Well, seeing as the topic of the "moon bombing" (as it was so horribly described by the popular media) stirred up some dust I thought to go make a new topic devoted solely to the debate of scientific research and NASA.

Do you think that organizations, the government, and NASA should continue to spend ridiculous sums of money on researching and on sending out missions? Do you see the point in all of it? Or do you think that we should just save the money for some better purpose, like paying off national debt (somewhere around 12 trillion dollars).


Sorry if this topic seems to tailor towards Americans... but I'm kinda new the the idea of international communities, and this topic is actually native to the US and doesn't affect the rest of the world as much.


Aslancsc

It's needed in the long run (for the human race to survive)

The hell it is, there's no such thing as redundant research.

I'm sort of neutral on this one. With the global economy in bad shape NASA shouldn't be spending millions of dollars on research and moon/mars missions. But, with 25 gallons of water being found when that space craft crashed on the moon, I think it would be worth it.

This is why funding space agencies is important.

I don't really know if space missions are really necessary. Well, now that we have a space station in orbit, we can't rightly just leave it there and let who knows what happen, such as it degrading and dropping out or orbit into us (I might be exaggerating a little here, but you get my point). Other research, such as medical, is needed also. Even historical research is needed too. The whole idea of history is that we learn from our past mistakes and don't have them again.

You need to start somewhere, and eventually the ridiculous amounts of money wasted, will turn into ridiculous amounts of money creating new habitations on other planets and vast growth in technology.

why wouldnt you want space missions lol?, arnt you curious as to what could be out their, are galaxy is only 1 of billions...

Perhaps because space missions cost billions of dollars. His question is basically if the knowledge we may or may not acquire (A ten billion dollar satellite may just find nothing out, after all) is worth the large price tag, especially in times of economic trouble like today.

I believe that space missions are vitally important, eventually humans will develop colonies on other moons, planets, asteroids and space statiosn whch will ensure the longevity of our human race.

But ultimately in the long term, It shouldnt be up to government agencies, it should be privatized. Space will create vast sums of jobs for people, and it will create previously unheard of vast sums of personal wealth and corporate wealth and it will enrich governments even more.

So the benefits of space outweight the costs, eventually space will pay for itself, and then some.

well i would much rather them waist money on something that "could" unlock great things rather than on things such as war or bailouts.., i thought that was common sense tho

ok, I see most people agree with me on this then, science is good and gaining knowledge and progressing should be our goals. I made the topic for some individuals who felt the opposite about this subject, but they haven't shown up yet...

humans can die out. all they do is make waste from their actions and boddily functions. humans ftl...

and the thing on their "moon bombing" is just a coverup for what really happened. There was no bombing of the moon. we would have seen a plume of dust. an impact like that doesn't just go plop and leave barely anything. it would be a big boom and dust. so i think that ship was ment for something else besides looking for water. I don't know what. but it has something to do with aliens. Conspricly theories ftw!!!

perhaps, didnt they even confirm water on the moon a couple weaks before they did the rocket stuff, but went with it anyway.. seems strange to me

I think NASA is one of the few government programs that has actually done some good on this planet, but I believe in the next 100 years it should become privatized. The amount of money spent on NASA is nothing compared to the amount of money spent on, lets see....stimulus plans, health care, and social security, so I don't think money should be considered an issue unless you want to open another can of worms, and I'm sure you don't.

Because a physics expert like you who can't even spell bodily, cover-up, Conspiracy, and meant, knows so much about the way the world works that you can just dismiss what happened on the moon because "TEH DUST CLAUDS R TEH TOO SMALLZ RAWFULZ, IT MUST BE TEH ALINESSZZZZZ RAAAWWFFULLL"


And yeah. Humans should all die out. While we are at it, let's kill all of the animals and stuff below us on the food chain because at least us humans also produce technology. Those damned bears, beavers, wolves, polar bears, fish, etc. do nothing but shit, eat, sleep, waste resources, kill each other for food, and have sex all day. So much waste.....*shakes head*

no offence, but why are you going around correcting other peoples spelling errors...? you must have something better to do with your time lol... for all you know english might not even be his first language.

do you really think that?



you are correct that they had already confirmed water on the moon, BUT, that water was only in extremely trace amounts on some random place on the surface, the bombing uncovered a whole bathtub worth of water that was somewhat underground. They both proved the same thing in two different places.


lol at spaz attack.

But bladepaul seriously chill, some people have different opinions on things, and as TheAnnunakii said, English might not be his first language.

