Amazing. I just wish we'd invest more of our money into NASA. So many good things have come from that program.

Also, I wish I heard more about this. I'm not sure if it was because of my end (being at school without cable and power outages all weekend) or from the publicity.. Either way, still an accomplishment like no other!

 

Latest photo from Curiosity:

 

See I am the opposite....I think spending 2.5 Billion dollars on this is such a waste of taxpayer money....

to find out Mars exists yayyyyyyyy.....lets spend 2.5B on America's infrastructure that could create many jobs which would help out many families in these times....

I never understood or accepted why so much money is spent in these programs....

 

I totally see where you are coming from, but how much of that 2.5B was spent on raw material? I would be guessing, but I imagine lots of people were long-term employed for the successful execution of this mission.

 

yes and if it wasn't run by the Gov't it would probably have cost half of that as well...

 

they already know mars exists. It's to find out any number of things. Such as is there life on mars, are there useuable resources, how did our own life start, etc.

 

Who cares if there is life there? and there is enough evidence that we already know that there isn't as of right now except Transformers....If there are useable resources there, to bring it back here in a quantity that is sufficient for the Country to use it and benefit from it..........the cost to bring it back wouldn't be worth it....

How life started? :pity: I really don't care about that....I care about the unemployment rate in our Country, jobs, selling all our assets to foreign countries, depending on foreign countries for assets.....If they can figure that out that on Mars then fine, until then scale it back, this Country isn't in a booming time to just hand over 2.5B to a govt run program to find out...


















































































nobody is there and the resources cant be used......

 

lol. That's a conservative for you. "Knowledge is stupid", should be their campaign slogan. You know, **** the entire Cape Canaveral area, they don't need jobs or anything. i mean there's only like 3 people that work at NASA, not about 18K directly and another 30K in contractors.

 

Well if we ever have to leave, then yes what we learn trying to get to mars, as well as its development, could help continue your future bloodline............ Unless they read your posts then they will probably leave your great great great grandkids behind.
And yes, investigating how life started, died, etc helps us understand everything from bacteria, to animals, etc.

that we know of.

 

That $2.5B is about 1% of the federal budget. Don't get all hung up on the word "billion".

 

If somehow that Mars Rover were to help find an element on Mars that was instrumental in developing the cure for cancer, do you think it would be worth $2.5 billion to us taxpayers? You can't be so negative and close minded when it comes to exploration.

 

The space exploration program has led to inventions, or advances, in microchip tech (and hence computers), satellite communications (and early warning weather systems), water purification, and fuel cells (more efficient energy with less pollution). Studies of the human body in zero gravity have informed our understanding of the aging process, and MRIs and lasers developed for the program are now routinely used in surgery. The world, not just America, has tangible benefits.

Long story short. You are always better off funding smart people, especially when that funding is a miniscule fraction of the overall budget.

 

my point exactly.....not saying abolish it...scale it back....it took 2.5B just to get the thing there, now add on top of that the 48K in salaries and benefits of them all and we are talking huge money.....

Obama could have been re-elected in an instant....using that money elsewhere...

 

Finyank doesn't want us to go to Mars, but he can't wait to spend his money on the Iphone5!

 

lol. 48K jobs and untold knowledge that could lead to untold benefits in the future for a tiny fraction of GDP, and you don't like it. This is precisely why conservatives are dangerous.

 

unless u have Mit Romney money, you and your grandkiddies will be here with me....

Which is the reason why the debt is so large, hey it isnt THAT much so might as well spend it right....

yes.......and hopefully they find it...

The only benefit as I see it is yes these engineers have created and made huge strides on stuff like this....chips, satellites, etc so for that great, even though they will figure it out just as fine here on Earth....but if they came back tomorrow and said there is life form on Mars, I could give 2 sh$ts about it honestly, it isnt about knowledge Fin-D.....I just don't care and it certainly isn't worth the money, unless said alien is a Dolphin fan.....

