Mars: Rocks and Dirt. Nothing more to see here.

[bigtree]

How can the supporters of this Mars mission justify the cost in the face of so many unmet needs here on Earth? If you support this mission, what would you say to someone who rightfully expects help with health care costs and access, help rebuilding their crumbling school and missing textbooks, help with affordable housing, or the many other unmet needs which many expect the government to address and alleviate and hasn't.

Instead the supporters are asking these Americans to put aside their needs here on Earth for montonous images of rocks and dirt. My outrage for this misplacement of priorities knows no end. Supporters of this space mis-adventure seemingly know no end to their ambitions to collect pictures of dirt and rocks.

To what end? If they manage to find biological evidence of life, why would we risk bringing it back to Earth? The only life form which survived a dying planet could pose an incredible risk to life here. What possible advantage to the average human can be obtained by our Mars adventure?

Will we mine the planet and rob it of its resources like we are robbing the Earth?

Will we employ corrosive technology there like nuclear reactors, which we shun here?

Where will the nuclear material that would support the propulsion system required for such a mission be produced? (your neighborhood?)
What will be the effects of such production? Will these new nuclear plants also usher in the next-generation of nuclear weaponry as this administration has repeatedly asserted?

Will this mission pave the way for the new generation of militarization of space as this administration has outlined in policy documents and pronouncements? By what right? By what mandate?

If we give them licence to fiddle in space, how do we turn them off?
How do we turn them off?

[aquart]

1. Rocks! Dirt! We're seeing the surface of MARS!

We aren't guessing. We're looking. WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will never begrudge a dime of a normal sensible space program. But we all know that Bush isn't planning that. This is NOT the time for manned exploration or for that to be the goal. We have too much to discover first.

As to militarizing space, ye gods, only George would be planning that now.

[mopinko]

2. agree

i approve of mankind exploring whatever can be explored. i don't approve of these maniacs exploring anything but prison life.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bigtree]

11. About Luddites

The idea of a technosocial "revolution," in which the same people came out on top as in France and America, has proven of use to many over the years, not least to those who, like C. P. Snow, have thought that in "Luddite" they have discovered a way to call those with whom they disagree both politically reactionary and anti-capitalist at the same time.

But the Oxford English Dictionary has an interesting tale to tell. In 1779, in a village somewhere in Leicestershire, one Ned Lud broke into a house and "in a fit of insane rage" destroyed two machines used for knitting hosiery. Word got around. Soon, whenever a stocking-frame was found sabotaged -- this had been going on, sez the Encyclopedia Britannica, since about 1710 -- folks would respond with the catch phrase "Lud must have been here." By the time his name was taken up by the frame-breakers of 1812, historical Ned Lud was well absorbed into the more or less sarcastic nickname "King (or Captain) Ludd," and was now all mystery, resonance and dark fun: a more-than-human presence, out in the night, roaming the hosiery districts of England, possessed by a single comic shtick -- every time he spots a stocking-frame he goes crazy and proceeds to trash it.

But it's important to remember that the target even of the original assault of l779, like many machines of the Industrial Revolution, was not a new piece of technology. The stocking-frame had been around since 1589, when, according to the folklore, it was invented by the Rev. William Lee, out of pure meanness. Seems that Lee was in love with a young woman who was more interested in her knitting than in him. He'd show up at her place. "Sorry, Rev, got some knitting." "What, again?" After a while, unable to deal with this kind of rejection, Lee, not, like Ned Lud, in any fit of insane rage, but let's imagine logically and coolly, vowed to invent a machine that would make the hand-knitting of hosiery obsolete, and so he did. According to the encyclopedia, the jilted cleric's frame "was so perfect in its conception that it continued to be the only mechanical means of knitting for hundreds of years."

Now, given that kind of time span, it's just not easy to think of Ned Lud as a technophobic crazy. No doubt what people admired and mythologized him for was the vigor and single-mindedness of his assault. But the words "fit of insane rage" are third-hand and at least 68 years after the event. And Ned Lud's anger was not directed at the machines, not exactly. I like to think of it more as the controlled, martial-arts type anger of the dedicated Badass.

