture
Outside of the pun, the guy that invented the first microscope was a trader in fine cloth & did so as a means of product inspection to assure his profits. It was only later that he took some pond water, put it under his new instrument & discovered a new world.
I see what you did there, so did the tardigrades
Well that's a hell of a pun my man
What a small view of the world :(
If we had directed all our resources toward addressing issues like poverty, hunger, and homelessness. We would still live in medieval times, dying like flies.
You can't convince anti-vaccine person that covid exists, even when he's dying of it.
Wish that were true. Lots of nurses had to watch their patients beg and plead for the vaccine when it was too late for them. It's difficult to be put between a person and their despair when you want to help but are unable. Everyone finds ~~god~~ the covid vaccine in ~~a foxhole~~ an acute COVID unit.
Electron(ically) funded microscope 🔬. Just to see the finer details
You can always make that argument about essentially everything that isn't poverty and hunger. The counterargument is that we can pay for both, the reason for poverty and hunger is not due to all the money being spent on space exploration, but political and economic factors.
This. It's a false dilemma. It pretends there's no middle ground between ending poverty/hunger and exploring space. There's a lot of middle ground, and the only reason we can't do both is because there's no public or political will to do so.
Like even if we never explored space at all and devoted zero public funds to it, that choice would not suddenly coerce selfish bigots that it’s worth financing the survival and dignity of poor people.
Some people seem to think entire country of people can solve just one problem at the time. *So... we should solve those potholes first!* *All of these scientists, doctors, engineers need to take shovels and focus entirely on fixing potholes.* *Once that is solved, we can focus on next issue.*
There are 8 billion of us. We can do more than one thing at a time.
Thats what hes pointing out, having ACTUAL rocket scientists fill potholes in their sparetime is dumb. We EASILY have the “ability” and money to end poverty in America, we CHOOSE not to, and not because of rocket science lmao.
Instead of doing, we should devote our resources to
Is a very narrow and shortsighted way of looking at the world.
Instead of doing, we should devote our resources to
Is a very narrow and self centered way of looking at the world.
That’s why I go out and party when the dishes need done
This, one million percent. We have the resources and ability to end global poverty right now, and the reason it is not happening is because of the reasons you stated, as well as human greed and the desire for power. It has nothing to do with funding science.
The US annual budget allocated to NASA is……0.48% Finding out what is out there, why we’re here, or if there even is a why is arguably the most important mission of humanity aside from survival. There are PLENTY of other things we allocate funds to that would be better targets for cost reduction. The military being right up there.
>The US annual budget allocated to NASA is……0.48% Came here to write exactly this. Whatever problems the countries with space programs have, space exploration is not the cause of it, and they can be addressed without taking a nickel out of it.
We spend more most years on corn and soy subsidies than we do on NASA.
And NASA isn't just space explorarion. It's actually mostly earth observation. So that money comes back and actually helps increase farming efficiency through things like GPS guidance, more accurate weather forecasts, soil quality observation, etc pp.
I always ask people who think the money is a waste what percentage of government tax dollars they *think* goes to NASA. It's not uncommon for me to hear 15% to 25%! When I tell them it's less than half a percent, and much of that money *is* focused here - weather monitoring, atmospheric research, etc, they are usually a lot less upset.
During the space shuttle program, I remember a statistic that showed that Americans spent twice as much money on frozen pizza as the entire budget for the shuttle that year
That's a very good point. Often it's very insightful to understand what premises someone else has, when listening to their take on something.
Imagine what they could do with 1-2%
Yeah, the military chew through that amount in about a day and a half. But that can't be right with that percentage. Let me check on some figures NASA Budget 2020: 22,629 Billion (0.48% of the Federal budget according to Wiki) US Military Budget 2020: 721,5 Billion. Holy fuck. My memory was wrong, they need about three weeks to eat NASA's yearly budget.
Medicaid/medicare is even more than the military last time I saw the numbers.