Spam (note to others, I'm not an expert, but I believe this just to really be common sense, if I'm wrong, please correct me), if you haven't noticed, the moon is pretty far away (238,857 miles). So, a twenty five foot tall plume on dark side (hope I got that right) of the moon would not be very noticeable. It wasn't a bomb, either, if I recall correctly. Just a dud sent in to make a small enough crater to see if there was water there. So, no we wouldn't of noticed it.

If the plume was on the dark side of the moon, no viewer positioned on Earth would be able to see it. The plume was in fact very large (~7Km after 15s), but not dense enough to be viewed by instruments on Earth. Explosives weren't used.

If they built a space craft for crashing it into the moon and instead sent it somewhere else to find aliens then why would it be build like that? Also, with a big plume of only one mile, the moon is prettey big compared to that, and a few days' travel in a shuttle.

dont think he ment it like that,( this is just one theory) i think he means that insted of looking for water say they were looking for old underground ruins, and if they wernt their the rocket would have made a big explosing when it hit the moon, and if they were their it would have just hit the surface and went inside of one and the exposing would have been all inside it and not blasted up into the sky.

I think they should research for more efficient means or cheaper means of launching objects into space. I believe the billions of dollars are worth it but coming up with more efficient methods or something that would pay off in the end. Spend a billion to save several.

Just put the economy on welfare?

Hey, I would do better than Obama...

Space Elevator.

The current problem they are having with the space elevator is mass-producing the nanotubes that will be the 'rope' for the elevator to travel up. The current method of producing them means it would take millions of years to produces a line big enough to reach the moon.

good thing that the research into nano-tubes and all that stuff is on the forefront of technological advancement eh?

Where is the information on this design? I don't see if possible even if you could make a 'rope' for it.

If we can produce enough Barbies to circle the earth three and a half times (140,262.5KM), we can produce enough nanotubes to "rope" our way to the moon (384,403KM). I do not doubt the effectiveness of the earth's capability to produce the necessary materials, only the time and human capability.

Ummmm, do you realise that the moon has an orbit, and distance varies beetween earth and the moon. Any space rock that can travel several kilometers per second could snap through it in no time anyway. Paint flecks can dent the space station with it's velocity.

I can't make an opinion on the matter until I see numbers and facts though.

A elevator to the moon is impossible, because of the orbit and space rocks, But I always thought they were trying to get an elevator to a space station

Everyone stop! Who said this was a moon elevator!? This is a space elevator (going to the moon would be truly insane lol), all it will be used for is getting materials and other things into very low earth orbit (a few hundred miles max) and the materials, resources, and time are all here for us, just the money is whats missing

No comprendo, Yo hablo un poco ingles...Me gusta MSW!!!! Actually english is my first languige i just suck at spelling. I am smart at everything except for that lol... And i don't really believe what i said i just hate NASA and the militaries fake reasons for what happened at Rosswell and their explanations for the phionex lights and other large UFO sightings. So I flame them any chance i get. =-P NASA ftl!!!!!

Nerds
Always
Suck at making
Alien coverup stories

Well I agree that space exploration chews up billions that could be used to actually benefit society. The poor man on the street doesn't give a damn if there's water on Mars.

Hm, I must say, you have made one very basic and very erroneous assumption that has skewed apparently your whole entire life, and that is this: All normal activities and "abnormal" activities are really just cover stories that the military and other authorities have posted in order to keep the common man incompetent. I have two counter arguments: 1) The military and government obviously doesn't have to do anything at all to make the common man incompetent, so why would they bother with very complex cover-up schemes and try to lie to everyone (except for things that are like military training or weapons use secrets)? 2) Aliens do not actually exist. Although I know this probably makes you angry because someone a long time ago told you that they do exist. But in reality, they do not exist and fly around earth any more than Santa Claus comes into your house Christmas night and gives you presents (Sorry if you still believe that).

And final word, the "cover-up stories" suck because really it was just completely stupid things that random people mistook for alien sightings and so that's why the stories sound so stupid, because they are true.

Aslancsc

EDIT: Grammar

I don't think Nasa ever has anything to do with cover up stories, Thats all the military.

Like in Roswell first they all said they found aliens, then quickly covered up what THEY said. They said it was a freaking hot air balloon and threatened families who knew the truth with their lives if they ever spoke of it. Stupid military.

Cold war era coverups= CCCP satellites/ CCCP related.

UFO sightings/photographs = frisbee

some things I don't know though, like the "light serpents" (about 8 bright lights slithering) that were commonly seen. My mom saw one apparently. I do believe it alllll comes from earth though.