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html

[Foehammer]

4. I think you should stop watching Science Fiction Movies and TV shows

Yours views are like my 98 year old great grandma, she is still mad about the airplane.

[bigtree]

7. I'm 43

Your response is like my 11 yr. old nephew. He's watching Star Trek.
Cost nothing to watch Star Trek. He's utterly facinated.

Switch to NASA TV. Rocks and dirt. Boondogle. Outrage.

[Foehammer]

10. FYI Star Trek is from the 60's when you where 11 hehe

you cant even get your fake Science right lady

[Deja Q]

17. Bzzt, WRONG-O! The cost is very high indeed.

Star Trek on TV? You bought the TV, antannae, windex to clean the screen, et cetera.

Star Trek on a cable channel? You're paying for cable. At least $50/month I'd guess.

Star Trek being interrupted by commercials? Every product you buy means you're paying for every TV show that product has been peddled on.

Or Star Trek on DVD? You bought the DVD (for a very high price as well!!) You also bought the DVD player and any necessary cables to be hooked up to the TV (that you also paid for). And the car in order to go to the superstore (best buy/walmart/they're all the same; mom'n'pop cold blooded murders) and the gas to fill up the car with.

Sounds like, in many potential ways, you spent a lot of money just so your nephew canm watch Star Trek. (good show though!)

The public also owns the TV shows made. People are simply led to believe otherwise.

Our society is socialism; we all pay into it. Problem is, we don't get much of the necessities in return.

[bigtree]

33. Clever

But well off of the issue of this multi billion dollar boondogle paid for with our precious, garnished contributions from our sacrifice and labor.

What is the return? Pictures of rocks and dirt?

[Serenades]

9. what????

Can you deny that there are other priorities in America right now than finding space rocks? People are dying of starvation, they are receiving no health care, schools are falling apart, our streets are falling apart, the economy sucks, we have no jobs, and they want to send somebody to the moon and mars?

[Muddleoftheroad]

13. The Future

The planets and then the stars are the future of mankind. It is our obligation to the future to go into space.

[bigtree]

25. This planet and our obligation to it is the future of mankind.

The planets and the stars are better off without our meddling.

And meddling on the moon may adversely affect our life here on Earth, through the efforts of this administration to militarize space through the introduction of space-based platforms and space-based lasers powered by nuclear reactors.

[Muddleoftheroad]

34. Man is going to the stars

Because man always goes to the next place and sees what lies over the horizon.

How do you know the planets are stars are better off without us?

[bigtree]

38. Evidence of our destructive tendancies and behavior here on Earth

makes it hard to imagine that we will improve the solar system.

[Muddleoftheroad]

40. Well, I think Mars isn't exactly perfect as it is

Personally, I'd like to see a bit of terraforming.

[bigtree]

54. Good man.

Some clarity.

ter'ra, n. L. (the) earth.

[ClintonTyree]

46. I agree............

it isn't as if we've been good stewards of our own planet. Yeah, lets go screw up the rest of the solar system. When we've conquered the frontiers of hunger, disease and ignorance on our own planet then perhaps we'll have earned the right to reach out to other planets.

[trogdor]

5. If the place is already dead, who cares about the Martian environment?

The most important question is, "what is on Mars that we want?"

You can bet if there were significant amounts of gold, uranium, or whatever, somebody would be busting his ass figuring a way to get it.

[BeFree]

6. But those were exciting pictures!!

NOT.
But they are the most expensive, so far.

[tridim]

8. It must be relative

because I find the first two pan images very exciting. I can't wait to see macro and microscopic images of the soil. The possibility of finding actual life on Mars makes this whole endeavor worth it IMO.

[bigtree]

16. life on Mars

Biological evidence of life.

We don't value life to the degree that we should here on Earth. Its hard to imagine humans deriving any lasting benefit from any discovery of evidence of life on Mars.

[BeFree]

19. 8oo million would go along way toward sustaining the life on earth

We don't even fully understand the life on this planet and we constantly kill it. If we find life on Mars, who's to say we won't kill it too?