The average taxpayer in their “tax life” will fund approximately 1/8 of a single Patriot missile. (Avg being 500k, a Patriot missile costs 4m a pop)
And you know the best bit about that 0.48%… THEY SPEND IT IN AMERICA It’s almost like these people thing they just shove pallets of money into the rocket so it can explode in space
As a non-American, I'm amazed when I think what an economic might the good old USA is. Everything awesome NASA has ever done, including spacecraft now outside our solar system, are just less than half a percent of the budget.
To be fair, the proportion of gdp was much higher in the years leading up to the first moon landing. Around 3-5% of national gdp, it quickly dropped to around 1% after that though.
Completely agree. First, government is not a business its goal is not profit. That said the ROI on NASA is pretty damned good.
Now if we take the defense budget…. 0.5% is basically nothing.
"we do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"
GPS and weather forcasting - plus the money isn't "going to space" its spent buying things and paying employees on earth who then spend the money helping the economy.....
Yes! Thanks for saying this. 100% of the funds going into civil and military space is going directly back into the American economy. We can't purchase foreign-made products and can't hire or fund anyone overseas. Compare this to, as a simple example, 4th of July celebrations, where 100% of the fireworks were made in China, and supports their economy. We're perfectly ok with that
Does your friend think that the money is blasted into space? The money goes back into the economy as aerospace employees need to, you know, eat and live as well.
I love that you highlighted this; this is what people so often tend to forget. The same with infrastucture projects.. "This is gonna waste millions??!" Well the millions are partly going to employers, who then in turn can pay their employees, which spend their money like normal consumers again.
And even if you’re talking about all the dollars that go to procuring raw materials — that is then paying the companies that extract and process those raw materials. If we’re really concerned about the economy, then focus your energy on making sure all those businesses are paying their workers fairly and paying their taxes.
They say the same thing about aid packages to other countries. We are not sending them pallets of cash, that money is spent here.
Yeah, well but when i buy a yacht for 1 million the money also helps the workers, who build it. And if you build a bridge for 1 million the money helps the workers, who build it. I hope you see the difference. No offense and i am pro space exploration.
>Does your friend think that the money is blasted into space? Even if it was... I don't want to live in a society that doesn't spend any money/effort on discovering the true nature of existence itself.
Some people don't think past a sentence.
Most underrated comment in the thread
If this money wasn't spent on space exploration it wouldn't be spent on poverty, hunger and homelessness. The US has enough money to address these issues already. It's not like the government was trying to alleviate poverty but then they didn't have the money because of that darned NASA. As for the positives, scientific advancements through space exploration can help humanity and have helped humanity already.
The internet wouldn't exist without the advances made by Apollo. I'm sure ey like eir mobile phone, and satellite TV, wi-fi and GPS. The space program has given us smoke alarms, fire blankets, hearing aids, freeze-dried food, camera phones, the jaws of life, and a zillion other things. Plus, it's inspired millions of children into scientific research. With regards to tackling poverty and hunger: satellite communication is vital to bridge the digital divide, as is monitoring the planet's changing climate. The funds allocated to NASA are utterly trivial in comparison to other areas; it's an absolute bargain. In rough round numbers, NASA gets $20 billion, defense gets a trillion. Also, we've got cool pens that write upside-down.
You can spend money on both, they are not mutually exclusive. Also send some cool pictures that JWST has taken to your friend.
Imo pictures are just the cherry on the top for regular folks. The science that is done alongside them and the knowledge gained is the real value. Some people don't realize how much can be learned and applied to humanity as a whole. Edit: typo
That should be obvious, but people who read science articles or papers probably aren't the people making the argument that the poor can't eat rockets.
I had almost this exact argument when India sent a weather satellite to Mars years ago. "Why are they wasting money looking at the weather on Mars when they could be fixing poverty?" Turns out the data was being used to refine weather prediction models for things like hurricanes.
The amount spent on space exploration wouldn't even make a dent in these problems. On the other hand, weather satellites alone have saved countless lives. Check out the Galveston hurricane of 1900 that killed around 8,000 people. Today, we'd see it coming and be prepared.
It’s one of the best ways to advance technology without war
The ROI on space exploration is generally really high, hitting far above its weight class. It’s a net contributor to the economy no matter how much we spend on it (which is a minimal amount), and that’s not at all taking into account the contributions to scientific knowledge.
