From Apollo to Starbucks.
Well, Lorne Greene would’ve been happy. 
I basically agree with that, which is why I’m a libertarian but not a Libertarian.
Why? One could make a much better argument for gov’t funding for basic research in biology, genetics, and the cause of deseases. Space flight might benefit the commonweal, but those other areas absolutely will.
Not to be smarmy, but B.F.D. I, myself, would love to have access that info, too. I’d be thrilled to see such research done. But how can that possibly be construed as benefitting the common good in any material way? Again, if $100B is to be spent, I’d rather see it be spent on those things I mentioned above (ie, biological research).
Seems like might slim reasoning to pop $100B on something. The more likely scenario is that we will be able to do such research in the future-- and do it more cheaply.
Asrivkin gets paid to be a planetary astonomer!!
I loathe you. Nothing personal, honest, I can’t help it. Its probably similar to the way I used to feel about the guy who was married to Ursula Andress. You’re perfectly likely to be a splendid chap, you were probably a paragon of good karma in your last life…
I still loathe you.
OK, fair enough.
Well, I’m not sure what to say here. You’ve got a completely self-consistent set of beliefs, which diverge from mine pretty quickly. I’m willing to accept that people who are libertarian probably won’t like public funding of science. Big of me, eh? 
Surely, though, if enough people share the same wants and desires it would no longer be “wrong” to fund them publicly? Like state colleges, for instance?
In a democracy, you have to accept that sometimes you get outvoted. As someone with a strong libertarian streak, I’m pretty familiar with that concept. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that whatever the majority votes for is “right”, though. Sure, it’s de facto “right”, but not “right” in the sense a debate among folks like us and what we think the best course of action is.
Are you willing to say that whatever the majority votes for is “right” when it’s something you disagree with on a fundamentally philosophical level?
Not well, mind you. But it’s been a really good gig so far. Other than having to use the trough, I mean.
Right.
(Scratches elucidator off of reprint list)
Wouldn’t do me any good, anyway. Math retard. Had to take Algebra 1 twice to scrape out a D. Cheated my ass off.
Remember once when a 12-year old boy blithely and succinctly explained to me how Maxwells Equations led directly to General Relativity. We’re related, so I didn’t throttle the little snot. Wanted to.
Math retard. If the train leaves New York at 8:40 pm for Chicago at 70 mph and another train leaves Chicago for New York at 9:20 pm at 85 mph, all the passengers are doomed if they’re relying on me.
Can I ask a completely odd question? Is it possible to donate money to NASA? Is NASA registered as a tax deductible organization? I’m just curious. If a majority of the people really support it wouldn’t it be possible (at least in theroy) to fund it other than with taxes? Is there any evidence that taxe support is absolutely manditory?
To hold that view, isn’t it necessary to value big, collective projects more than human beings? You cannot know and I cannot know whether there are enough people who care about space exploration to finance it voluntary. Why can’t we know? Because that would be a hypothetical. The reality is that funding of these projects is not voluntary.
You and I can cross-conjecture all day long about a hypothetical in which people with a brain as sharp as yours realize the potential economic bonanza of space exploration. We can argue about whether or not they, in a free and noncoercive economic environment, would have the motivation and wherewithal to organize billion dollar collective projects. We can bicker about whether necessity really is the mother of invention, and even about whether government has not actually botched space exploration such that voluntary exploration would nowadays be far ahead of what government has done.
But what’s the point? You’ll say I’m crazy, and I’ll say you’re myopic, and nothing will change. But one thing is for certain — the same principle by which you value your pet projects over my rights is the exact same principle by which government can force you to finance Piss Christ art, bloated bureaucracies, and anything else it dreams up. As the farmer told Davey Crocket, it isn’t about the amount of money. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a dollar or a million dollars. The same principle that entitles me to one of your dollars entitles me to as many as I please.
Economics, when government does not interfere arbitrarily, is about supplying demand. If there is sufficient demand for space exploration, it will happen. If not, then, says Thomas Jefferson, the minority declaring that their desire usurps the desire of the majority is definitively oppressive. As you well know, even a pure libertarian government would take advantage of space as a means to defend its citizens, and would not allow some other nation to achieve an advantage in that regard. But the rest of the stuff — exploring Mars and looking for viruses on Saturn’s moons and all that (which is actually the topic here) — is not something that enhances and defends the rights of citizens. Let the citizens decide for themselves, using their own money, whether that is something they want to do.