[Foehammer]

22. Hello!

Mars is a dead Planet..its the Fossils.... former life they are looking for ...like looking for Dinosaurs here. Is that a waste too?

[BeFree]

27. Oh Boy!! Fossils!!

Gee, we know there is LIFE here, but do we know much about it? Very little, I'd say.

Instead of housing the homeless...BORING... instead of exploring the ocean, instead of feeding the children, we spend 8oo million on a robot that goes someplace else. It's not just 8oo million either... Billions have been spent looking at Martian rocks.

Meanwhile, the same folks spending the billions on Mars stuff say: "We can't AFFORD" to clean up our deadly pollution on earth.

Yeah, wasted time and money, I'd say.

[bigtree]

31. yes

Looking for Mars fossils is a waste of taxpayer money. But that is not all that is in play here. The Mars inituative is a foot in the door for future missions which intend to prove the new (unproven) nuclear propulsion technology that manned or colonizing missions would require. That same nuclear reactor technology will be used in the space-based lasers which are envisioned to rest on permanent platforms, on the moon and elsewhere.

The SP-100 nuclear reactor system is to be launched ‘radioactively cold.' When the mission is done, the reactor is intended to be stored in space for hundreds of years.

The reactor would would utilize new blends of "recycled" uranium fuel.

To develop and demonstrate these new nuclear power and propulsion technologies, President Bush's budget proposes $279 million;($3 billion over five years) for Project Prometheus, which builds on the Nuclear Systems Initiative started last year.

Project Prometheus includes the development of the first nuclear-electric space mission, called the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. This mission will conduct extensive, in-depth studies of the moons of Jupiter that may harbor subsurface oceans. Only advanced nuclear reactors could provide the hundreds of kilowatts of power the craft would need.

Included in NASA plans for the nuclear rocket to Mars; a new generation of Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) for interplanetary missions; nuclear-powered robotic Mars rovers to be launched in 2003 and 2009. NASA touts future mining colonies on the Moon, Mars, and asteroids that would be powered by nuclear reactors.

Foot in the door. Licence to fiddle. How do we turn them off?

[Foehammer]

32. sooo..

so your afraid of Nuclear Reactors and the danger of Radiation on Mars?

[bigtree]

35. Not afraid

Unwilling to shackle future generations to this administration's military industrial cabal's agenda of new-generation nuclear, blended reconstituted fuels, new-generation nuclear weaponry such as bunker-buster bombs and tactical mini-nukes, and the next-generation of nuclear plants that this cabal envisions to produce these new-generation nuclear, blended, reconstituted fuels.

I'm unwilling to shackle the next generation with a new legacy of nuclear meddling. We are, by the way, still cleaning up from our '50's misadventure into nuclear madness at some of the same facilities that they intend for the next generation of meddling.

How do we turn them off?

[Foehammer]

39. you got some Imagination

how you go from this....

military industrial cabal's agenda of new-generation nuclear, blended reconstituted fuels, new-generation nuclear weaponry such as bunker-buster bombs and tactical mini-nukes, and the next-generation of nuclear plants that this cabal envisions to produce these new-generation nuclear, blended, reconstituted fuels.

...from a golfcart sized rover on Mars looking at rocks is behind me.

I think I'll turn you off now..bye bye.

[bigtree]

55. for those who haven't turned me off

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/

http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/prometheus.htm

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bigtree]

21. Tower of Babel

In the Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in what is now modern Iraq, is a mound, or tell, of broken mud-brick buildings and debris. This is all that remains of the ancient famed city of Babylon.

A tower was built there which many thought would enable them to get closer to God. It may have, but not as they had envisioned. Babylon crumbled.

Are these space missions our attempt to place ourselves closer to God? If so, then this enterprise will also crumble.

[LifeDuringWartime]

49. i dont think nasa's scientists are that crazy

they're scientists, not religious freaks

[Cat Atomic]

30. We are. Watch the news much?

[Cleita]

14. Looks like the view from my bedroom window

when I lived in the Atacama desert of Chile while my father was working in a copper mine there. Extreme desert areas of this world should be a warning to us that we too can turn this planet into Mars if we don't start changing our ways and help mother earth to heal the damages we have done to her.