Well, anyways, off the topic of aliens.

What do you think is the need for privatized space exploration with maybe a little bit of international police type regulation (think UNSC from halo)


Orson Scott Card has written an amazing series of books (The Ender Series) which is set around 400 years in the future and it has a very advanced humanity that has no trouble interacting with space and actively begins to colonize their little corner of the galaxy (proceeding to encounter three individual intelligent alien races). But anyways, all of this advanced space stuff is ruled over by a organization called the International Fleet, which is a space-only organization run by non-nationally biased individuals, and the purpose of the IF is to regulate space and eventually is used to fight off alien invasions (cool I know) and colonize/rule the galaxy.

If it came down to it would you be willing to sacrifice nation's independence for a one-world order (assume that they are good, non-corrupt, and really have our best interests in mind) that would help the human race to survive, expand, and become impossible to destroy (not stuck on one planet fighting petty wars). Mind you, this is far future we are talking about.

I for one would be willing, but only if there were like 10 colony planets and they each had mostly independent governments.

Space elevator doesn't sound practical. According to wikipedia:

While I agree that they are a bit impractical, a cable long enough to reach the ISS is about 1% of Earth's circumference.

They wouldn't make a cable to the moon, it would be to a space station like the ISS or a new bigger one. Considering I live about a mile away from NASA, I would say if the government would throw NASA a bone instead of blowing it on "fixing the economy", we'd have a space elevator in about 5 years. Of course, spending trillions of dollars on the economy is more important than about 5 billion to secure mankind's existence, or that's what our brilliant government administration led by our brilliant president believes. If we would give NASA and Boeing and all the other aerospace corporations the money they needed, we'd be set in under 20 years. When I was in middle school, the plan was that we were going to be on the moon by 2020, and that was under Bush. A Democrat gets elected, and before he even cut the budget, they moved the date to 2030. That tells you something.

Indeed, as I have said before we are not trying to reaching the kriffing moon! (Pardon my Mando'A)

But MCharger, you are wrong. The best way to fix our economy is to stimulate it, and the best way to stimulate it is to give large companies money so that they can go spend it. If Obama gave NASA a spare trillion dollars, 1: All our scientists through the trickle effect would become millionares and everyone would want to jump into learning science, a sure plus. And 2: We would be done with the projects very fast, we would have all sorts of new technologies, and we would come out richer in the end.

That's my point. We give NASA money instead of failing banks. I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic honestly.

I hope he is being sarcastic because that is the worst way to get the economy going again.

No, there are worse ways. Raising taxes is probably the absolute worst way to stimulate the economy. The only reason stimulus packages don't work is that they only benefit the companies receiving them, and the other thousands of companies must suffer by paying higher taxes. Taxes are what hurt the economy the most, despite what CNN and MSNBC and the rest of the communists say, it's been proven throughout history that when taxes are low, and government involvement is low in the economy, the capitalist system makes people richer and life better. In the 1920's, the economy was going crazy high, and the government had almost no involvement, taxes were low. In 1928, under President Hoover, the government decided to begin regulating stocks (they believed they had gone too high, and they did to an extent), and the stock market crashed. To add injury to insult, the government promised to pay off national debt, which it did, by raising taxes another 10% at the outbreak of the Great Depression. FDR came in, promised change and hope and all that bull shit, established the roots of communism in America, but didn't do anything but build us the Hoover Dam and a couple of other public works, the economy still was crap. When WW2 started, men suddenly had jobs (go figure), and although people argue that either way, the government still pays up with taxes, they are wrong. Yeah, taxes went up, but companies such as Boeing, Ford, Chevy, and the entire steel industry suddenly had buyers in England who needed weapons fast, and the demand in America increased after 1941 as well, but why? Not because of the government's tax program and redistribution of wealth, no, don't listen to that crap. The government started a war bond system, basically, you invest in our military, we win (hopefully), and we will pay you back plus interest. When the Iraq war started, or the Afghanistan war started, did any of you buy war bonds from the Fed's? Hell no! So if we aren't going to do war bonds (we honestly don't need them, our military has plenty of funding, it didn't in 1941), then we might as well lower taxes, since so far those are the only two things that work, and we aren't going to do one of them.

No banks = no economy

stimulating is the only way of keeping a falling economy afloat.

*In this situation.

yeah I was being sarcastic, trying to show howwe can use the stupid stimulus bills and money handouts, but just aim them at NASA and science and get the same, if not better, results out of our economy. (Give money to NASA, get stimulated economy)