If the citizens are as hopelessly ignorant as you fear them to be, such that they would not voluntarily pay for exploring Mars, then you must realize that whatever scientific benefit you might hope to bestow upon them is an exercise in futility. If they’re too stupid to get why what you want is necessary, then they’re too stupid to get why what you did benefits them. I mean, you’re going to turn to Hank Redneck and say, “Oh, look! We found something on Mars that might indicate a primitive bacterium existed there a hundred million years ago!” And when you tell him how much beer you deprived him of to find that out, he is going to go back in his trailer to fetch his shotgun. Don’t pretend you’re doing this for the people. You’re doing it for yourself and for those who are like minded.
Squink: […] America will not fare well in a future in which the red chinese hold a monopoly over lunar deuterium production and importation.
They’ll have to hustle if they want a monopoly, Mars lander or no Mars lander. I just picked up this week’s issue of India’s The Week magazine and saw the cover story on “India’s race to the moon”. Apparently the Chandrayaan-1 satellite is scheduled for launch in 2007/08 in order to remote-sense for minable (mineable?) minerals.
Lib
Although I agree with you on this subject, I would quibble with your characterization of this as an example of the minority forcing their views on the majority. We have to assume that NASA’s funding is arrived at thru the democratic process-- by a majority in Congress apporving the budget. Perhaps that’s not what you meant, but it sure came across that way. To me, space exploration as pure science is simply something outside the bounds of the legitmate actons of government.
Otherwise, excellent post. Exactly to the point.
The Indian satellite would be a private venture right, as opposed to China’s government run program? 
Dear me, how will American private enterprise compete against such state-sponsored resource discovery and exploitation? Or should we cede the high ground over issues of ideological purity?
Mining operations on the Moon? The Hindoos corner the market in molybnd…molybede…molybdnemumum…rare minerals? Let me get this straight: you lift enough tonnage to the moon to build a mining operation, that then lifts the ore by rocket back to the Earth. Either that, or you lift a refining facility to the moon and ship back refined metals.
I am, as I admit, math impaired. I cannot actually tell you to which power of ten this is nuts. But its nuts. Even at my “See Dick quantify Quantify, Dick, quantify. See! Spot equals one!” level of understanding, this is right out!
Thanks. With respect to the quote, I’m afraid you stripped the context right out of it by pasting only a dependent clause. Here is what preceded it: If there is sufficient demand for space exploration, it will happen. If not…
Y’all can go on arguing about public vs. private funding.
Me, I’m going to sit here looking at the pictures, saying to myself: “That’s Mars. Damn. That’s fucking Mars. That’s a picture from the surface of motherfucking Mars that was taken six hours ago and now I’m sitting here looking at it on my own motherfucking computer. And if I click here, I can look at a dozen more just like it. Pictures. From Mars.”
Then I lose words, and begin to drool.
For the record, I’m a fan of government-sponsored motivational prizes, which combine the best aspects of centralized social engineering for projects whose future revenue stream falls unrealistically outside the cycle of typical industry planning, and the sheer blinding creative force of private entrepreneurship. But until we find ourselves some leaders with the vision, passion, and drive to make something like this a reality, I guess we’ll have to muddle along with the inefficient bureaucracy as an acceptable second-place alternative.
And I’ll just keep looking at the pictures.
Fucking Mars. 
Cervaise:
But we’ve actually been thru this all before-- 30 years ago, in fact, when the first probe went to the Red Planet. I’m afraid that unless we find something wiggling around, this will go the way of the Apollo program-- excitement giving way to apathy. Enjoy it while it lasts.
More pictures better pictures, different experiments, different amounts of data from similar experiments, different tracking systems, different landing craft, different entry technology, new exploration techniques.
A short list, I know. But there are many new things being done by these probes.
Mind you, I agree that government funding is not that way to do these things. But that these probes are not doing science is not a reason in favor of that argument. If these new probes were only falling cameras (like our old moon probes) they could concievably do good and new science.
