Yeah like *cough* *cough* maybe Venus *cough* or Saturn.
No, planets and moons like Pandora, the forest moon of Endor, Betazed, Bajor, Mars, even Europa and Enceladus.
*note* Listing fictional planets and moons is not to be taken as a belief that said planets and moons exist in reality.
"Practically every" you say. Yeah sure. Your middle name isn't "Exaggeration" by any chance is it? And FYI, I wasn't talking about the space program, but space exploration, a facet of the program.
It's not an exaggeration. You'd be surprised when you see how much came from space technology.
So what? Weather forecasts relying on satellites are a result of placing satellites into orbit, not with space exploration. You know, e x p l o r i n g space, the science.
But where did we get the tech to put satellites into orbit? From space exploration.
That is very debatable. However, for sake of argument, granting you're right one has to ask, At what cost? As Michio Kaku (physicist and science commentator) said in one of his Forbes articles:
"The space station costs upward of $100 billion, yet its critics call it a 'station to nowhere.' It has no clearly defined scientific purpose."
Meanwhile government services are struggling to find enough money to keep them afloat. Money and resource use for space exploration aren't the sole cause for our sad financial condition of course, but they've certainly been a large contributor. Had the money that went into space exploration---billions upon billions of dollars---instead been spent on needed social service these services would never have been eliminated or downsized. And the trade off for all this expenditure? Not much. Certainly nothing to brag about as far as getting our bang for the buck. In fact, the return has been down right pathetic.
Ah yes, the cost argument. Do you know just how much money has gone into space exploration? I looked it up: $843 billion from 1958-2009. This year's budget was $19b (0.5% of the national budget), bringing the total to $852b. Yes, that looks like a lot of money, but remember, that's spread out over
52 years, giving an average of $16.6b a year. Again, that sounds like a lot, but lets look at what else the government has spent money on in 2009: $782b for defense (23%), $678b for Social Security (20%), and another $676b for Medicare and Medicaid (19%). Wow, social services and the military are sooooooooo starved for cash.... Of course the space programs critics are saying it's a waste. They'll say anything to cast it into a bad light.
As for the return from space, lets see: jobs on American soil, high-tech research, faster and better aircraft, better satellite tech for science, navigation, and defense,
economic increases, and more tech and process spin-offs than I can imagine.
Oh I got your point, but its an
extremely bad one. But go ahead and enjoy your dream that the world's future failing civilizations will be saved by packing a few humans into spaceships with Tang and Spam for their 12 year-long trip to. . . err . . .what, Neptune? As for mental and spiritual survival,
c'mon, give me a break here.
I'm not talking about our current civilizations, I'm talking about our species. If we want to survive in the long run we have to learn how to live in space and on other planets and moons. If we don't we'll be at the mercy of whatever it is that comes to kill the Earth.
And for the spiritual and mental survival, go to a public star party, the more visitors the better. Look at people's faces when they look into a telescope for the first time. I've seen nothing else that brings that level of awe to a person.
