Cassini will make its final close flyby of Saturn‘s moon Titan on April 21
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
"Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace."
That doesn't sound like a great system.
What we can accomplish together in peace is breathtaking.
Despots are created and thrive on the backs of hungry and hopeless citizens.
I'm not saying the US currently does either (feeds or polices the world), but just pointing out that spending the military budget on food will not change much.
The dangerously seductive, utopian naivety of such statements rubs me the wrong way.
I wish all the kumbaya nature's-way-is-stupid-here's-my-brilliant-social-engineering-idea-instead people would collectively go and... try their social experiments elsewhere.
Countries that try them may not be utopias, but they do have consistently high citizen satisfaction scores.
Perhaps a little more realism and a little less moralising would be helpful.
To add: these science programs are good examples of collective action. Can anyone seriously imagine Facebook or Google paying for a project like Cassini?
To which one are you referring, China or North Korea?
Btw I agree 100% that change is necessary and "natural". Vacuous hippie statements are not "it" though -- rational discourse and careful simulation is. This cannot be another "Oh, I had an idea in the bathtub, how about we try this ideology on the entire world's population?".
Given the room for disaster, and history's record of emotionally-loaded ideologies not backed by facts leading to such disaster quite reliably, that rhetoric is utterly unconvincing (as well as scary).
Instead of veiled insults, just re-read the original utopian quote. It's nothing like what you're describing. In fact, it's exactly the opposite -- a direct call to action.
I think you ought to think a little harder about what defense and military spending really is: welfare for engineers and those desperate or foolish enough to test their inventions. It's "from each ... to each ..." but under a different system of values.
Is there someone else who you are thinking of as an originator who was "anything but a communist" as you put it? I'm more than willing to listen if there is.
So then instead of trying to change the world for the better, we ought to just submit to a naturalistic fallacy and live our lives in ignorance of the ways society could be better organised? It seems like you're criticising Communism based on this quote, which is in fact supposed to show how life ought to be under Socialism, rather than how we ought to implement it with capitalism.
What gives you the ideat that capitalism is "nature's way"? This couldn't be further than the truth.
Am I the only one here who misses the balanced, informed, steady and smooth narration of Carl Sagan et al of yesteryear STEM media? Now all I hear is this over-ambitious, over-animated, low-content, and stressed voice with absurdly long pauses. Almost like somebody is shouting at you.
BBC are terrible for it in the UK, it seems like a race to the bottom. Whoever can superficially appear the most terribly "passionate" about whatever they're talking about gets the job...
Cassini rocks though, what an achievement for mankind the whole saga has been!
They might not have known the gap was there, either. Much of what is now known about the structure of Saturn's rings was first discovered by the Voyagers.
Perhaps I'm putting too much emphasis on the naturally pristine state of things around Saturn, but I've read that also is a priority of researchers, at least in some circumstances.
[1] https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/navigation/
And there are gaps that have been identified, but they don't care if the spacecraft gets destroyed now, so that's why they're doing these bold maneuvers now
I've generally decided not to comment on people's spelling and grammar on HN because it doesn't really add to the discussion. I do sometimes make a point of italicising the correct spelling in my response if I have something substantial to add to the discussion :)
But as a non-native speaker myself the homophone mistakes really bother me (though I concede native speakers are likely to make these kind of mistakes in their native language - and I include myself in this)
But it's a continuing effort, however I noticed this kind of mistake has increased in past years. I suspect autocorrect is to blame
Cassini has been around Saturn for a long time now and I don't think there will be too many surprises on its final cruise.
And, if there are, Cassini will just have discovered a new way to destroy space probes.
Here's a collection of such images: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/images/index.html