To Mars again @ 7:50AM EDT tomorrow morning July 30th. Weather looks good! Perfect timing for a cup of coffee.  

streaming on https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

 

Total mission cost is estimated at $2.7 billion USD. Just think of what we could have done for the world's poor and sick if those monies had been spent otherwise. Priorities? IMNSHO opinion they are in the wrong place. I know this is a politically incorrect post and will probably be locked/deleted but it needed to be said.

Edited July 29, 20205 yr by W2DR

The same cost/benefit arguments were made 60 years ago regarding the Mercury and Apollo programs and they'll be voiced again as we're getting ready to go back to the Moon. It's never a good time to spend a serious chunk of change on anything that doesn't materialize into tangible results in the short term. Like it or not, there is a international and commercial race for the resources of the Moon; to mine asteroids and to explore Mars; not for exploration`s sake. For resources.  We`re to blame here at Avsim. We`re into FPS, fluidity. We`ll soon all be needing more bandwidth too. That`s rare minerals. Satellites. A whole lot of 'em ...   

You wanna make the argument that space exploration is a waste of valuable resources that could be put towards health-care, education, and other humanitarian ends? Go ahead. But making that argument on a social media that is about the most socially useless thing that can be done with money; whether it`s to debate how many angels can sit in a PMDG cockpit (with their wings folded) or for how long will we have to wait so that Microsoft get`s into seriously modeling bunny rabbits ('cause it can`t be so real without bunny rabbits according to this little girl sitting next to me here...) sounds moot to me. 

Everyday, money is spent on frivolous things. And the reason flight simming stuff  ain`t included in Red Cross care packages is because it`s a total waste of money.

Fortunately. 

 

Edited July 29, 20205 yr by CYXR

2 hours ago, W2DR said:

Total mission cost is estimated at $2.7 billion USD. Just think of what we could have done for the world's poor and sick if those monies had been spent otherwise. Priorities? IMNSHO opinion they are in the wrong place. I know this is a politically incorrect post and will probably be locked/deleted but it needed to be said.

 

2.7billion is a drop in the bucket of the usa budget. the military gets 250x that, not just once, but every single year. americans spend more than 140x that just gassing up their cars, every single year.. you could easily argue that neither of those things should be a priority. or that you could chop them by 1% and spend it on something better. if it's poverty or science, i don't care, but here we are. just keep in mind that there is quite a bit of value to scientific research on other planets even if the practical applications may not be immediately obvious.

meanwhile if you divide up the 2.7 billion among the 750 million or so people living in poverty across the globe, it works out to a couple bucks each. it could maybe help them for a day or two but isn't going to do squat for fixing the systemic, cultural, or resource issues that allow for hundreds of millions of people to be in poverty in the first place, while jeff bezos can earn $13billion just in a single day. heck, if he paid taxes on those capital gains at the same rate normal americans pay on their income it would cover the cost of the mars launch right there. (hint: he doesn't pay taxes at the same rate either) 

now obviously food aid programs and other development programs are, or at least can be, more effective than just dividing up the money, so saying that just giving everybody a few bucks doesn't really solve anything is somewhat disingenuous of an argument i will freely admit.  but keep in mind we already participate in those too. (the usa spends around 3-4billion every year on food aid.) now you can easily say that number should be higher and i would totally agree !!! but i'm not convinced that chopping scientific research is the place to go to find that money. remember that the usa just recently cut corporate taxes by more than 800 billion dollars so they could spend it buying back their stock. sad to say but solving human problems is simply not a priority for americans and most likely never will be. 

cheers!,-andy crosby

It's not that 2.7 billion was the cost of this project: It's what it was spent on, and who exactly got the money.  I'm always curious about how and where enormous sums of money are allocated. I would just love to see the spread sheet costs on this money.  

Don't get me wrong.  I have always been a big believer in space exploration, even as a kid.  I had book shelves full of sci fi books and magazines back then.  Now, I can't wait 'till Perseverance lands, and starts exploring the Martian surface.  But to paraphrase, someone once said  "A billion here, a billion there.  Pretty soon, you're talking about real money".  