 

go and take all the money they have spent trying to find this "knowledge" dating back to when they went to the moon, and they have made nothing by way of proving life form is actually around....they say it COULD be there and there POSSIBLY could be signs of something once being there in an effort to keep that funding coming....but nothing by way of actual prove since then....nada....they spent alot of money finding nothing.....

 

I think I see something!!!! you guys see what I am seeing?? I see a nice camera that is used for these photos, maybe that will be in the iPhone 5 Firesole!!

 

Oh and Fin-D, a "conservative" started this all this......I think you have heard of him, why am I not surprised by this....

400B isnt chump change eh?

And sh$t you not boys and girls, the bolded is the real reason why we dump billions upon billions of dollars into this pit, to stay ahead of the Chinese, Russians, etc.....it is all a big co&kwaving exercise to see who can do what the fastest and earliest, masked under a guise of ever eternal riches and benefits for humanity....

as usual...politics...Space is cool, that's about it....

 

Do you not know the myriad of things NASA has either discovered, invented or helped invent? Seriously bro?

You mean when conservatives were actually rational people? Duh. Those guys don't exist anymore.

48,000 jobs isn't chump change either. Not too mention all the industries that wouldn't be here without the advancements made by NASA, like I dunno, all internet, cellular, satellite & aerodynamics companies.

Your point is bad and typical of the emotional vomiting of conservatives these days. Just reactionary bs, that not only misses the point but thinks facts are unnecessary. Basically, congrats, you're Sarah Palin now.

 

Again it's about more then just life. It's about inventions. It's about discovering our own history. All that leads to bigger and better inventions in everything from medicines to the computer you are sitting at. You are trying to trivialize something without I don't think really fully understanding it.

 

Again I am not saying about the advancements in medicine and tech, I am talking about exploring for actual life elsewhere....That is useless, I dont believe in aliens, ghosts etc like that, to me they dont exist, they have been looking for a while and there isnt a shred of evidence proving there is....

I would rather see that money being spent in the advancment of tech that we use here on Earth in you know reality....do missions catering to that, send the thing as far out as possible, see what the capabilities are I am all from bettering and streamlining stuff we can use here...that is different then what they are doing now, and the whole Mars mission which is what I have a problem with....instead of shifting from it after no signs, they will dig deeper to try to find something that doesnt exist...

Atheist love it and I get it, because if they do find something living they can shake their fingers saying I told you so....I wouldnt hold your breathe however....

I am not saying abolish every aspect of the whole program, even though it all could be run better and more effieciently by a private corporation, I am saying eliminate some foolish parts of it....like trying to find E.T.......

 

yes 400B for this mission alone for 48K jobs is a waste....you can employ a far larger amount of people with that here, thus doing more good than it is now...not vomiting just common sense....

 

But it is precisely the desire to understand the unknown that led to those medical and technological advances that you don't have an issue with. That's the surprising thing about scientific discoveries in general, they sometimes come from outside of the field altogether. Darwin's Origin of the Species was, for example, informed by a close reading of sedimentary geology.

The cost to your average American is one expensive cocktail drink a year.

I think it's highly ironic we're having this discussion on a computer.

 

woot....Rover's rule!

 

It is naive to think that we are the only living beings in the universe.
Odds are we wont ever make contact with another sentient creatures though.

 

Wow, great lover Mr Crater seems. Must be British.

 

I'm guessing it's possible that an element on Mars not found on Earth might be that way for a reason, just as some fish found in the Amazon are devastating to freshwater systems in America.
....... but like highly intelligent yet stupid humans of the past we'll bring it back without fear of consequences, watch it react with something on earth and rampantly kill millions, then claim it was Al Qaeda biological warfare, subsequently increase American taxes to "counter it", all the while some pharmaceutical company makes billions off a drug that slows the onset of its symptoms, from which $millions make its way back into government officials pockets who helped create the cluster **** to begin with.

Here's an idea: how about using that $2.5 billion toward finding ways to help us save & improve our current planet rather than trying to look for a f***in new one. :dunno:

 

A mirror at Walmart cost me $7.99. It's worked out fairly well for me.