[rock]

15. Well, the simple answer is

that science does not proceed on a bottom-line MBA mentality. Now, it's true that it's funding does, but then that's political and not very rational to begin with.

On edit: on further thinking, 800 million for the Mars flight compares rather well for bushsucks* spending of 500 billion. What's he got to show for it?

[Peregrine]

18. Go talk to the defense department

How can the supporters of this Mars mission justify the cost in the face of so many unmet needs here on Earth? If you support this mission, what would you say to someone who rightfully expects help with health care costs and access, help rebuilding their crumbling school and missing textbooks, help with affordable housing, or the many other unmet needs which many expect the government to address and alleviate and hasn't.

Go talk to the defense department.

So with your argument all science that isn't meeting the "unmet needs here on Earth" should be stopped.

[Foehammer]

20. yep your right

85 Billion for supporting Iraq...Missing Trillion dollars from the Defense Budget.
NASA has 14 billion budget wow!! from 6 billion in the 60's wow!!
Wake up... their are men on this Planet that can buy that amount 3 times over...and this is your big worry.

[Cocoa]

23. it's more than that

but it's also much less than the hype. Those scientists on TV are also salespeople, and this mission I think was ordered by Dick Cheney if I heard right, after the shuttle disaster last year.

[Corgigal]

24. Was Mars Earth at one time

and will Earth be Mars? Only a matter of time before a meteor takes us out again and mankind will be poofed forever. We have to travel into space, or we will be extinct.

[bigtree]

26. How many of us will fit in your spaceship?

Who will be chosen to go?

Will you include the starving children? Should we feed them first?

Will you include all of the oppressed along with all of their oppressors?

Who will be allowed to leave the planet after we have destroyed it with our indifference and neglect?

[Foehammer]

28. no just you bigtree (nt)

[bigtree]

36. I wouldn't go.

if it meant one person would be left behind

[Corgigal]

29. We have to be able to get there first

before we answer any questions like that. We can afford lots of programs if we stop the Iraq oil/land grab that eats the most funds.

[soothsayer]

37. I think we also want to know....

...what happened to Mars' water and atmosphere? Since we have water and an atmosphere we're fond of, too.

[bigtree]

41. We know how to preserve those things here on Earth

But we refuse to commit ourselves. Instead, we are presumably looking to rape space as we needlessly exhaust our resources here.

[Terwilliger]

42. Samples and readings confirm long-held scientific theories...

about solar system formation.

I know that now isn't necessarily the time to do these missions, but, long-term, I value the expenditure of the government in space exploration. It's one of the laudable services of government.

END THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!

[bigtree]

44. billions of dollars to confirm theories about our existence

Still not a convincing argument in the face of so many other meritorious priorities here on Earth that are unmet and mostly disregarded and ignored at appropriation time.

Isn't the argument about priorities in the appropriation of our tax dollars? How do we justify neglecting urgent needs here on Earth and throwing money around to confirm the theories of solar system formation? (As if that was this administration's true aim in space.)

[Terwilliger]

51. Oh, I have no doubt that these claims by Bush are full of ca-ca

but we could re-order the priorities in our country and STILL go to the moon and other places

Cut down the military, cut out the war on drugs, re-prioritize subsidies and grants, re-prioritize on every issue...we could eliminate so much waste, a space program would be easy to pay for.

[bigtree]

56. I like your priorities

Finish them, then do the Buck Rogers.

[Bozola]

43. Fiddle-dee-dee

How can the supporters of this Mars mission justify the cost in the face of so many unmet needs here on Earth? If you support this mission, what would you say to someone who rightfully expects help with health care costs and access, help rebuilding their crumbling school and missing textbooks, help with affordable housing, or the many other unmet needs which many expect the government to address and alleviate and hasn't.

When has the development of new and radical technologies that must be employed to build a probe ever come back and benefited the populus?