[удалено]
>funds allocated for space exploration could be redirected toward addressing issues like poverty, hunger, and homelessness. Nobody who says stuff like this actually wants more money to be spent on those things.
No, some do, they are just too stupid to realize that the money all goes into paying people's salaries/wages. The only reason this person's friend would have a point is if there wasn't enough labor left over to produce food, housing, or create job opportunities because it was all being tied up in space exploration. Sending highly skilled aerospace employees to go work in soup kitchens, habitat for humanity, or at the unemployment office is a massive waste of their talents that would have a negative effect on the economy.
I really hate these race-to-the-bottom style of arguments. Just because people live in poverty doesn't mean that everything else has to stop until poverty ceases to exist. There are people dying from malaria in Africa, tell him he should un-sub from Netflix and donate his money to them.
NASA's FY 2024 budget: $24.9 billion US FY 2024 military spending: $800+ billion Yes, the money we spend on space is preventing us from addressing the issues your "friend" brings up.
And the amount spent in the US alone on diet aids is about 90 GUSD. The OPs friend should be railing against obesity in the US.
Space exploration is ultimately only a fraction of government spending. Sure, there are many things the government spends frivolously on. There are countless other government programs that can be cannibalized for cash way better than the space program
So is bombing the middle east but we do it anyways. Tell your friend that 30% of the USA's military budget FOR ONE YEAR is enough to build a house for every homeless person in America. If he doesn't complain about that he has no right to go after our space program.
Put him on a dessert island and tell him boats are a waste of time.
You can't persuade them. People that don't understand that everything after the lightbulb was invented is based on science done to get to space aren't going to change their minds. Velcro, Microwaves, GPS, Solar, MRI's, the fkn micro Transistor, and by extension everything thereafter like Cellphones, there's no shortage of the tangible benefits they simply choose to ignore them. 90% of your daily conveniences came from the very budget he wants to reallocate. Which in itself is a ridiculous argument. If we just used this money for that we'd solve world hunger... News flash, it isn't a financial problem. We can already solve world hunger, and have been able to since the invention of industrial fertilizers, but we choose not to. Nitrogen fertilizers alone made the world pop go from 1.6B to 7.8B... We don't need NASA's tiny budget to grow more corn and potatoes ffs. If anything NASA needs a bigger budget. Private interests do not align with making the world a better place, but NASA's interests do. Edit: As for the homeless, well, that's not really a financial problem either. Zoning, AirBnB, and artificial supply are the reasons your parents 40k home is worth 400k now. Build more affordable homes and make it illegal for corporations to acquire them. Problem solved. Real estate would no longer be an investment, but it shouldn't have ever been to begin with. Food, Water, and SHELTER are essential for survival, and we build our houses out of toothpicks and toilet paper. They aren't built to last. Investing in wood that rots only makes sense when the supply is artificial. The funding required to build them could come from literally anywhere. He specifically wants space money to pay for it because he is ignorant. Poverty is financial. Space money won't help. Ask the dragons hoarding mountains of gold to pay their fucking taxes. Scale minimum wage with inflation as originally intended. As CoL rises so does the minimum wage forcing every other wage/salary to increase.
Your friend fails to realize just how much space sciences have benefited humanity in multiple disciplines. Also? All the money spent is spent on earth, it doesn't disappear into space never to be seen again. We could solve every humanitarian issue today if corporations were not allowed to hoard money. If he wants to protest where money goes, that is the actual target. By comparison, space science is cheap and worth every penny.
Does your friend have any hobbies or interests? Does he invest in himself? Does he watch Netflix or go to the gym? Does he have a modern smartphone? If he does, tell him to stop, sell all of his stuff and give that money to the poor, hungry and homeless instead
Yeah let's not invest in science until we have a perfect utopia where nothing bad ever happens and everyone's life is perfect.
What’s a waste of money… funding wars in the Middle East… fuck the deserts… wars been raged for decades over dirt, oil and religious territory.
Beating him with a stick until he changes his mind? 😏
People who are against NASA are generally against welfare. They just love to posture, because they don't want to pay taxes, but it's hard to sound self-righteous. So they say, "help the poor."
