Here’s an interesting discussion that came up on an earlier post.
Kathy: The space program is stupid. That money should have been spent on something more useful.
Me: I’m glad we went to the moon, but I don’t see a need to go back. I’m very excited about unmanned space exploration and astronomy, though.
Morticia: Manned space exploration has already had some payoffs, and it will be very important for the long-term future of humanity.
Your thoughts?
Filed under: philosophy of science |
Throne and Altar 
I am so damm tired of hearing about Debt Cielings, Terrorism, Rape-on-Campus and all the usual dreary crap. I need to know that the human race will continue to build itself into a future of exploration, advancement, and enlightenment. Yes, the payoffs are important, but what ever happened to climbing a mountain just because it’s there? What’s happened to the spirit of Boldly Going Where Man Has Gone Before? How rare and wonderful is the mind of Man, and how awesome are it’s achievements. I just can’t beleive we as a race will simply use up all the resources of this world and then die out. I hope I live to see the day when the first astronauts land on mars, and know my contribution to this remarkable species ment something.
I am so damm tired of hearing about Debt Ceilings, Terrorism, Rape-on-Campus and all the usual dreary crap. I need to know that the human race will continue to build itself into a future of exploration, advancement, and enlightenment. Yes, the payoffs are important, but what ever happened to climbing a mountain just because it’s there? What’s happened to the spirit of Boldly Going Where No Man Has Gone Before? How rare and wonderful is the mind of Man, and how awesome are it’s achievements. I just can’t beleive we as a race will simply use up all the resources of this world and then die out. I hope I live to see the day when the first astronauts land on mars, and know my contribution to this remarkable species ment something
That money should have been spent on something more useful.
Yeah, like payoffs to the black world to keep them from going off like a Roman candle.
Space exploration is important, but we need to know where is the limit. To know the budget of exploration, pay off, and acceptance of knowledge of aerospace by current academician and researcher.
Without space exploration, satellite, world telecommunication, internet, will not grown as fast as currently growing. Vacuum is one of the subject that very hard to master even for experience engineer, limitation of material to be selected, limitation of book to study.
Without knowing of vacuum technology, many advance product that we have today is not going to be created. This only one of sub subject that being separated from aerospace studies.
Other product that being ignited by space exploration is hydrogen fuel, green energy, satellite, light weight material, heat resistant material, solar panel, UV protector film, hand phone, and GPS.
Look, I made the point (maybe a little too subtle) that space exploration was all about the glorification of man, and certainly nothing to do with the glorification of God. Am still waiting for Morticia/ Paige to tell me how space exploration honors God.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Pretty hard to justify this wanton extravagance just for a selfish euphoric and fleeting feeling.. Wow, man walked on the moon.!
Yeah, so what? Think about it..
More pressing business on planet Earth… Pull your heads out of the clouds,, people.
And I say once again, we did not need space exploration to develop technologies.
Just think what could have been achieved for the good of mankind with all that wasted billions upon billions…
Space exploration is good. NASA sucks. Especially at building rockets. And launching them.
I find no more theological meaning from man’s exploration of outer space than I do with his exploration of say… the deep sea or high energy physics… which is to say, a fair amount of theological significance, but nothing that singles out “space” for special comment.
The fact that the US had, and continues to have, “A Space Program,”, i.e., a single monolithic centrally planned program, just about says it all. Free market principles would have lead to equivalently valuable discoveries and technological developments at a much lower cost. No doubt this is the future of space exploration as governments spiral toward the end of their great ponzi schemes.
Manned space flight, especially in the age of advanced robotics, is nothing but a national phallic symbol. Good to see the Chinese now hell bent on such stupidity–they could use a good phallic symbol. It multiplies risk, and thus cost, by probably an order of magnitude. There is today very little a man can do in space that a robot could not do for less money, less margin for safety, and less artifical atmosphere. On the other hand there are zillions of things a robot can do that no man can do anywhere. This was stupid, and becomes ever more stupid as technology advances: National greatness myth-making and little more.
Space, however, does have ever increasingly important military and national security implications. Take out geo satellites and GPS, which was of course originally a purely military application, goes down–and with it a crucial chunk of the US Military. Similarly, scramble the geo signals so that only US Mil issued receivers can decode GPS, and only the bad guys GPSs go down (along with all the plebes’). We need, for the foreseeable future, to be able to shoot bad guys’ satellites and shoot the things that they’ll shoot ours with. So government does have a legitimate role in space and space programs, but nothing that would justify the waste in dollars and lives that has up to now been made.
So you think ‘that space exploration was all about the glorification of man, and certainly nothing to do with the glorification of God’, eh, kathy? A certain Buzz Aldin woul like a word with you, re. space expploration, and wether or not it had any purpose least of all for a nonexistent ‘God’).
…and I’m sure you’d ‘turn the other cheek’, just as a certain journalist did in the past. As he picked his teeth from the floor, just after saying less than what you just have, to Buzz Aldrin.