Also, I think I can make a (tenuous, but real) argument that even these probes serve a useful defence purpose. We can’t exactly test our rocket or tracking techniques by launching missles at our enemies. Launching probes at Mars allows us to test the technology we use in those missles and develop wholly new ones. Whether its worth the cost is another argument, but you could argue the value of these probes on utilitarian grounds as well as “pure research” grounds.
perv:
I never said science wasn’t being done. My last post was about the fickle nature of public support for space programs.
Lib: Your reasoning can be applied to ANYTHING government does. Defense? I know lots of Libertarians who say that the military and police should be private. Courts? Again, private judiciaries.
At some point, people interact with each other. They share common assets (air, radio waves, national assets like oil fields or natural wonders, etc). Some of this needs to be regulated because of market failure.
So the minute you move away from ‘pure’ libertarianism, you enter a realm where people have to employ democratic principles to determine who and what to tax, and what to spend the money on. I am a fan of limited government, and I used to be a hard-core libertarian until I decided that such a system was A) politically impossible, and B) probably not a good idea anyway.
So I draw my own personal limits - government programs I’ll support, and ones I oppose. And I have my own (hopefully) consistent ethical and moral framework from which I make my decisions. My own decisions are still fairly close to ‘pure’ libertarianism in that I think we are over-taxed, over-regulated, and over-controlled by government. If I had my druthers, the Department of Education, the Small Business Administration, HUD, OSHA, and a whole bunch of similar administration would be gone tomorrow.
And I would get NASA out of the commercial space business. They have no business flying scheduled trucks into space. NASA should do what private industry can’t - cutting edge research that is too big and expensive to be done any other way. And I would put into place mechanisms that force NASA to immediately cease and desist operations in any area where private industry expresses a desire and the capability to take over.
I just think this stuff is too important to ignore. It is IMPORTANT that we understand how the universe came to be, what our place is in it, and where it is going. It is also important that we maintain common goals as a society, lest we stagnate and die. I don’t want us to turn our gazes to our navels and spend increasingly comfortable, yet increasingly meaningless lives discussing whether or not Britney should get a divorce. Cultures thrive when grand goals pull them together. A spirit of exploration and discovery motivates people, pushes children into working harder at their educations, and gives us great enjoyment.
When you think about the vast sums of money the government spends, you have to realize that NASA is the one shining jewel, the one area where the government has achieved something worth the money spent on it. The Department of Education has an annual budget closing in on 100 billion dollars a year - and you can not show me any evidence that it has improved education one bit. It’s a black hole of wasted money. NASA has a budget 1/5 that size, and its achievements have inspired several generations of humans all over the world. Think of how much poorer our existence would be without a space program. Not having those glorious photos of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Not seeing the wonders Hubble has brought to us. Not knowing how old the universe is, or how big it is, or whether there are other planets around other stars.
How different do we humans feel knowing that we have stepped foot on the moon? How does that inspire us, give us a sense of limitless possibility? How many people have been motivated to study science and engineering because of that? And how much has that benefitted us financially?
It’s worth it. No matter how much we spend, it’s worth it. And we don’t spend nearly enough.
Gotta disagree with you here, and elucidator as well.
Not on your reasons for supporting space research. Never that.
With the notion that space excitement is a non-rational phenomenon. This is close to the heart of what being human means!
We are curious animals. We poke at things, we take them apart and try to see how they work, we look at stuff we don’t understand and try to puzzle it out. And we come up with clever ways to find out things. Not always to make money off it. Not always to kill each other. Sometimes, just because we gotta know.
It’s the same thing that made me (as a young and poverty-stricken Shodan) spend money I didn’t have on a book I couldn’t afford, even if I had to eat beans for dinner all week. It’s the same thing that that ape felt three hundred and fifty thousand years ago, when he looked up at the big light in the sky, and said, “What is that thing?”
And his wife told him to stop wasting time and come to bed, it was late and he had to hunt mammoths in the morning. And he grumbled a little, but he did it.
But before he went into the cave, he had another look. And he said, “Maybe someday I can go there and see for myself.”
We got a chance to do it.
We have already set foot on the Moon. We have advanced out of the cradle, as Arthur Clarke said. That was kindergarten. Mars has got to be next. That’s first grade. God alone knows what we will be up to when we start work on a Ph.D.
And I don’t care what it will cost. It will be money well spent.
And Sam Stone - you nailed it.
Regards,
Shodan