1 hour ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

"just planetary cattle." 

Cheers, Rob.

Love that phrase 😂

Edited July 30, 20205 yr by Paul Golding

11 hours ago, W2DR said:

Total mission cost is estimated at $2.7 billion USD. Just think of what we could have done for the world's poor and sick if those monies had been spent otherwise. Priorities? IMNSHO opinion they are in the wrong place. I know this is a politically incorrect post and will probably be locked/deleted but it needed to be said.

Do not flatter yourself my friend 😉, it is not politically incorrect, this is unfortunately a prevalent notion in a very large portion of the population.

What would 2.7 b do for the poor and the sick ? Or that matter 270 b ?  If we have learned something since the Sixties it is that pouring money on welfare does not do much but develop dependence and poverty and the social plagues which go along. In the US and Europe alike. And I see, in my country, that the huge so-called social justice budget makes us spend too little in science (civil and military spendings).

The US agency that I have always admired , I wish we had one in my country and Europe, is the DoD DARPA. Knowing to invest in the future. Bluntly speaking,  the ability of a country to spend billions in failed technological ventures to get the one technology which will make the difference in our world. The never ending search for the grail, the technological rupture. Few countries know how to do that on a scale large enough. Besides the US, Israel and maybe China. Spending money on space and military research -  DARPA, NASA, ESA, DUNE, LHC, LIGO, Mars, Pluto , Hubble and the Webb telescopes etc -  beats food stamps anyday for our future. 

Edited July 30, 20205 yr by Dominique_K

58 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

LIGO

LIGO is a thing of great beauty. It`s in that mysterious  area of things where science becomes art. In my book it ranks way up there with the Pyramids of Egypt; also said to be a total waste of resources at the time.

Ready to watch teh stream in 5 minutes ^^.. next to work obviously

3 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

Spending money on space and military research -  DARPA, NASA, ESA, DUNE, LHC, LIGO, Mars, Pluto , Hubble and the Webb telescopes etc -  beats food stamps anyday for our future. 

If you're a single parent who, through no fault of your own, has just lost your job, has the landlord about to evict you, and don't have enough money to buy food for your kids the future doesn't mean a heck of a lot. Top that off with a government who is about to drastically cut what little benefits you have and I would suggest that the future contributions derived from the space program (and will continue to be many) aren't all that important right now. It's all about priorities. And maybe that's why a very large portion of the population carries that as a prevalent notion. While $2.7B USD is, I would agree, a drop in the bucket it's just on of many, many such "drops" that could be much better spent elsewhere..........Doug

16 minutes ago, W2DR said:

If you're a single parent who, through no fault of your own, has just lost your job, has the landlord about to evict you, and don't have enough money to buy food for your kids the future doesn't mean a heck of a lot. Top that off with a government who is about to drastically cut what little benefits you have and I would suggest that the future contributions derived from the space program (and will continue to be many) aren't all that important right now. It's all about priorities. And maybe that's why a very large portion of the population carries that as a prevalent notion. While $2.7B USD is, I would agree, a drop in the bucket it's just on of many, many such "drops" that could be much better spent elsewhere..........Doug

Put your money where your mouth is: quit paying your ISP fees and donate them to your local foodbank. 

I work two or three days a week at our local food bank and my annual donation to them is a whole lot more than my ISP fees. I know what poverty feels like...I've been there. Maybe that's why I understand a bit more than most folks about the problem......Doug

19 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

 

Wow, this topic did stray from a positive to a negative.  

 

And if it gets any worse.......we all know what will take place!  

IMHO space exploration and our understanding thereof is quite important, but context is of course key. If a person is starving then they probably won't be interested in watching the latest rocket launch..

So, we need to be ready with the obscene amount of warheads to fend off the incoming "extinction-level-event" causing meteor which is hurtling towards us..  which we will detect sooner and further away thanks to advances in space exploration and science..

