Ravenwood - 12/24/03 06:00 AM
I must admit that I love science, and I love astronomy. Still, I must admit that most space exploration is not worth the money. I would also ask if sending expensive gadgets off into space is worth it, when it's funded by money seized from private citizens at the point of a gun. Especially when you read things like this.
The odds of all four spacecraft succeeding are slim.When government's spend money on these efforts, what they are really saying is that your money is better spent on sending hunks of metal into space than on your family's clothes, food, books, and what not.Since 1960, roughly two-thirds of the three dozen spacecraft sent to Mars have failed, including two 1999 NASA missions, the Climate Orbiter and Polar Lander. Most have been lost on launch or arrival, the most perilous portions of any mission.
The most recent failure was the Japanese satellite, Nozomi, which failed to enter orbit around Mars earlier this month.NASA's back-to-back 1999 failures prompted the American space agency to tighten oversight of the design, construction, testing and launching of its spacecraft, including this year's batch.
Actually, Ravenwood, space exploration is (along with defense) about the only government spending I don't really have a problem with. (The waste I have a problem with, but not the idea.)
If homo sapiens has a future, it's going to be out there - off the surface of Mother Earth, and the required initial ventures into space (having little to no commercial return on investment) pretty much required government spending.
That's no longer true, though. There is a growing commercial market for the hardware necessary to put things into orbit - or higher. Add to that the fact that NASA is now a bloated bureaucracy more interested in making sure its budget is increased than in accomplishing the mission, and the argument against government spending has more weight. But when it comes to pure research, government still has an edge over private ventures.
I have no problem with .gov spending my money to send "hunks of metal into space." At least, I have a lot less problem with that than I do with them spending my money on a lot of other things.
Posted by: Kevin Baker at December 24, 2003 9:40 AMI like Brian's take for funding space-related things. And I'll further it - what about product placement - ads on the Shuttles.
hln
Posted by: hln at December 24, 2003 3:22 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
