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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

I once sat in a talk by a NASA Ames director (?) about his belief that even the tremendous cost for a manned mission to Mars would be "worth it" for the inspiration it would provide to the youth of the country to pursue STEM fields.

But then I thought -- wait, wouldn't it be much cheaper if we could harness the same kind of inspiration through Hollywood storytelling?

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You're looking at the costs vs benefits in isolation. We'd get far more than just a trip to mars.

Many of the technologies and research in to a wide range of medical fields (including long term isolation/social pressures) that are developed as a result of that endeavor would continue to pay dividends for generations after the trip.

However I am very much in favor of sending robots up first; build a place to actually go to and live in, then stock it with a lower order ecosystem, and THEN send anything we forgot with the human payload.

I think this is happening to a degree. I know of a guy, whose younger brother started reading up on physics after Big Hero 6.

Also didn't older tech-related movies on hackers inspire some of us?

Given the way the "Hackers at 20" article resonated, I'd say the answer is "YES": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10220853

i remember watching sneakers and feeling inspired at a young age!

Not necessarily. As a society, we spend a lot more on Hollywood storytelling than we do on space exploration. And certainly more than a mission to Mars would cost.

iirc (from the talk) a mission to Mars will cost a few trillion dollars (I forgot the exact figure, but somewhere between $1T and $10T). That's a lot more than Hollywood storytelling.

Maybe with current technology. But as technology continues to advance things will continue to get cheaper. What costs a trillion dollars today could cost a couple billion dollars in a not so distant future

Technology does not advance in a vacuum (pun intended). When you say that you are ignoring that the technology advanced because some of those trillions were spent in research, even though the research has more goals than enabling a manned mission to Mars.

...if you ignore inflation :)

Really? I've never heard a figure that high. I think the estimates currently are about $50B, spread out over 10 years or so.

Is this an allusion to the faked moon landing conspiracy theories...?

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