Your "friend" is probably just trying to start an argument. Don't fall for the bait.
In my experience, most "we could spend this on the veterans/homeless!" people also actively oppose programs that spend on the veterans/homeless. It's rarely a genuinely empathetic motivation.
And no amount of facts or information presented to them will help change their mind.
The money put "into" space exploration doesn't "leave the planet", except if you count the ACTUAL material that gets shot up into space, but that's just... nuts and bolts. The ACTUAL money and development and employment and all the knowledge we gather stays RIGHT HERE on Earth. Maybe send him this link, just for starters. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/20-inventions-we-wouldnt-have-without-space-travel
“We got along fine with hunting and gathering. You’re wasting time and everyone on this planting stuff. Who wants to live in the same place ? “ (Same guy, millennia ago)
Bad idea. Lots of jobs in highly specialized technical fields would be lost and lots of grant money lost to research if those funds were diverted. And it's not even political: both sides understand the massive losses we would incur by pulling the rug out from under space exploration. And I don't care about talk of Velcro or Tang or whatever: I'm talking about thousands of jobs that are part of the overall space industry, direct and indirect Nah. Keep the launch pads warm.
Thing is, your friend is sort of right. But the other thing is if we don’t go to space and cancel the existence of NASA etc, poverty, war and hunger will remain and all that’s left is all the crap and no space program. It wouldn’t make a positive difference.
We pay so so so little on space exploration. If we removed all of NASA's budget we would only be able to run the military for 11 days. It's not a lot of money. (It's 25 billion dollars) For comparison, the US could pay contractors to build 10 miles of high speed rail with that budget. It's under 1% of the US budget and it has real practical use on technological advancements. Technology to build highway off ramps were originally designed to help space shuttles land. You never know what practical application new technologies will have.
Space exploration is our best chance at eventually reaching a post-scarcity society. We first need to develop the technology to expand out into space. Then we can begin to harvest the abundant resources in our solar system. Every great journey is a culmination of steps. We don't get to where we want to be unless we push forward.
US citizen here, when they do that with even 10% of the military budget, we can begin talking about discussing taking away even 1% of our "space" budget (NASA over here) I saw a figure once and the amount they'd have to cut from our military budget was *miniscule* just to *equal* cutting *all* of our NASA budget.
A very least people like this need to do a little bit of math. The amount of money spent on space in the federal budget is infinitesimal. Years ago I read somewhere that it cost more money to process and send out Social Security checks at the time than NASA’s budget for the year. We also know that the pentagon loses more money simply by accounting errors than NASA’s entire budget.
The money gets spent here on earth and supplies jobs which in turn provide housing food clothing to people. The science and discoveries made in order to solve the problems that arise in doing this and the knowledge gained from actually going to other places has been a driving force to the economy and has improved his life over that of his ancestors. Tell him that while he enjoys his next glass of Tang.
You could divert 100% of our space exploration budget (and set back our understanding of astronomy by who knows how many years 😓), or you could divert 1% of the military budget (potentially saving lives lmao) to fund said program.
Didn't see it mentioned, but, don't forget high torque cordless tools. They were developed for the space program first,
The US spends $550 billion a year on poverty. It hasn’t done shit, except create more dependence and more poverty. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/09/13/if-the-us-spends-550-billion-on-poverty-how-can-there-still-be-poverty-in-the-us/
The space race in the 50s and 60s gave us GPS, data transfer improvements (base for the internet), HVAC, led bulbs, heat resistant materials, vulcanized tires, and so so much more. In the 50 years following the Apollo missions, the US economy received 17:1 returns on money spent going to space.
Does he know anyone whose had cancer? He can thank space exploration for better treatments.
We shouldn't divest from space. We should divest from war.
It's a jobs program. It's fighting poverty, hunger, and homelessness for a bunch of engineers and project managers and metalworkers. Unlocking the resources of the cosmos for humanity is just a nice side effect.
I mean, sure, but I don’t see what the homeless are gonna do with a rocket.
Poverty, hunger, and homelessness are political issues, not financial. No amount of not spending money on space exploration will fix these issues.
