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Comment by RA_Fisher | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a good time to reflect on the work: "Whitey on the Moon" https://youtu.be/goh2x_G0ct4 It'd be one thing if this was private money, instead it comes out of the pocketbooks of those suffering. That's rarely acknowledged.

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I think, if we want to play 'what-about', then it's fair to say that the cost of the New Horizons mission ("approximately $700 million over 15 years", per Wikipedia) is a drop in the ocean compared to the US Dept of Defence's direct spending on the 2003-2010 Iraq war, which was more than $700 billion, which came just as much out of the wallet of the US taxpayer (who is both rich and poor, and separately, both content and suffering), and as a little-known side-effect, killed a bunch more people than New Horizons has so far.

Spending on space exploration has been in debate and protested since the 60's, and probably even earlier than that. Not to say that it isn't worth discussing, only to counter the comment about being rarely acknowledged.

Not to mention that government finances are nothing like private finances. Governments are assumed to be infinitely lived and their debt can always be paid by new debt. Debt isn’t the same thing for a government that it is for a private entity. For instance, only the government creates money. A Tbill is literally the government taking currency today and agreeing to give it out with interest over time. It was going to need to do that all along.

I say NASA’s budget could be much greater. And employment for all could be guaranteed. Political movements to the otherwise are bad for society. They actively hurt society and guard against betterment. We’re talking dark ages vs progress.

Is that right? I hadn't seen much discussion of that.

It would be very easy to figure out via few simple searches. For example: "About 164,000,000 results" in Google for popular search "is space race worth it?" And 41 million of search results for "space race economic impact", and so on. This question has been discussed almost on every single forum I've been registered in my life, including multiple times on HN.

During the 60's more people opposed the Apollo program spending than supported it, specifically for the reasons you allude to, spend that money on social programs, etc... De-funding these types of programs has been a major talking point of almost every election since then. The discussion has even been renewed quite a bit since SpaceX has came into existence.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/moond...

This would come over to me more if it was not for the fact I also hear these same people complain about SpaceX send tourists to the moon and maybe landing a probe.

More often the complaint is "I hate that you are spending money on space rather on the things I am interested in".

I have no objection at all to spending one's own money or money given with consent. Of course, some of the money SpaceX spends isn't given with consent (like NASA).

It sounds like you just don't like taxes? I'm not sure what this has to do specifically with space? Nobody personally signs off on everything their tax dollars are spent on.

Nor can they. The cost of that would exceed the potential benefits.

Unless of course there was a website you could log into and pick the top-10 things you want your tax dollars spent on. And an accompanying Law directing that x-percent (>60) of your (unmanipulated) choices be apportioned accordingly to the programs you choose.

The cost of that would be relatively close to nil (except for those who'd rather you see you with no choice at all).

There is a lot more to it than just making choices avaliable.

Let's say you are right.

I do not want taxes turned into a market. Doing that is a patch for not doing civics better in the first place.

When more of us get involved, the funding scenario inproves right a long with a lot of overdue things.

I am completely willing to revisit this idea when we are doing more of the basics right.

Which is why it's important to make your opinion heard regarding how it's spent.

In a simply literal sense this may be true, but it's also misleading.

(What is true is that the only people to have seen the far side of the moon directly are white male Americans, but New Horizons is not a manned mission)

Does this guy know how to party or what?

Hard to see, I know, but there actually are people who can't afford to party.

There need to be more black engineers at NASA. There have been great successes, but there is room for improvement.

"Two NASA employees received awards at Saturday’s (Feb. 11, 2017) annual Black Engineer of the Year Award gala in Washington."

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-employees-honored-at-the-3...

The movie "Hidden Figures" showed some of the problems NASA culture had with integration, this Air and Space article shows more of that struggle.

"How NASA Joined the Civil Rights Revolution Integration came to the nation’s space agency in the mid-1960s"

https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/how-nasa-joine...

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