Further…
I think we all know that engineering and technical achievement is no measure of the “goodness” of a society or a government. Hitler built the autobans and developed much of the rocket technology we used in early NASA flights. He gave the German people a new prosperity and a sense of purpose. The USSR was the first into space with *Sputnik[i/]. Does that make them better than Western Democracies?
I haven’t a clue what your point is here. I’m not talking about systems of governance, I’m talking about publically funded research being a wise investment. It has demonstrated its worth so many times, in so many tangible ways, it is simply ludicrous to suggest that it is an example of big government largesse and abuse. I’m an industry scientist, and I’m telling you we NEED publically funded basic research. It keeps us industry types honest. Plus, these guys in the universities tend to be smarter than us, and to have an entirely different agenda than we do. Both what we do and what they do matters and is worthwhile, but more often than many would like to admit, industry reaps the bountiful harvest that our colleagues in academia sew, sometimes rather selflessly. We depend, absolutely, on the knowledge they provide to guide our research into particular applications, and the fact that this information is freely available to all is nothing short of a godsend for any society. I mean, go to the NCBI website and look at all the literature, genomics, proteomics, etc. accessible, that anyone with an idea can use to help further the goals of research, both applied and basic. It’s almost miraculous. And you and I helped pay for it. I can assure you, we benefit hugely from it.
I don’t care if it’s communism, capitalism, socialism, totalitarianism. The nation that invests in public research reaps great rewards, and often benefits humankind as a whole. The fact that sometimes it’s a Hitler or a Stalin in power does not change this. It has nothing to do with “inherent goodness”; it has to do with smart money, good investments. I’m sure even Hitler and Stalin wanted their nations to succeed, or they wouldn’t have bothered with the few worthwhile things they did in their pathetic lives.
It was a small add-on to my main point, which ended up on page 2. From the rest of your reply, it seems that you didn’t see the earlier post.
There is a problem with the “it will get done if people want it” view. In fact, it’s flat out wrong. That doesn’t defeat the libertarian position at all, but the fact is, due to coordination problems, individuals cannot easily band together to start giant projects when their willingness to participate depends heavily on them knowing if enough other people are willing to do so as well. The government solves this problem at the expense of liberty. If we want to have an alternative to promote instead of tax funded, government run space exploration, it needs to address the coordination failure in some way.
At greater length, the problem I see is this: I’m willing to donate money for space exploration. BUT, I only want to give away that money if I can be assured of there actually being a program with some real results: I don’t want to donate my money if the program will never be big enough to do anything but put up a few more sputniks. And that is exactly what will happen unless enough other people donate at the same time I do. But all those other people are just like me: unwilling to give if they think it might turn out to be a waste due to it not going anywhere. So, in the face of this uncertainty, we are not as willing to donate as much money as we would. It’s a vicious circle, and we are all less and less willing.
The government solves this problem by simply forcing us all to spend our money on the program, at the appropriate level to get really big stuff done. But it creates a bigger problem: it also takes from those who do not wish to give, it has no way to guage the correct amounts anyone is willing to give, and thus deprives people the liberty to decide the relative value of their spending (since some of us might think our money is better spent on other things)
So: sans enforced government taxation of all citizens, how do we solve the coordination failure?
Astronomy is purely basic, and there’s quite a bit of that going on in various universities. I do know a few astronomers employed by corporations, but they are indirectly funded by the government (working on NASA astronomical satellites). Planetary science is mostly “basic” as well, except the sub-field concerned with mineral and oil deposits on earth. Most physics research is purely basic, in the sense that it is not motivated by a commercial or technological goal. I don’t see any private company making a significant investment in these fields.
I’m not really sure this is such a problem. What is a coorporation? What is a charitable organization. The process of amassing money for a purpose are quite well understood. What is the essential difference between NASA and GreenPeace? I mean in the nature of the control that individual investors (or contributors, if you want) have over the timing or specific nature of the projects undertaken.
Certainly NASA would have to spend money on getting more money, but I believe they do that now. I’ve heard some argue that the ISS is simply a project which has political viability. The continued degradation of the shuttles original mission is another example.
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What is a coorporation? What is a charitable organization.
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Neither really solve the problem. Charities are not really the same, because for most, every bit helps. When it only takes 5$ to get a child its medications, it doesn’t matter what anyone else does. But when it takes 900M$ to even get the easy stuff done, my 5$ might as well be thrown down the drain if I give but not enough other people do. So I am way less willing to give in the first place.
Corporations, of course, have a direct motive to profit. That’s what makes them effective. That HAS to be their mission.
Right, but the point is that money can be gathered, saved for a purpose, and used for that purpose. Some things only require $5, but some things require a lot more. Look at Dean’s campaign for another example. $20 doesn’t mean didly for a modern political campaign. But get enough of them and your off to the races. Or is that off to Mars 
The Nobel prize in physics in 2000 was won by a team including a scientist from RCA, and one from Texas Instruments.
