Should we spend more money to fund space programs?

[kflyer]

With the world deep in recession and with billions needed in cancer research and to fight poverty. Is there any reason the international community should spend the billions needed in space exploration.

[Anthraxus]

Yes, because if nothing can be done to reign in ecological damages (and since most of the third world is still working on stumbling through their own industrial revolutions, I don't think it is reasonable to assume that we will) space is the only place to go.  Also the chance of a meteor or cometary impact is a world devastating event that we can do almost nothing to prevent or protect from without continual space funding.  The only way to really assure the continuation of the human species is to shake off the shackles of being bound to a single world.

[benh7777]

I support space exploration but only to a certain extent. There is way to much money wasted on it. Anything that is plain curiosity should be a lesser priority. So we spend billions and billions of dollars to send little crafts to other planets to move 100 feet in their lifetime and look at dirt and sand, that to me is a waste. Now if we were to try to develop a way to send men to mars then that's different, just as when we landed on the moon it would be the same for mars, it's a sense of national pride and might.

If we had been trying to develop cheaper ways to get to space 20 years ago rather than wasting it for nothing more than plain curiosity, then we would be sending men there now not little robots.

[kflyer]

i think it's less about curiousity and more about scientific discovery. Sending humans to mars will cost way more than just the robots. The robots can get all the work done at a fraction of the cost. I mean if we send humans they'll need probes and other expensive drilling equipment to work with them anyways. Besides the crafts are just to get more information to pave the way for future human landings. Something as trivial as pride and might is much less important than for science and thirst for knowledge and exploration. and as anthraxus said future colonization is important and only by moving in baby steps will we be able to realize the dream safely. If you ask me there is way more than enough money for research and space exploration. Just take some of the money spent on costly dragged out legal proceedings, wars, and giving free food and shelter to hardened criminals. It's a travesty that people living in prison live better off than most families in poverty.

[benh7777]

There is wasted money in everything the government has their hand in, you could argue over a million things. Seeing how space exploration dwarfs anything else, it's an easy target.

If we accept the reasons for the billions and billions spent on this, then we need to figure out how to convince the millions of children and families starving and homeless that their sacrifice is worth it.

[Anthraxus]

I don't see how you can say that the NASA budget dwarfs anything else.  The federal budget for 2009 was 2.6 trillion.  Of that only 17.6 billion was allocated to NASA.  The lion's share goes to the military and the "war on terror".  An easy argument can be made as to why any given governmental department can be seen as wasteful and unnecessary. 

I would argue that as NASA is only of the very few government departments that spends a large portion of it's budget on basic science research, which directly benefits all other fields of development (industry, service, technological, etc) which in turn directly benefit those millions of starving and homeless children and families, NASA should at the very least continue with it's current funding, if not increasing it. 

The advances that will be made over the next 10 years by NASA will translate into new ways to produce food, housing, resource reclaimation that will be directly applicable to life on earth.

[benh7777]

of that 2.6 trillion,

1.89 trillion for mandatory spending (social security, medicare, medicade, unemployment, and debt interest).
nearly 700 billion for defense and war on terror.

no doubt there is waste here too but I'm glad I still speak english.

17.6 billion is alot less than what I thought was spent on NASA, but I still think there is room for improvement on spending.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against NASA, what I'm against is wasteful spending. If you want me to complain about any other government funding I can do that too, lol. The subject was on NASA.

So after looking around some, 17 billion does sound somewhat low when you compare. I think my argument should be toward total government spending rather than 1 specific budget.

[Anthraxus]

I think my argument should be toward total government spending rather than 1 specific budget.

I can't argue with that.