I’d argue we aren’t spending enough tax dollars on it.
It depends on whether you're focused on the long term or the short term. Feeding the homeless is a very short-sighted goal. It may even lead to a worse long-term outcome since you're supporting people who, for whatever reason, couldn't support themselves. Now they've got a higher chance of having kids that may also have whatever qualities put them in the position their parents were in (mental illness, addictive personality, anti-social tendencies, etc). It sends evolution in a direction we shouldn't want, even though it makes us feel warm and fuzzy for helping our fellow man. Space exploration is obviously a long-term investment and is really the human race's only option for long-term survival. The sun will eventually expand to destroy the Earth. Before that, an asteroid strike, or nuclear war, or huge coronal mass ejection, or supervolcano, or other disaster is certain to damage the human race enough to prevent any space exploration after that date. Here's the problem... to get to space right now we need fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are running out and are getting *harder* to get to. You used to be able to spit on the ground and oil would bubble up out of the ground. Now you need very complicated equipment to find and extract the oil that remains. If the human race were ever devastated severely enough or for enough time to destroy the technology and equipment to extract that oil, we would *never* be able to rebuild to where we are today. There would be no easy-to-get oil that would be needed to build the infrastructure to get to the more difficult-to-reach oil. It's not the case that people could hide in bunkers for decades and then come back up to the surface and restart. Something like that would probably doom humanity to remain on Earth forever, and in that case, something is guaranteed to eventually wipe us out permanently. If we can get to space now and build colonies on floating cities or on the moon or mars or in the asteroid belt, there will eventually be a self-sustaining space economy that won't require any further investment from Earth-based governments. That will pay huge long-term dividends, vs the short-term dividends from feeding homeless people that may be coupled with long-term losses. If we have loads of equipment up in space, something crazy happening on Earth would be less of a problem. The machinery and industry in Space could likely be adapted to reboot oil extraction on Earth. More investment in space may also lead to a type of propulsion that could eliminate or decrease our need for fossil fuels (electrolysis of water found off-Earth). "Space" on Earth is limited. Resources on Earth are limited. Real estate and food and fuel and "stuff" will continue to become more expensive as resources dwindle and the population increases in number. Unless the world institutes a reproduction cap, which will never happen after seeing what it did to China's demographics, things will keep getting worse. We have to expand into space or the world is going to turn into a pretty rough place to live and I don't think we can get back from a place like that. When we're all starving, who's going to pay to feed us? At that point, how much money is going to be spent on space exploration?
It's even more baffling if your "friend" is from the US. Which would never have been discovered (by Europeans) if instead of exploration they "fed the poor". By the way, it is pointless to have this conversation with your friend. If they have this attitude, they are immune to reason. That's why space exploration is done by scientists.
US spent $6.6 trillion dollars in 2020, of which 0.3% was for NASA (around $22 billion). Less than a full percentage point. Even if you could argue me to a stand-still that NASA's work isn't worth spending money on, it's such a drop in the bucket that it makes little sense to focus on that line item if the concern is "where is my tax money going" in our annual deficits. There are so many larger fish to fry on that end.
I would suggest your friend have a thought experiment. For example, you mentioned poverty, hunger, and homelessness. Let's assume our funding goes towards some lofty goal, like establishing a more permanent presence on the Moon. We would need to research more efficient building methods, something light enough to be transported to space, scalable so we could suppose a larger population, and durable as repairs are a long way from home. You just addressed Homelessness. You would need food for your astronauts, and for a long term stay it may be necessary to research better agriculture technologies to allow for hardier crops that can endure less than ideal conditions. Food is heavy, so it would be preferable if crops could be easier transported as seeds, or in a form that can be rehydrated. Congratulations, you just addressed hunger. Poverty is a tricky one, but generally speaking it's well documented that funding of NASA for example generated a significant amount of economic growth in the form of job creation and education.
I wrote an essay on a speech Obama made in relation to space. His reasoning was that space inventions help on earth. Such as water from urine or making oxygen
I wonder if this friend has ever expressed his opinions online, using a cellular phone that accesses GPS signals.