The answer is everytime. The innovations having to build something smaller and smarter has paid off a thousand-fold, especially in the medical world. Every innovation the JPL comes up for their detectors with will be adapted to the medical instrumentation industry: better Mass Specs, HPLCs, Raman detectors, etc... $800 million is a hell of a good investment if you are consider just detector technologies alone. I'm not even touching AI, NavCom, Material Science, Launching technologies. What has GPS ever done for us? What about ceramet technologies?




Instead the supporters are asking these Americans to put aside their needs here on Earth for montonous images of rocks and dirt. My outrage for this misplacement of priorities knows no end. Supporters of this space mis-adventure seemingly know no end to their ambitions to collect pictures of dirt and rocks.

It's truely sad that you see just "dirt and rocks". Dirt is a hideously complex mix of inorganic and organic material. Is there "dirt" on Mars? If there is then what's the organics and how did they get there? What about that clay like material seen in the disturbed area; why does it crumble like that? It's well below freezing and the atmospheric pressure is somewhere arounf 0.6 Torr. It can't be water that's doing that...or can it?

What about those rocks? What are they? Basalts? Carbonites? Fossiliferous sedimentaries? A mere "rock", as any geologist will tell you, is not just some lump of material, it is a story waiting to be read.

What about that dust? How fine is it? Is it sharp grained or soft? What's it made of?

Just "rocks and dust", huh?



To what end? If they manage to find biological evidence of life, why would we risk bringing it back to Earth? The only life form which survived a dying planet could pose an incredible risk to life here. What possible advantage to the average human can be obtained by our Mars adventure?

If they find biological life (or fossils there of) what is based on? The "Panspermia" idea has been growing more and more likely, that the Earth has been seeded from organisms drifting down from space. Finding "Earth-Type" DNA/RNA levo-amino acid based lifeforms would cinch this hypothesis. As for the fear of contamination, you're forgetting that fragments of Mars have been raining down on the Earth for billions of years. If there are tough Martian organisms, I suspect that they're already here. It'll be interesting to see which ones they are. I personally suspect the Archaeons. What's it worth for the "average human" to know this? To the "average US citizen" it means more TV entertainment and consumer goods; a rousing boost to the patheticly sagging entertainment industry, good by itself for a minor economic recovery. But to the rest of us, abstract knowledge has its own rewards.


Will we mine the planet and rob it of its resources like we are robbing the Earth?

It's far better to "rob" resources from off Earth bodies than to stripmine the only known oasis in the universe. Actually, you DO NOT want to mine a planet, you want to mine an asteroid in microgravity. The skies are full of gold, but we scrabble over pennies on Earth.



Will we employ corrosive technology there like nuclear reactors, which we shun here?

Are you saying that a "well engineered" (this is hypothetical; due to corporate and political reasons one has yet to be built) nuclear power plant is "more corrosive" than a coal-fired one? Technically speaking, a nuclear power plant doesn't emit anything "corrosive", but a coal plant does: SOx, NOx, and COx. Radioactive waste is not corrosive (on edit: there are some waste recovery methods that are produced a radioactive corrosive mix, especially from the 1950s, but relatively speaking they're not)

Here's a trick question: pick the average Nuclear power plant and the average Coal power plant. Which emits more radioactivity? Which is the greater threat to the Earth's environment?

Nuclear energy ain't evil; it's just been f*cked up technically and politically.


Where will the nuclear material that would support the propulsion system required for such a mission be produced? (your neighborhood?)
What will be the effects of such production? Will these new nuclear plants also usher in the next-generation of nuclear weaponry as this administration has repeatedly asserted?


Where will it come from? Why that's easy, elegant, and simple. From the dismantling of nuclear stockpiles. There no need to go produce any new material.

If there's any nuclear weapons in my neighborhood (there are many, thank you, USN) I'd be more than happy to see them go.

Will propulsion technology usher in "next-generation" weapons? Well considering that the "next-generation" weapons are already here, and since the target of these weapons are on the Earth, they don't need any special propulsion technologies, orbiting their target works just fine (ever wonder what was really in some of those military satillites?).


Will this mission pave the way for the new generation of militarization of space as this administration has outlined in policy documents and pronouncements? By what right? By what mandate?

Bush has already done this by smashing nuclear space treaties. He hasn't given a reason, right, or had a mandate.