The Nobel prize in physics in 1998 was won by scientists from Bell Labs.
The Nobel prize in physics in 1997 was shared by a scientist from Bell Labs.
The Nobel prize in physics in 1987 was won by scientists from IBM Research Labs in Zurich, and IBM Research also shared the prize in 1986.
But the libertarian position would be that there actual is no problem. Maybe I misunderstand what you are trying to say, but it seems that you (and most others posting to this thread) start out with the assumption that this fundamental space research must be done. That the only question to be answered is how best to get it done, not why does it need to be done in the first place?
I guess it’s sort of a zen thing with the libs.
If people want it to get done, it will. If it doesn’t get done, that’s proof that the desire isn’t actually there.
Frankly, I agree 100% with what Libertarian said about Sam’s justification. It can be used to justify anything. And if you accept that coercion should be used to fund your pet project, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be used to fund someone else’s. Using that logic it would be hard to prioritize space exploration over, say, feeding starving people in Africa.
Perhaps, but your post had large numbers from companies like TI and Lucent that would seem to be basic research amounts to the untutored eye, You also mentioned R&D spending as if that were basic research. If you’ve ever filled out the R&D tax credit form, you’d have become painfully aware of what the gummint considers R&D.
NEC is one of the companies still doing some basic research - their research center in the US was down the road from me, I’ve visited, and I know lots of people there or who have been there. As I am sure you are aware, development is not trivial. However once you have a commercial application in mind, you can do a business case, and it isn’t basic research anymore. That goes for the private decoding of the genome. They knew how they expected to make money from that - and in any case, I’d hardly call it basic research anymore.
I’ll certainly agree with you that lots of university research is not basic. I review grant proposals, and the failure of nerve on some of them is amazing. I try to get my professor friends to work on stuff that commercial companies aren’t doing, and sometimes it is hard.
It would be interesting to consider if any engineering research is ever really basic. Depends on your definition. Lots of companies still keep basic research labs around to give some space for people to work on stuff not needed for the next product, and for press coverage. It is of benefit to tell your customers that you are leading edge, and you can’t do that for stuff going into products. Bell Labs research didn’t used to be like that, though Arno was busy trashing it at the time I left.
On the other hand, a lot of what Microsoft is doing is basic research.
As Voyager said, Bell Labs was funded by a largely monopolistic company. There seems to be no current equivalent.
Anyway, the Nobel physics prize is heavily biased towards practical developments. Einstein never got one for his theories of relativity.
But we cannot go too far in this direction either. Are you saying that if research has a fiscal application this disqualifies it as basic?
My above post was in response to Sam Stone’s post a few posts above listing corporate Nobel laureates. Sorry for the confusion.
The basic question is, “Without government funding of fundamental science, would science still progress?”
And the answer is, “Of course”. Government funding makes up a very small percentage of total science research. Much of it is done by private universities, corporations, or is done using grants and bursaries from private foundations. The Nobel prize itself is an example of how a private philanthropist has aided basic research. There are other prizes and medals in science that are also funded privately.
The difference with space research is that some of it is beyond the grasp of private organizations. No one but the government can send a nuclear-powered probe to Saturn. Since I believe that sending probes to Saturn is a critical part of what our civilization should be up to, I have to support government action.
Show me that private industry has the ability to do it, and I will withdraw my support for government action.
Show me that there is some critical need to send a probe to Saturn now, as opposed to 50 yrs from now*, and I’ll throw my support behind government action. “It will be such a magnificent achievement” does not consititute a critical need. There is no lack of sublime goals to be accomplished within the realm of private enterprise.
*or some time in the future when it is cheap enough for private industry to consider doing it.
Why do you think it will become automatically cheaper? The Spirit was cheaper than the Viking only because we have the experience and technology from the past 3 decades to draw upon. If we had to design a Mars lander from scratch now, without off-the-shelf components developed for and tested on previous satellites, I’m sure it would cost just as much as it did in the 1970s.
For that matter, the cost of manned missions is going UP. We probably could not send people back to the moon today for the same cost in constant dollars that we spent in the 1960’s.
John: We’re just going to have to disagree. I happen to think that continuing humanity’s drive to explore is critical to our well-being as a civilization. We need a frontier - it’s healthy.
I haven’t read his thread in detail, so apologies if this was commented on earlier.
I believe that Lib supported the war in Iraq.
How many children could be fed, clothed, and educated for $100 billion, $200 billion, $300 billion… who knows how much. 
I expect that private industry would, on its own timetable, find its way into space at some point. It might not follow the same course as gov’t funded space exploration, but there are plenty of applications that seemed fantastically expensive 50 years ago, but that are cost effective now.
Why? I could see this only being the case if we set higher safety standards or added other mission objectives.
Yep, an impasse seems to have been met.