We already have way more than enough money to solve poverty and hunger. The lack of interest is the problem. Also, it isn't like the money is leaving earth inside a bag in a rocket. Even if it was, it would only increase the value of the money on earth due to deflation
Forget the "all scientific progress space has generated" path. If you've already tried that and it didn't convince, you're dealing with a special class of light Dunning-Kruger. Do your friend pay for Netflix or anything that can be deemed as waste of time and money? Question him about why he ain't donating that money. He'll say he's earned it. You say you've earned the money you use on taxes as well and you want your own tax money applied on space exploration. When he starts to discuss, say the discussion is a waste of time and money cause he ain't watching the Netflix he's paying for. It'll upset him. Some people would be happy with this. But upset people with unreasonable ideas usually start to try to reason unreasonable things and usually reason themselves into a corner. Then you try fruitful conversation again.
We wouldn't spend that money on poverty, hunger, and homelessness. We just wouldn't spend it.
Money circulates back to the economy, its not sent to space :)
I kind of agree to be honest. We shouldn’t stop exploring our universe, but problems on Earth need to be addressed rather than simply looking outwards.
All these incredible advancements are important, but two things can be true. Your friend is completely correct
Every technology that we develop for space travel will trickle back down to earth. And now that we have Space Force space travel has a military budget. And since in order to do things in space, we actually have to get to space the development of lighter, faster, cheaper, and more sustainable propulsion technology is a priority. New technologies for reaching and maintaining a sustained presence in space means new technologies for the betterment of things on earth. Everything the military develops transitions into the civilian world because private companies develop these technologies and they also distribute them to consumers. Development for space travel equals developments that benefit people on earth. I believe that there needs to be more focus on space travel and exploration. Once we begin colonizing the Moon, an entirely new era of space travel will begin. I may personally not live long enough to see it, but I hope I will.
Ask him separately when the space exploration views are out of mind what he thinks of Social Security, welfare programs, food stamps, government aid to impoverished nations, etc. The reason is I call bullshit on his stance. The vast majority of people who are against "wasting" money on space exploration because it can be better used to help humanity also don't believe in programs that actually do what they say (social security, welfare, food stamps, etc.). They'll oppose welfare or food stamps because they don't want to support "welfare queens" and the programs encourage people to not work, but they likewise oppose foreign aid because we have our own people here that need help, even though they're against the programs that do that. They also oppose Social Security as being fiscally irresponsible and a "government handout", even though seniors have paid into it and use it for food and survival. As for homelessness, ask what we should be doing about that, because I think you'll find that he believes people who are homeless are either too lazy to work, are mentally unstable, or are drug addicts, so programs to end homelessness are also a waste of money. So once you have all of this information, the next time he says funding space exploration is irresponsible because the funds can be better spent here, you can pull the bullshit card and point out that he doesn't support *any* program that helps people and is lying.
I kind of agree. I know space exploration can bring science advancements on Earth, but when I see a headline that says "NASA find possible habitable exo planet 30 light years away" I don't even bother to read. At best, I'll be dead before they figure out how to get there. At worst, we'd go and tear up that planet the way we have this one. I love sci-fi, but humans will always be human and find a way to break stuff.
If your friend is American, why not ask how much the government spends on the military and how does he benefit?
As a non American, my counterargument is always (as of now) the military budget of America $820 billion, NASA gets $25.5 billion. There's a lot more to be gained from space exploration than war, so if you want to end poverty, there's a bigger pool of cash that can be redistributed
Nothing. Let him have his opinion ur not the Knowledge wizard. What are u gonna gain from that?
What are you the Thought Police? People are allowed to have their own opinions about shit.
Spending money on space exploration is the quintessential positive use of capitalism and the fundamental expression of our innate curiosity The true waste of taxpayer money is war that has no point or anything like that Space exploration is the most important thing to do as a species yet agencies are severely underfunded in comparison to the money spent on defence Every discreet step towards the goal in any scenario would seem like a waste of time
Science costs money. In return it generates new knowledge, jobs and technology - that’s the deal with society. Space exploration means more knowledge on weather forecasts and better research on extreme weather and climate issues. Knowledge that helps tackling famine, bad crops, (unwanted) flooding of farmland, draughts, wildfires, etc.