Bull crap. Smart people are often the most dangerous.
The Fukushima nuclear reactors that leaked radiation upon Japan (and even the yellowfin tuna we're catching off California) weren't created by stupid people, nor are much of the 11,000 tons of mercury released into the atmosphere annually, most of which b/c a non-stupid person came up with a profitable idea but not an understanding or care of the consequences.

 

The only reason we miss something is b/c we brought it into existence in the first place, providing ourselves alternatives. If, for example, the internet was never created, we'd have no idea of its benefits, and human life on earth would've continued just as it previously had; teen boys would still be eagerly whacking off to Victoria's Secret catalogs rather than hardcore, teen, midget, tranny porn with goats, and I'd be happily reading the sports page during my morning dump rather than trying not to accidentally piss on my lap top. Information would still change hands, only it'd be done in a different fashion just as it previously had...... and I'd still relish in the fact that time spent away from the house phone (mainly work) was time that my wife or other annoying people wouldn't be bothering me. :tongue2:

 

if other life form is out there, which it obviously is, then let those f***ers spend their own damn money finding us instead. The human race cant be the only egocentric, curious-to-a-fault species in this neck of the universe.

That's all relative. You're assuming those 48,000 jobs would be lost as well as the related industries.
If the US govt had prioritized a different program and had the same budget to work with, then there'd be 48,000 different jobs, and there'd be other created industries. It's like matter---- it wouldn't be destroyed; it'd only change forms.

And it's not fair to say advanced technologies wouldn't have resulted b/c it wasn't NASA per se that developed them; it was the people.

 

I disagree 100000% with your opinion, but you have the right to it.

However let me ask you, what do any of those things have to do with each other? Looking for life outside of our planet has nothing to do with ghosts or the like.

Also we have explored well less than 1% of the universe. What we have discovered so far basically means nothing when it comes to what we may. In fact what we HAVE discovered is that life is not only possible in many forms, but very very likely.

Like most have said, Im not sure you're letting yourself understand and contemplate why things like this really are important.

 

I see what you did there.....well played...

 

How? It would just be government jobs*then.

We get it, you hate smart people.

 

None of that is true. For all you know, the government could have spent the same amount of money and created 10K less jobs and 5 less industries too. You're making an assumption not based in real world logic but from a flawed philosophical standpoint. Jobs and industry are not like matter at all.

 

What makes you think they have currency in the first place? Or are even as evolved as we are?
FYI all that money you guys are *****ing about spending drives tons of industries. Including some of the private corporations.

Not really. What we do know is the technology does exist because of NASA. Saying it would exist anyways is pretty ego centric of you and to do so with zero proof.

 

no just you....

 

Seriously, you're just making stuff up though. You cannot under any circumstance tell me that if NASA was defunded, and all that money was spent anywhere else, we'd have gotten the return we did. It takes money to invent new technologies that bring about new industries.

And considering the digital age we are in those technologies are going to require even more money than inventing things did in the past.

 

I agree and again you are misquoting me as saying dissolve it all, I don't mean that at all....it can be streamlined, and made better at a lower cost. The fact we are spending 400B on trying to find something that there is no shred of evidence is there is nuts to me...it is a waste...

develop equipment, technology, and all of the wonderful things the new digital age grants us is what I would like to see, develop stuff WE use and can use instead of gambling 400B away finding other life forms....

I dont buy the "wel we need to find life forms in order to develop this stuff"........we dont, develop it another way, they are the smartest people in the world, they will figure it out.....

I have always said and will always say America right now needs more Math and Science generation....thats what sets nations apart, so for that I agree I have no problem spending liberally (ehh see what I did there) on it.....but just stop with ET or trying to find another planet to possiblly live on....stop.....I like Earth, I love people...the fu%k am I going to do on Mars?

and lastly we just disagree on the cost of it because of where we fall politically.....of course development of new age stuff cost more, but it will cost alot more whenever the Government is involved...it is fact, it cost more, and isnt as efficient....

Schooling, housing, banking, mail etc anything the Govt is in cost more to operate...you know what runs great, and that we all enjoy for a fair price.....Big Macs, Cellphones, Taco Bell.....stuff the Govt doesn't have their hands into directly...