Besides, no one can deny that using a car made by your own company as a payload demonstrator rather than spending a stupid amount of money on engineering a steel block was definitely a superb PR exercise and proof of concept. I suspect a bit of mathematics was involved, but "How heavy is that Tesla? Yup, that'll do" is an excellent short version.

This should be interesting too:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/one-step-closer-to-touching-asteroid-bennu

What is worth bearing in mind with this, is that space exploration and related aerospace stuff which NASA involves itself in, is something which ends up creating all manner of spin offs which benefit mankind in very many ways, and quite often the poorest among us. Here are just a few of them...

NASA experimented with using algae as a food source for long durations in space. From this research, we learned that some algae contains fatty acids similar to those found in human breast milk. As a direct result of this, it has improved the characteristics of a number of baby food formulas as well as many of the medicinal supplies used in regions hit by famine. But nearer to home, when you get on a bus or in your car to go and buy some of that baby food, or when you come in for a landing in an aeroplane, you can thank NASA for improving the surface grip of the road or runway you are on. Those grooves you see in the runway surface and in many road surfaces too, is based on NASA research into reducing the amount of runway accidents. This safety technology trickle-down extends to tires too. When developing the cushioning mechanisms for the Mars landers, NASA collaborated with Goodyear to develop a particularly hard wearing material. Goodyear then went further with this research and ended up using it to make a much safer and more hard wearing tire which retains its tread integrity for longer.

Quite often, certainly in the UK, less well-off people are housed in high rise buildings, and some of those have had fires with tragic consequences. But one of the things which can make this less of a risk, is the development of the heat shields for re-entry, particularly the Apollo missions, and much of this stuff is to be found in heat resistant paint coatings, and fire resistant insulation foams used in many high rise buildings. But should the worst happen, and a building does catch fire, you can thank NASA for having developed a highly heat-resistant aluminium composite material which is used to construct spacecraft structures, because this material is also used in a number of earth bound applications, including being the material which the lightweight breathing apparatus that fire crews use is made from.

Like that cordless drill you have for your DIY? Or for that matter pretty much anything else which uses that kind of battery? Yup, that's down to NASA too. It's a spin off from their development of a portable drill for use by Apollo astronauts when drilling into the lunar surface to take samples. Or if you prefer a nice lie down to some DIY, that memory foam mattress on your bed is another NASA development when they were researching materials to reduce the stresses on passengers from aircraft seats in hard landings. And whilst you're at it, why not throw a space blanket over yourself to keep warm? The name is not a mere coincidence, space blankets were developed to insulate against heat in space, you can see early applications of this in the Apollo lunar modules, particularly the Lunar Lander. 

If you want a nice cheap snack, again you can thank NASA for this. Freeze-dried food was developed by NASA when they collaborated with Nestle. And whilst you're cooking it, if your smoke detector goes off, that's another NASA invention, being developed to alert astronauts to the presence of gases in their spacecraft. But if you prefer to use a microwave to heat your food up, guess where those LED readouts on the thing came from? Yup, it's no coincidence that LEDs started showing up on calculators and digital watches a few years after the Apollo moonshots. All that stuff was developed to make the readouts on the spacecraft lighter than the older flip number readouts which had been used prior to this.

There are many other such things developed by ESA, ROSCOSMOS and all the other space agencies too, way too many to list here, but to those who say it's a waste of money, if we removed all the things from our home and car etc which have been a direct result of these kind of endeavours, I suspect we  might change our tune. Yes it is difficult sometimes to see a direct benefit, but a little bit of research will show us  that there almost always is something of that nature which we all use and appreciate using.

It'll be no different for this Mars mission and the technology it has engendered. And who knows, maybe the cure for some disease is present in the rocks of Mars? Or there's some other wonder such as this awaiting discovery? Maybe not, but we won't know if we don't go there, and whilst we develop the technology to do this, we get all these spin off benefits.

 

Edited July 30, 20205 yr by Chock