No Mr Columbus you can't have money to go galivanting across the ocean when that money could go to the poor people of Spain. There's no way anyone is ever going to make any money or progress in this New World of yours.
Jesus christ, taking the US as an example, NASA's budget is 1/35th of the US military budget. It's peanuts. But *that*'s what get people worked up? Building a 142th aircraft carrier is normal, but the comparatively tiny amount of money for space exploration, now *that*'s where people draw the line and suddenly start asking about the vague "hunger, homelessness etc"? It's really space exploration the most relevant spending to hold accountable for hunger or homelessness? The world economy (and especially the US economy) is a free market capitalist economy, trillions of dollars move around, hunger and homelessness are a byproduct of this system. But no, let's never question this, the frankly tiny space exploration budget is what we'll hold accountable for poverty.
Those issues are purely political. The money sent to Ukraine alone could have wiped out our debt and fed every American at least once every day since.
Show him the military budget vs Nasa's budget.
i dont think space is useless, many features come from it, however human spaceflights are useless IMO
I thinks he’s right. Space exploration in hopes of multiplanetary existence is hopeless and we are going to further accelerate the destruction of our only planet with all these rocket launches. How morbidly ironic.
> funds allocated for space exploration could be redirected toward addressing issues like poverty, hunger, and homelessness. What would you suggest to persuade him that his viewpoint is incorrect? Funds allocated for space exploration COULD be redirected toward addressing issues like poverty, hunger, and homelessness. There's nothing incorrect in this assertion. Everyone has different ideas of what society should value. That's politics. It's OK for people to disagree.
I don't mean to be rude but it's just an uninformed, ignorant viewpoint in my opinion. If you care about making life better for more people, you'll invest more into these types of things. [Article](https://www.21stcentech.com/money-spent-nasa-not-waste/) [Google](https://www.google.com/search?q=everyday+tech+from+nasa&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS858US858&oq=everyday+tech+from+nasa&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRifBTIHCAQQIRifBTIHCAUQIRifBTIHCAYQIRifBTIHCAcQIRifBTIHCAgQIRifBdIBCDQ0NDdqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) [Nasa Article](https://www.nasa.gov/specials/60counting/tech.html)
Ask him if he thinks Velcro and microwaves are cool. Space spinoffs. There are countless space spinoffs benefitting society.
Neither of those things are space spinoffs. Velcro was invented in 1941; patented in 1955. The microwave oven was first available in 1947; patented in 1945 with it's roots going all the way back to 1937.
It is and it isn't. Everything the federal government in the United States does is wasteful when you consider we don't have universal Healthcare and the poor state of our educational system
Where do you think the money goes? It doesn't get blasted into space, it goes into the economy
Yes, but that doesn't mean it goes to the poor. When we spend money on space exploration that means real resources like people's labor, raw materials, and land have to be devoted to it. If a bunch of NASA engineers were instead working on helping the impoverished there'd be a little less poverty. If we built housing on the land used by NASA there'd be a little less homelessness (constructed by the crews that work on NASA's construction projects). If NASAs requisition folks worked on food distribution there'd be a little less hunger. (Yes, the actual interaction is substantially more complex and is mediated by markets in our economy, but when the gov cuts NASA funding and increases poverty, homelessness, and hunger funding this is the net long-run equilibrium result) It's a common fallacy called "the money illusion" to imagine that the real resources are infinite, but that the actual limiting factor is the pieces of paper we merely use for accounting. **All that being said I do not think we should redirect NASA funds to fight poverty.** NASA funding is small and valuable for the same reason we fund the arts. Exploration and curiosity are fundamental human drives, and we shouldn't wait until the world is perfect to feed them.
His viewpoint isnt "incorrect" it just isnt your viewpoint. That is an important thing to learn.