If we give them licence to fiddle in space, how do we turn them off?
How do we turn them off?

We as a species have to get into space or perish.

[bigtree]

47. Response

The future trips that are envisioned by this administration to Mars, the Moon, Jupiter, are intended to promote and legitimize the industry's new nuclear propulsion technology required to support such missions. New medical advances are not part of the Mars and Jupiter agendas. New nuclear reactor technology which intends to utilize a new generation of blended, reconstituted fuels, which will lead to space-based lasers on permenant space platforms are on this military industrial cabal's agenda.

The Idaho Engineering and Environmental Laboratories is lead facility for nuclear R&D. This has been the nation's primary lab for all of the nuclear madness since 1952. INEEL's primary function since the mid 70's was the clean-up of their own toxic waste. This clean-up is still going on.

To tout past discoveries or claim that technologies produced here on Earth for use in space have advanced medicine and the like may have merit but nothing prevents us from making these advances outside of a trip to Mars or Jupiter.

Mars and Jupiter are dead planets that contain exotic rocks and dirt.
The only benefit, and the benefit touted by this administration's military industrial cabal is the proving of new technologies for use in their scheme to militarize space. The pictures and breathless analysis of exotic rocks and dirt is designed to keep the rest of us non-science types pacified and distracted.

And what of the industry that builds the rockets and all of the technology that supports it? What is their priority? They are the heart and soul of the Pentagon's space program. I am certain that they would insist that the seemingly benign applications in space would not survive without the influx of defense dollars. I believe that this is NASA's dirty 'secret'.


Read this:

The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space maintains that just like missile defense is a Trojan horse for the Pentagon's real agenda for control and domination of space, NASA's nuclear rocket is a Trojan horse for the militarization of space.

NASA's new chief, former Navy Secretary Sean O'Keefe said soon after Bush appointed him to head the space agency that, "I don't think we have a choice, I think it's imperative that we have a more direct association between the Defense Department and NASA. Technology has taken us to a point where you really can't differentiate between that which is purely military in application and those capabilities which are civil and commercial in nature."

In the end hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars will be wasted on plans for the nuclearization and weaponization of space. In order to fund these missions Bush and Congress will have to cut programs like social security, education, health care, child care, public transit and environmental protection. In the name of progress and security the lives of future generations will become more insecure.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclearspace-03b.html

[Bozola]

53. Ooooh! Hijacking your own thread.

"How can the supporters of this Mars mission justify the cost in the face of so many unmet needs here on Earth? If you support this mission, what would you say to someone who rightfully expects help with health care costs and access, help rebuilding their crumbling school and missing textbooks, help with affordable housing, or the many other unmet needs which many expect the government to address and alleviate and hasn't. "

and now we've jumped to

"The future trips that are envisioned by this administration to Mars, the Moon, Jupiter"


I'm calling bullshit on this. If you haven't noticed, ANYTHING touched by these creeps is perverted. NO F*CKING SH*T, Sherlock. No F*cking sh*t that they've got all kinds of pie in the bunghole whack brained ideas they want to employ! No f*cking sh*t!

Are you saying that the Spirit mission is no more than bait put out by Bush to tempt people into supporting Nuclear Klingon battlecruisers?

Bullsh*t. Spirit, and the science teams behind it, prevailed not because of the current administration, but in spite of it.


The current administration's recent claims are two-fold; they're looking for another distraction, and they're looking for another, new, way to mine the US Treasury. One thing they big corporations learned about the Space Shuttle, and best yet, the Space Station, is that gold-plated PR events make great cash-cows. These people don't like these little science missions. The successes of the Spirit make people ask questions like "why are we spending so much on the shuttle and not on more probes?". Why the hell do you think the science budgets keep getting shashed?




"Mars and Jupiter are dead planets that contain exotic rocks and dirt."

And, sure, the world is flat and the sun is rolled across the sky by a giant dung beetle. Here's to progress!

