To reduce spending on scientific enquiry is to cut off your nose in spite of your face. If you want to make the world a better place, then we need MORE spending in the areas that will contribute, not less.

Also, the money to cure poverty has already been spent, many times over - it ends up lining the pockets of currupt individuals who need to keep populations hungry to keep them malleable. Throwing good money after bad is not the solution, a fundemental change in political attitudes in many third world countries is what is needed.

If you add together the total cost of sending every rocket, satellite, rover and man into space and beyond since the inception of the space program it equals roughly the amount of money the Pentagon spends in 8 weeks.

I think you've got your priorities as to where money should be diverted from completely backwards.

Originally posted by Kryties
If you add together the total cost of sending every rocket, satellite, rover and man into space and beyond since the inception of the space program it equals roughly the amount of money the Pentagon spends in 8 weeks.

I think you've got your priorities as to where money should be diverted from completely backwards.

Excellent post sir. I'm worried by how many people share OP's viewpoint, It boggles the mind how NASA's allocated funds can be criticized. The US defense budget was $1.19 TRILLION in 2011!!

Well, I'll sure agree with you on this thread. When questions arise on costs of these projects, the question should be asked "what real benefit do these explorations have for mankind." NASA will chuckle and say " but look at all the benefits of our research"--------seems like computer design and engineering happened in the private sector not NASA. The rest of their research has led to developement of things that tax the environment. We can learn from some of these expensive projects but not Mars or the Moon. Monitor our atmosphere and learn how the sun reacts with earth. Learn to push away an asteroid. Show some return for your cost instead of filling our heads with nonsense about mars while you empty our pocketbooks. Everything comes down to the consumer and the taxpayer, all donations to NASA are in leau of taxes to our government so that means all of NASA's budget is taxpayer money.

Historically, the space race has created lots and lots of good paying jobs.

The only risk involved is the people that actually get shot up into space.

There will always be poor people, hungry people and people that just have less. If you took the money that was spent of space research and instead gave it to the poor, the poor would be happy for about a month and they they would be poor once more.

I think that money spent on poverty is mostly wasted while money spent on research has the potential to benefit the entire human race.

Originally posted by Required01
Ye i , ofcourse possebility

rediculous sadning kan

desasters vulcano's

ofcourse

You forgot to mention the lack of worldwide schooling, in your opening post. Selfish!

Originally posted by Trueman
I never believed they send robots to mars to search life or blah, blah, blah. They know they'll make a profit in more than one way.

Also, they need where to bug out when they're done screwing this planet.

You are right, we need that money here, but they control it.

We do not need any money at all. What we need is a complete system change and getting people to take responsability for themselves and their egos and stop parasiting on each other. The egoparasitic power pyramid will always fail. Capitalism in the world now, Soviet Communism, feudal kings, represantiv democracy. All part of the power pyramid and all faulty.

Originally posted by Required01

Originally posted by mainidh
If all people thought the way you do, we'd still be banging rocks together and going urgh urgh to indicate danger.

Stay in the past if you want. We'll carry on exploring.

This has nothing to do with banging rocks, it has to do with being selfish and not helping people who live in poor conditions.

I think the U.S. should rather spend that 2 billion on there own people, improving healthcare, providing jobs, etc instead of 1 robot that could very well have crashed during landing and been lost!

Like i said before, i love technology and i don't want to stop research on it, but let the private sector invent and fund. Let the government spend those absurd amounts of money in there own country before waisting it on a robot.

Why?
Then you'djust complain Cocoa-Cola Aerospace came back from mars with a martian artifact or creature in a bottle and patented its dna. " You didn't go to Mars by yourself! We built the bypasses and interstatesyour engineers used to get to work!"

Originally posted by Required01
Believe it or not, but that robot is paid with your tax money. I would rather see my tax money go to improving the community and my friends having jobs, health insurance. And not just for people with money, but for common folk as well.

Me: I'm perfectly fine seeing my tax dollars expanding all of mankinds knowledge. You can assume all you want you don't KNOW something until it has been verified.

Originally posted by Required01

Ofcourse you are intitled to your own opinion, if you believe that helping your own people comes second to things as space exploration that's your call.

If there is anything we should be spending tax dollars on it is space exploration.
You want to support the human condition?
The only way to do so is through massive decentralization and massive cuts to the dependence inducing welfare state. People are not as pathetic and useless as liberals like to believe.
You want "progress"?
Mars is it.
Government help for he poor is the quickest and surest way to enslave and debase them.

Yes and No.
look at all the silly things people buy.
TVs, digetal watches, moblie phones, computer.
would have all this tecnoligies have come so for
if a great deal of people wonted them.

But yes it is now wasting resorses.

and why has it all hapend in the last 200 years?

the robot only costs $2 billion because it is not their money to pay for it.

it is why every bolt on the robot probably ends up getting billed for a $1000 a piece.

I think we should remove the tax exempt status of all religions in the United States. If we taxed the greedy churches, mosques, synagogs and temples we could feed the worlds poor.