Comment by blisterpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blisterpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

Almost more significant than the new Perseverance mission is the old Curiosity mission (https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission-updates/) which has been operating for 3,034 (Earth) days since its landing on August 6, 2012. (Technically it's been 3,116 days since the landing, but Nasa reports the smaller number, perhaps because of some downtime.)

One can only imagine the internal debates and budgetary fights around a new rover mission to Mars while a team is still actively operating a very successful and healthy existing rover. Luckily, this new mission did get the green light.

One also might speculate, amidst these multi-trillion dollar "stimulus" bills, what lost opportunities (no pun intended) there have been, had Nasa been budgeted more than its puny $22.6 billion allotment (as of 2020, 5% up from the previous fiscal year).

I can hardly imagine a better investment in the future of the country, the future of science, and the future of humankind, than to explore the Solar System and develop the necessary technologies to enable humans to move off-planet in large numbers.

The 3,034 days refers to how many sols (Martian days) it has lasted. The discrepancy is due to the fact that a Martian day is roughly 24 hours 40 minutes long. That extra 40 minutes over roughly 3000 days leads to the 82 day difference.

Ah you're right, they did say Solar days.

I imagine it's similar to the LHC where an expensive project over decades breeds a lot of new technology and techniques (if you imagine the statistical equipment required to condense hundreds of petabytes of data over multiple years down to about 100 points on a graph, let alone building CMS and ATLAS).

Opportunity had been driving around Mars since 2004 when Curiosity landed.

When NASA does their typical "get kids interested in science" outreach programs the kids they talk to have lived their whole lives with something driving around Mard.

> I can hardly imagine a better investment in the future of the country, the future of science, and the future of humankind, than to explore the Solar System and develop the necessary technologies to enable humans to move off-planet in large numbers.

If space exploration is so importanr to the future of humankind, why do Americans have to bear all the expense?

A “puny” $22.6bn buys a lot of food and houses a lot of homeless people.

>If space exploration is so importanr to the future of humankind, why do Americans have to bear all the expense?

Countries other than the United States are actively exploring the solar system, and until recently the United States had no independent capability for manned space flight and depended on Russia's Soyuz program.

To claim that Americans bear all the cost is disingenuous at best.

> why do Americans have to bear all the expense?

Good news: This very month, orbiters from the United Arab Emirates and China both reached Mars. And the latter even has an (as-yet-undeployed) lander.

Good. Let them pay for it. The usa has funded a disproportionate amount of space travel since the 1960s, money which in the end really goes to the military industrial complex.

Other than the fact that there are multiple countries that have space programs.

> A “puny” $22.6bn buys a lot of food and houses a lot of homeless people.

This is reductive line of thinking. You can't equate spending on cutting edge research with taking away from welfare. Earth has finite resources and you need to be forward looking as well while taking care of the present.

Also, it is not like all the research benefits just space exploration or MIC. For instance, research into hydroponics is being used on earth now to grow food with much less resources.

When 99% of the realized benefits are financial windfalls to arms manufacturers, is that 1% really so special?

Americans happily spend excessively on war without blinking yet any suggestion that we devote resources to the welfare of our fellow human being is written off as “godless communism”.

We are in the middle of the worst homelesseness, unemployment and food instability since the great depression. Why is that not of greater importance?

A significant percentage of HN are randian free market fetishists. I say if space exploration has value then let the capitalists fund it, not the taxpayers.

Yes, but it all depends on many other things. For example, you can't have good science without good education, stable political system, and economy. So you need to invest in many other things while you have limited budget. Not just Solar System is important: we're waiting for a launch of James Webb Space Telescope like 15 years now.

> had Nasa been budgeted more than its puny $22.6 billion allotment

$22,600,000,000.00 yearly income is not puny by anyone’s definition.

It's 0.0471% of the 2020 federal budget, which was 4.79 trillion dollars. That's a pretty puny share of the budget. For comparison, the government gave 45 billion to farmers in 2020[1].

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/12/30/949329557/farmers-got-a-gover...

> It's 0.0471% of the 2020 federal budget, which was 4.79 trillion dollars

Its just under 1/200, not 1/2000. That is 0.47%. But almost 2/3 of the federal budget is non-discretionary, NASA claims 1.1% of the federal discretionary budget while having 0.8% of the employees. But you’re right, one man’s puny is another man’s puissant and its entirely possible for people to think 20 billion dollars a year is a piddling sum.

There's also a good argument to be made that the research NASA is doing is valuable and reaps generous economic dividends down the road.

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