[Is Space Exploration a WASTE OF MONEY?] [scronx comment:] Wish I could agree with you, Belinda, but this time I simply can't. The US space program has made the country even more vainglorious and full of hubris than it already was. The US space race basically compelled the USSR to meet it step for step -- other countries too, no doubt. It's macabre department of the arms race. (I despise communism but Washington dealt with it in insane ways.)
I'm not sure that technological wizardry is an absolute or overall good. It dazzles the sheeple and gets them even more addicted to things than ever before -- keeping up with the Joneses in the computer age greatly exacerbates the throwaway culture.
Computers -- one of the 'benefits of the space rates most often touted - - of course are a grotesque example of this as every new breakthrough in them makes millions or billions of units obsolete. (Gee, where'd all those bulky heavy monitors, floppy disks and first-generation PCs end up?) Thrilled as I am with the ways computers have improved my life, there are definite downsides including much less time in motion outdoors. I'm addicted!
In addition, every new technical (e.g. digital) advance is immediately seized upon (if not commandeered) for purposes of ruining citizens' lives, destroying normalcy, and bludgeoning countries Israel doesn't like. Our ethics have died in inverse proportion to our ever-growing smarts. This boomer didn't enjoy growing up under the constant threat of nuke war -- now it's the direct war on our health and longevity with these voodoo shots.
This idea of humanity (or any portion of it) colonizing the moon, Mars or whatever is sheerest insanity. The excuse is given that we've ruined this planet -- I'm not sure how that entitles us to do the same to an endless chain of others. If there are "other" intelligent beings out there, what must they be thinking of this nonsense? How happy would our saner ancestors be with this picture. Shall we take up the obvious fraud of the moon walk etc.?
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Poster Comment:
She's a great lady and tipper of sacred cows, but dead wrong on this one. To answer her specific question, Space exploration IS a COLOSSAL waste of money, but also of human life, attention and brain cells.
The great Rivero has space fever too -- guess you can't have everything in one pundit. I covet for them (as the fundies say) the impulse to consider other perspectives.