Is NASA useful?

I keep debating myself over this. On one hand, humans have always had a surge for exploration and it is kinda cool. On the other hand money could be used for better things like social security food stamps etc

What do you guys think?

Humans need to explore and learn.

Which will not happen any time soon.

We need to clean up Spain before we go anywhere else.

A missile defense is not.

NASA funds a lot of good Research that would not be done otherwise. Historically, NASA's contribution to our technological landscape has been substantial in fields ranging from astronomy and aerospace to electronics. Huge challenges like those that NASA pursues are a powerful inspiration for scientists and engineers.

On the broader question of whether we should be pursuing R&D when the same funds could be used to attend to immediate needs, I think we should. You can't stop investing in the future, and there is a long list of things I would do to save money before I would shut down NASA.

Bother anyone. NASA = survelance, weapons. Nasty stuff. I knew back in 1985 after seeing the cargo loads as a contractor for the space shuttle. DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, Photo-op DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD, DOD,

Depressing.

Let's not forget this while we're talking.

The Air Force Space Shuttle Program: A Brief History

E. J. Tomei

The Air Force had high hopes for its West Coast shuttle complex. But despite years of preparation, this state-of-the-art facility never saw a shuttle launch.

http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/winter2003/05.html


Still, I love the space program, :blush: , especially the unmanned stuff. :thumbsup:

that can keep us going. The militarization of NASA-no. Sadly, without the military payloads, NASA and space research, generally, would have been long since abandoned. Nixon's shutdown of the US space program, typically republican, remains a blot on the spirit of this country and fits comfortably into our long term decline.

and other risky collective projects with abstract intellectual or imagination-based payoffs.

If you've ever lived in a small country for a long time, you see the strength of the other side of the argument. You become painfully aware that providing people with adequate material stuff is not enough of a collective endeavor. Something has to be done to maintain morale, to create a hope and a dream and a challenge which all participate in somewhat, something that engages the collective values and collective imagination. Creativity is a value. In large countries it is never entirely stifled; in small societies it's often hard to get the critical mass of mind, talent, participation, and desire together in the first place, never mind sustaining it long enough and fully enough to create things that are great.

Small countries generally fund themselves arts and cultural programs, at a minimum, and invest a lot of their time and resources getting/staying connected to larger countries' cultures and creativity and endeavors.

The answer is that there has to be a balance, of course. Particle physics, space exploration, and mathematics these days produce things for the world that have rather little practical value per se- but they have great psychological value in giving us images and thought that makes the problem posed by the physical universe's indifference to human life and striving seem a bit closer to resolution. Even medical research is quite inefficient at giving us material return on the investment we put into it, and quite what we want to rationally achieve isn't too clear either in that business (in which I happen to be). But the people best at them would still work at all these things because there is a promise or possibility within the endeavor of breaking the chains and limits of our lives in the present condition of the world, and if not now then sometime in the future. A world in which cancer and schizophrenia are rare, distant memories rather than present terrors and constant companions, for example. "Useless" things such as the arts remind us of worlds yet to be and worlds that were and the range of human possibility, and the wonder of all that can be discovered in the here and now.

There is some help for the poor and hungry in these things- if their lives did not have great achievements (by other people) to witness to, to touch, then they would not feel that they were living in the fullness of the World and History. The slums of South America have satellite TV and Air Jordans. On one level, these things mean deprivation. On another level these things mean participation, are accepted as the tithe demanded in the cathedral that is the world beyond their place, are tickets to the Faire were mankind is on display. American CNN now plays in Baghdad, with the effect that common Iraqis have arrived at a lot of selective information and firm (if to us somewhat bizarre) opinions about average American life and government and cultural detritus. Baghdad housewives are mouthing off about American Idol participants on Riverbend's blog.

I recommend Burroughs's "This New Ocean", a history of space exploration up to 2000 or so, for a really insightful perspective on the big picture politics of space exploration. He's very deliberate and clear on how it all really works, that Washington has always conceived of NASA as an entity whose reality is rather mundane and more modest and jittery than pretended. Washington also realizes it embodies an ideal that Americans need maintained and means a great deal of international prestige.

The US is not so poor that it can not afford both science, space exploration etc - AND have proper welfare at the same time.
Poor welfare is the result of lobbying by big corporations that want tax money to be spend on them rather then on the common good.


on edit:
NASA's inefficiency (ie poor reliability and high cost of the shuttle) is the result of it having to many managers and to few engineers and scientists. But the reorganization trend of the past decades that has caused that situation, can be reversed.

Keep NASA but give it a realistic budget and get out of its way. Demand accountability and high safety but do not do as this admin. has done and cut its funds, reduce oversight, yet demand it do more than it can do. NASA does a lot of great educational work besides the more public person in space stuff.