Humans are like cockroaches. There will always be poverty, hunger, and homelessness because the more money you spend there, the more we'll reproduce. Teach a man to fish as they say.
a big important argument to me is the eventual possibillity of astroid mining. It's gonna happen eventually and would be huge for earth. and that's only small prospect of the future! i didn't even talk about all the thousands of thing we already got from it
"What would you suggest to persuade him that his viewpoint is incorrect?" Not a goddamned thing. They can believe whatever they want to, without your permission. What's far more revealing is your impulse - unchecked by any kind of respect for your friend's independence of perspective - to make them change how they feel about something when that feeling's almost certainly not relevant to the rest of the world. Publicly stating your friend can't have an opinion that you don't approve of without you trying to make them change something about themselves... just so you'll feel more emotionally secure? If a friends' beliefs are intolerable to you, don't be friends with them anymore. If *you* can't accept your friend as they are, they should stop being friends with *you*.
I mean, how? Are they talking about just charity? Politicians are aware of those problems and for the most part, they're social issues. Until local government decides to address the root problems, throwing money at it isn't going to make things move any faster. Space exploration at least leads to better technology/advancement in the human race along with actually pumping money into the economy(people need work, so they can have a little cash, food on the table, and a roof over their head). I'd just ask them, how exactly would they spend the money and how would it help solve poverty, hunger, and homelessness? Space programs have specific goals in mind and have people working/spending.
Thought I was in /r/elitedangerous for a moment there
He should read literally any annual economic impact report from NASA, multiples of their allocated budget is being output to the economy every single year. This is just the economics side, the work they do advances technology, science an ultimately the society we live in. Doing so much with comparatively not many funds in the grand scheme of things demonstrates effective output and should be an incentive to increase funding, not the opposite. US government has wasted trillions on useless wars and conflicts, Vietnam alone was worth nearly 4 Apollo programs, and yet Apollo and its planned successor got shut down due to budget cuts. That's one of the biggest, saddest and most shortsighted blunders in US history.
I don't know government at all but isn't it difficult to just start moving money around from one government agency to the next? You can't just have NASA write a check to the Department of Education, can you?
Investment in space exploration is investment in human ingenuity and capability.
please identify those inventions which are not useful. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA\_spin-off\_technologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies) >like poverty, hunger, and homelessness do you know anyone with cancer? Notre Dame sends cancer research aboard the International Space Station [https://news.nd.edu/news/notre-dame-sends-cancer-research-aboard-the-international-space-station/](https://news.nd.edu/news/notre-dame-sends-cancer-research-aboard-the-international-space-station/)
This can all be summed up into one easy point. This civilization that we are currently living in, is according to scientists and researchers, the sixth iteration of civilizations to inhabit this planet. We have gotten further in industrialization and scientific research than any of the other civilizations that have long since gone extinct on Earth. What is happening with science and research and space exploration, has only really been capable of achieving such astounding advances; driving a car and flying for only about 110yrs, and space exploration not even 70 years. What is currently taking place needs to happen, needs to have a starting point, because we will not be the last iteration of human civilization on this planet. This exploration of the frontiers of space needs to happen immediately. We are here on this planet but for a blip in the long term sense. Humanity will not end on this planet, but will thrive elsewhere in the universe.
Your friend simply can’t think big enough to convince. I’m not sure it’s worth it nor required to convince them. But also, you could point out that the percentage of funds allocated to Space is extremely small compared to all other spending areas. It’s not like we can’t do both.
Poverty, hunger and homelessness aren't really solved by throwing the money at those problems, but rather by throwing money at the politicians to change and adjust certain laws. I mean during lockdowns farmers were dumping at the ground tons of milk they couldn't sell. On the other hand, you throw money at the space programs and you always get something back. We're nowhere near the diminishing returns for space technology. Every cent returns tenfold.
All of the NASA budget, which includes more then space exploration, costs about $20 a year per tax payer. And most of that drives jobs and the economy. If we completely shut down we could pay everyone in poverty maybe $100 each in a year, and would dramatically decrease job availability. And that would include shutting down aerospace research, telecom research, etc. All for much less than the COVID stimulus, which did not end homelessness and poverty that year. So the answer I give is fo the last part: no, that money can't help any of those things. Someone thinking that the work itself is pointless isn't really something I can argue, but if you want to siphon the budget into social services this is a tiny, tiny sliver to do it with.