Hacker News Reader

Comment by heimatau | Hacker News Reader

Anyone in this field says it's extremely complicated. NASA (or ESA) probably would solve this, if we didn't underfund them so much. To those advocating to privatizing, I don't see how the private sector could solve it by themselves. Just like McDonalds didn't land on the moon. It's extremely complicated. The task is going to require a lot more scientists and innovators to understand our weather patterns, it's my opinion that the best way to do that, is through the large governments of the world (not just USA's govt).

View on HN

Why the blind faith in NASA? They're capable of screwing up royally. And they're capable of great success. Pure money is not the only part of the solution.

Blind? It's not blind [1,2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies 2. http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Spin-off_tec...

I think NASA is great, all that space stuff. I remember when I was in college I got a personal tour at the Johnson Space Center, and I got to put on a glove that had been worn on the surface of the moon (it was in a closet with all the used space suits). However, despite my interest in science and space, I feel like its a lot to ask of average (tax paying) people to pay roughly 800 Billion dollars for a tiny handful of useful spin offs. The satellites have great military and commercial usefulness, but a lot of money has been spent that would have been better to leave with the people that made it.

Hmm. Solid point about cost/benefits. I'm sure more could be done to improve the benefits of NASA inventions. As for that solution, I wouldn't know where to start. I just think when it comes to modeling, who would know better than NASA (or other space programs)? They have data from various planets and moons, that might help improve our models here on earth.

When the event occurs that wipes out the ability of humans to live on Earth, no amount of money spent on space exploration will seem like it will have been too much.

Such an event is coming sooner or later, from one source or another; probably not in our lifetimes but we're so far off from good solutions that "we have plenty of time" is not a good excuse to not be investing in space.

As an "average (tax paying)" person there is a list a mile long of shit we spend tax dollars on that I'd rather cut over space exploration, with the military (over $500 billion a year) being an obvious start.

I am not sure that this evacuate Earth angle is going to work as a funding motive, even if there was a catastrophic asteroid it is far more realistic to build domes here than on Mars.

An average of 16 billion a year for 50 years is different than the sum total of 800 billion which is meant to shock people.

How much has war cost our country and left us with little benefit. we spend almost the entire historical budget for NASA in one year at war.

Maybe NASA is not as useful anymore? I don't know. Maybe the money would be better spent making our country less dependent on oil? Well, actually, one of the spinoff technologies was the solar cell so it seems to be helping to that aim. Who knows what the next thing NASA does that improves humanity as a whole will be?

Why is 800 billion over the course of 57 years a big ask but 2 trillion over 10 years to invade Iraq isn't? Wouldn't that money be better left with the people that made it? I don't even think there have been a tiny handful of useful spin offs from the Iraq war.

Was the parent comment arguing in favor of $2 trillion for invading Iraq? I don't think so, they didn't mention anything about Iraq or being in favor of that sort of military spending, so what's the point of that sort of straw man? Why not focus on what was actually said?

Oh, I'm well aware, having worked on a NASA program for the prime contractor for 2 years (and being a life-long space nerd). I love the idea of NASA, but the reality that I encountered was quite jarringly different. The culture was toxic to any new thought, or any outside opinion. I fled (at great personal expense and stress) before the toxicity of the environment broke up my marriage and eroded my soul. My wife is a veteran of NASA HQ and ultimately left for similar reasons -- the agency just wasn't interested in actually doing anything that wouldn't further its own political interests.

Disclaimer, of course, is that my experiences only apply to the specific NASA site I was at (that's why my profile says "reformed sounding rocket engineer"). I think I've posted extensively about that job before.

My point was simply this: NASA is now a large hierarchical organization whose primary goal (as must be the goal of every hierarchy) is to perpetuate itself. The parent made it sound like all that's needed to solve some of these complex problems is to open the fiscal floodgates to NASA. It's going to take more than money. It's going to take a culture change.

Space exploration, nor the serving of food to those in space, was a goal of McDonald's. There was no sufficient market opportunity. However, is there a market opportunity for improved weather prediction? Who would benefit and make money?

McDonalds is hyperbolic language. There is no market in space, even for SpaceX. Private incentives don't exist in a pure market fashion. Only the ultra-weathly would be the market and they are a small bunch (in the thousands of people) as opposed to the billions in the bottom/middle classes. Also, I wouldn't say the government is the market because that's inflated and not real (always a budget cut away from disappearing).

Hence why private interests won't work.

P.S. I think SpaceX has a difficult task to appeal to the public. When they can do that, on a regular basis, I'll change my position. Or if some weather company is trying to be disruptive with technology and innovation, then I'll modify my view. (But most of us know innovation in the private sector doesn't always reach the public)

ECMWF charges for their weather forecasts, which are more accurate than the free American ones.

There are lots of small commercial weather forecasting firms who sell to people like securities traders. A single high-temperature day can reduce corn yield by 1%.

Here's a startup that had a $1 billion exit to Monsanto: http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/10/4823004/monsanto-bets-the... Their business is a combination of weather and climate.

In short, there's a big market for this stuff.

Please note NOAA is a Department of Commerce organization. Weather prediction is crucial to any logistics operation, and all businesses live or die on logistics.

the only goal private enterprises have is MAKING MONEY. Pretending to predict weather is not a goal in itself.

Also interesting to read this while BBC are ending their centenarian relationship with the Met Office for weather forecasting due to new privatization demands: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/aug/23/met-office-lo....

At least they can continue to work together for severe forecasts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com