Re: NASA Mars mission funding - better spent on paleo?

[Jura <pristichampsus@yahoo.com>]

While the Mars mission might not have been the best
use of NASA's funds, compared to a Europa, or Titan
mission, it was still worthwhile as far as I'm
concerned. 

Besides the fact that I am one of those
"go-there-at-any-cost-damn-the-practical-gains
people," the fact that NASA spent 400 million bucks to
do this should be taken into consideration; mostly
because this is not a lot of money. 

The lay public always seems to get told about how much
money NASA is spending to do the things they do.
Rarely does the public get to hear about all the many
breakthroughs that NASA tech has made, which we take
advantage of in modern society. More importantly, few
people are told about the fact that NASA eats up about
0.5% of the national budget. 

At the risk of taking this off on a political tangent,
the real crimes of bureaucracy should be leveled at
how our government decides to spread our tax resources
around. 

For comparison consider that NASA spent $400 million
on landing a probe on Mars. Meanwhile, today our
government will spend MORE than that amount of money
on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Alternatively,
consider that NASA's mission was the equivalent of ONE
Russian anti-aircraft Cyprus missile, or half the cost
of a low-end B-2 spirit stealth bomber.

At the end of the day, we will learn something from
the NASA mission; even if it's not much at all. Still
that is a greater use of funds than giving it to the
defense department. 

How about a little follow up question to this? The U.S
government just spent 42 million dollars to mail out
(a week late) letters telling people that they will be
getting a rebate check from the government. How could
that money have been better put to use in everyone's
respective fields?

Jason




--- hammeris1@bellsouth.net wrote:

> Well, like everyone else I'll monitor the landing
> tomorrow night and follow the progress of the
> mission, but let me assure all paleontologists on
> this list that this mission is not by any stretch of
> the imagination "approved of" by all
> physicists/engineers.  Many of us feel the knowledge
> gained will be minimal, and the facts found will do
> little more than make a lot of philosophical
> speculation that cannot be proved until a much, much
> more detailed examination of Mars can be made in the
> somewhat-far future when robotics will be advanced
> enough such that a large payload landing craft can
> be practically built to go there.  There is no real
> practical method of a 'manned' landing there - the
> hassles of dealing with the environment would
> undermine any work of value that could be done there
> - I don't think the general public really grasps
> just how hostile Mars is to human life, and the
> enormous costs required to protect a human being in
> a suit there.  Anyway . . .
> 
> . . . at the risk of driving some
> go-there-at-any-cost-damn-the-practical-gains people
> out there crazy, could some of you describe what the
> funding for this mission could have accomplished for
> your field if it had been distributed to projects
> here?  I believe the figure is around $400M (above
> and beyond the original estimated $325M.)
> 
> There is SO much on our own planet that we know
> little or nothing about, with much more "immediate"
> impact on our lives and who/what we are and where we
> came from let alone the planet we live on, that
> spending so much time/effort/resources at this level
> of our technology seems not much bang for the buck. 
> Of course, this arguement could go on and on about
> curing social ills, etc., but I'm just talking about
> this particular corner of the issue.
> 
> The discovery of the monster pliosaur last year has
> a much more profound impact on my life (and alot of
> others) than a few scraps of soil chemistry on a
> dried out dead husk  hundreds of millions of
> kilometers away could ever have.
> 
> What would be the "top ten" for more funding on the
> Mesozoic, so to speak?
> 


"I am impressed by the fact that we know less about many modern [reptile] types 
than we do of many fossil groups." - Alfred S. Romer