[bigtree]

57. I agree that the space program has been hijacked by the military

So does Sean O'Keefe:

[Selwynn]

45. I'm slow to come out vehemently against exploration and discovery

Because I believe that our curiosity, creativity and pioneering spirit are the absolute best qualities of human beings. We need to go to Mars because its next. :) Because all through the history of mankind we've pushed forward, made greater discoveries and learned more about our surroundings and then put it to use, for sometimes better, sometimes worse results.

At the same time, I'm not sure that the country can afford a Mars program right now. I want to be excited about exploration and scientific frontiers. But I think its just not realistically feasible right now in the fact of such immense need around the planet here. How can we justify spending billions of dollars on space instead of billions of dollars on fighting poverty, fixing our utterly broken education system, and providing health care to everyone who needs it.

I propose a compromise, something that was on a poll here recently. I believe unmanned space flights to mars should continue, and we should continue to learn from them. And I believe that the next scientific frontier shouldn't be seen as space, but it should be seen as medicine! The great adventure of the twentieth century should be to cure cancer by the end of this decade, to develop a vaccination to prevent HIV, to make medical breakthroughs that will save millions of lives. Now that would be a science and technology race I could really get excited about. I do not believe the country can currently sustain an national mars space program costing billions of dollars in the fact of such abject need and utter inequities here on the earth.

[bigtree]

50. I support unmanned flights.

With our necessary system of satellites, there may also be a need for manned flights for the purposes of maintaining those satellites.

But this is a debate in a vacumn. This is not what has been proposed by NASA or this administration. They have a full agenda which has, as its ultimate goal, the militarization of space. This is a ball that was started rolling with Rumsfeld's Space Commission http://fas.org/spp/military/commission/report.htm , and furthered by the introduction of an unprecedented number or military industrial warriors into the highest offices of our government and military, with ultimate influence on appropriations and policy.

[Bill McBlueState]

48. it's not the zero-sum game you're making it out to be

Do you really think that, if this Mars mission had been scrapped, the extra money would have gone to fix poverty or homelessness?

The problem we have isn't that there's no money for fighting poverty, it's that a significant chunk of the population, and an even greater proportion of those in power, have no interest in helping the poor. If we really wanted to raise the standard of living in the US, we could start with a fair tax system, and continue by cutting back on defense spending. But the people who make these decisions don't mind if some people don't have jobs or enough to eat.

I think a well-funded space program is a sign of a healthy civilization. Consider science to be part of our culture -- just like a strong country has funding available for artists and pays its teachers well, a strong country also spends money on science, whether or not it produces immediate practical results. This bottom-line "is it practical?" approach belongs in the corporate boardroom, not the political party that is known for dreaming big.

I share your concerns about the militarization of space. But when humanity tries to discover what's beyond Earth, we're dealing with issues that transcend any particular administration. Sure, specific programs like Reagan's Star Wars thing are a bad idea, but you're chopping off the arm to fix a paper cut if you stop all space exploration for this reason.

Check out the Union of Concerned Scientists webpage for what progressive scientists are thinking about the militarization of space:

http://www.ucsusa.org/

[bigtree]

59. I don't want to stop it all

Just this cabal's ambitions in space, and those of the aerospace weapon hawkers, as well.

[William Seger]

52. The money doesn't disappear down a black hole

I understand what you're getting at about other uses for the money, and given an "either/or" choice, I suppose I'd agree with you that the money could be better spent. But my preference would be finding the money to help people in need, and still spending a small percentage of our budget for space exploration. Why can't we have both?

"Tax and spend" is not a bad thing. The space program provides good jobs, and all those employees are also consumers, so most of the money goes right back into the economy, which helps to create more jobs. The aerospace companies and their employees pay taxes, as do the companies that sell to all those consumers, so some of the money is really returned for other government programs.

History shows that even the rich benefit from "tax and spend" (because it grows the economy), although they are generally too short-sighted to realize it. What Bush* will attempt to do is to roll back progressive taxation, which will limit the government's ability to do much of anything. The solution is to send him back to Crawford to clear brush (an occupation far better suited to his talents, anyway).

[bigtree]

58. I agree that Bush's military industrial cabal is the real threat

to developing a rational, sustainable space program that won't result in the further militarization of space and the neglect of our responsibilities here on Earth.