Okay, the money objection–apparently tax dollars are so precious it’s a total waste to spend on NASA.
Hmm, according to this story, the Iraq war is costing 177 million dollars per day. I’ve seen other numbers that put it closer to 195, but let’s go with the smaller one, just for shits and grins. Heck, let’s be fair and round it down to 150 M/day.
According to this source NASA’s 2007 total budget request is for 16.8 billion. Let’s round that up to 17, shall we?
17,000,000,000 / 150,000,000 = 113.334 days. So if we stop the war in Iraq cold and stop spending all that money on it, in just a bit over three months we’ll have paid for all of NASA’s requested budget for the year. Seems quite the bargain to me. I don’t think anyone could argue that taking such a step would drastically increase the level of world peace. I sincerely doubt that anyone would argue that taking the step of ending the Iraq war would promote good feeling worldwide and tend to make other countries more amenable to working with America rather than against.
Let’s just say we’re all dead game sports and double NASA’s budget–that means 226 days of Iraq war savings. That leaves a whole 'nother 140 days of savings, or 21 billion dollars, left over to do something fun with. Maybe hook some people up with health care or ponies or building a nice park in Baghdad, whatever. Meanwhile, world peace is still looking pretty good–as long as we don’t go attack anyone else it’s pretty likely things’ll simmer along as they were before.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I would really rather be able to point at a space ship, or an orbiting habitat, or a Moon colony and say “my tax dollars bought that!” than pointing at another war memorial or a pile of dead people or a rubble field that used to be a thriving city. I’m a little weird like that. I’d be easier in my heart if my child died trying something grand and new than if she were blown up by a suicide exploding donkey. Again, I’m a little weird like that.
Then there’s:
Valid, because gold is fairly useless. But what if the Moon were made of coltan? That would be worth shipping down a gravity well, and a larger supply looks like it would also help with that world peace thing, too. What if there was a whole bunch of iridium up there, or rhodium? Both darned useful metals–much more useful than gold.
Heck, forget the mining aspect, how about transuranics? Some of those you don’t want to make inside a biosphere, tad hazardous don’tcha know. Moon doesn’t have an ecology to worry about and radioactivity doesn’t travel far in a vacuum. Giant supercollider got you anxious when they build it right out back of the kid’s swing set? Moon don’t care too much if particles get out of bounds. Who knows what interesting and useful things we could accomplish when we don’t have to spend huge percentages of total budget just protecting the neighbors?
People spend enormous sums of money on travel and amusement–you don’t think space tourism would generate huge amounts of moolah? If you can’t see the incredible potential there then there’s no poetry in your soul or adventure seeking in your nature.
There’s a lot of truth to the semi-religious nature of space travel for space nuts, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of practical value there as well. Unlike faith and gods, however, the benefits can be fairly and objectively assessed and quantified.
Oh, and Liberal? They’re already stealing my money to do bullshit things with. I’d just prefer they do something cool and fun instead of finding new and interesting ways of killing our and other countries’ children. I also prefer to fund many smaller projects that have potential for turning out positive results than one big project that produces nothing but ugly death and hatred. But then, I’m weird like that.
Ad astra, goddammit! I bought a reservation on Pan Am flights to the moon in the sixties, and I damned well want to collect!