Tooth-grinding infographic: Cost to keep SETI going vs. Kill Brown People.

johnson1010 · Sat May 07, 2011 8:56 am

This might be one of the deepest problems with the united states.

How can we justify spending so damned much money on attack hellicopters and waging unnecessary wars and not be able to squeeze a drop for knowledge expanding programs like SETI?

http://io9.com/#!5798730/the-cost-of-ke ... ison-chart

Dexter · Sat May 07, 2011 9:01 am

I'm all for cutting government spending, and particularly "defense" spending, but comparing it to random dollar amounts in the private sector is not very informative.

Go get some private funding -- they really can't find some rich people who wouldn't want their name on something to help fund it?

johnson1010 · Sat May 07, 2011 9:25 am

I don't think it was to say, "grab some of that starbucks money" but just to compare it and say, "we spend this much on coffee. Can't we spend a bit to answer one of the fundamental questions of existence?"

But yeah...

johnson1010 · Sat Aug 13, 2011 9:29 am

http://io9.com/5830127/success-the-seti ... ack-online

yay!

Kevin · Mon Aug 15, 2011 7:10 pm

Here is a brown person asking about the justification of spending money on space projects when so much is left to be done here at home.

Interbane · Mon Aug 15, 2011 9:47 pm


	Quote: Here is a brown person asking about the justification of spending money on space projects when so much is left to be done here at home.

Spending money on space projects is better than spending money to kill each other.

johnson1010 · Tue Aug 16, 2011 8:49 am

I was not comparing the cost of SETI to the cost of taking care of our own people. I was comparing the cost of SETI vs. killing people on purpose for no good reason other than because we jumped into a swamp with both feet.

In the long term there is no doubting that space is humanity's only future. There are too many of us, we all want a high standard of living, and it will take another 2 earths to supply it to us.

What kind of galvanizing force would it be to know for certain there are other intelligences out there, and that we can talk with them? (a thousand+ year lag not withstanding)

We broadcast a show now called "How it's made". Where we show everybody how to make grand pianos, fiber optic cabling, and automobiles. What if somewhere in the night sky there is an alien version of "how it's made" that is demonstrating in plain terms how to make a teleportation machine, how to extract free energy from the zero point field, or clean and easy cold-fusion reactors that would fit in your shed?


	Quote: Neil Degrasse Tyson: First of all, let’s clarify what the NASA budget is. Do you realize that the $850 billion dollar bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50-year running budget of NASA? And so when someone says, “We don’t have enough money for this space probe,” I’m asking, no, it’s not that you don’t have enough money, it’s that the distribution of money that you’re spending is warped in some way that you are removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow. You remember the ’60s and ’70s. You didn’t have to go more than a week before there’s an article in Life magazine, “The Home of Tomorrow,” “The City of Tomorrow,” “Transportation of Tomorrow.” All of that ended in the 1970s. After we stopped going to the Moon, it all ended. We stopped dreaming. And so I worry that the decision that Congress makes doesn’t factor in the consequences of those decisions on tomorrow. Tomorrow’s gone. They’re playing for the quarterly report, they’re playing for the next election cycle, and that is mortgaging the actual future of this nation, and the rest of the world is going to pass us by.

Kevin · Fri Aug 26, 2011 7:13 pm


	Interbane wrote: Spending money on space projects is better than spending money to kill each other.

Sure. Pie-in-the-sky. And speaking of spending money on killing people, I wonder what percentage of space research dollars is given to the military!

Interbane · Fri Aug 26, 2011 8:02 pm


	Quote: Sure. Pie-in-the-sky. And speaking of spending money on killing people, I wonder what percentage of space research dollars is given to the military!

What percentage total, of all government spending on space exploration? I'm sure there was a point to your rhetorical question, but the military does fund space based research projects which have beneficial impacts for civilians. It's the nature of space that it pushes the envelope for what engineering is required. This trickle-down effect can take place without developing sonic satellite spikes or space based arab-frying lasers. Well, Star Wars was intended as icbm defense, but who wouldn't use a laser for offense if one was developed?

johnson1010 · Sat Aug 27, 2011 9:25 am


	Quote: Sure. Pie-in-the-sky. And speaking of spending money on killing people, I wonder what percentage of space research dollars is given to the military!

That's kind of the whole point of this thread, don't you think?

It's unfortunate that the engine that drives our technological growth in this country is first, money, second, killing people.

I totally agree that we would be better off spending our resources trying to increase the well being of everyone on the planet, rather than finding bigger and better ways to hold a knife to eachother's throats.

As for pie in the sky, sure it's a slim chance that there is a show like how it's made being broadcast at us, but we know of at least one instance where such a show is being broadcast. From us. Any any civilization out there which can receive it will know more about our culture, and will know that somewhere there are beings which make grand pianos.

And slim likelyhood has never stopped us from blowing our rousources in the past. We are a few trillion dollars in the hole allegedly fighting in the sand over something that never materialized.

There is no argument that the country, hell, the whole world would have been better off if any of those resources would have been diverted to scientific research.

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