Hot take / prove me wrong: Space telescopes, astrophysics, and other "big" science have not yielded and are not likely to yield NEARLY as much practical benefit for mankind as biology, medicine, nuclear physics, and other "small" science.
And these are just concrete technologies. A lot of research done to reach the endpoint was, of course, used in many other areas of research. Even just manufacturing breakthroughs--taking something possible "in theory," and actually producing an instrument to do the thing involves a lot of research that bears fruit for basically anyone paying attention.
> There's not a lot of practical benefit to looking at the stars beyond trying to understand the universe we live in.
Of course there is! We are not just looking at pretty pictures. We are also refining our understanding of physics.
Dark matter alone is a glaring indicator that we don't understand what's going on nearly as much as we should. Without any telescopes we wouldn't even know that our theories had a problem.
Improved physics understanding has always led to technological leaps. Be it electromagnetism, photonics, or even just relativistic effects. And now, quantum computers.
> For every dollar invested by the government the American economy and other countries economies have seen $7 to $14 in new revenue, all from spinoffs and licensing arrangements.
This suggests that we're under-investing in NASA, since the ROI of the marginal government dollar is surely nowhere near that high. Basically to first approximation, we should start at the bottom of "ROI per marginal dollar" in the federal budget and reallocate those dollars into NASA and other basic research. I suspect agricultural subsidies and military spending are two places where you will find extremely low ROI at the margins.
(In other words I don't think we should be trading off between "big" vs. "small" science.)
NIH does get a lot more funding than NASA, they just don't tend to be in the news as much. 41.6 billion vs 22.6 billion in 2020. (I'm actually surprised the difference isn't larger.)
I do agree that the stuff that's immediately practical should be a priority. I'd be in favor of substantially expanding research to solve immediate problems facing humanity (e.g. cancer, climate change, pandemics, energy and food shortages) but I have no objection to our current funding of space exploration.
We don't do science for the secondary technology benefits, we do it because in our society we believe that the goal of learning about the universe is justified inherently
First we consume stuff, then after we have grown so tired of stuff that we can't even fanthom acquiring more stuff we can have a discourse about philosophy.
Learning about the Universe really is philosophy after all.
The only philosophers of that kind that produced an advancement in terms of stuff being consumed are the ones who did it all inside their heads and the only expense they needed was paper and pen (Einstein, Feynman, Bohn, Maxwell..)
They are showing the way by minimizing costs and delivering huge practical benefits.
Big science inspires wonder and curiosity, which causes children and young adults to pursue STEM, which leads to more biologists, medical researchers, and nuclear physicists.
> Space telescopes, astrophysics, and other "big" science have not yielded and are not likely to yield NEARLY as much practical benefit for mankind as biology, medicine, nuclear physics, and other "small" science.
You're drawing a line between astrophysics and nuclear physics?
Thats because we dont use them as much in practice as we should and could. Asteroid mining for instance can provide access to endless resources, reduce our reliance on authoritarian states and help keep our planet tody. At some point we will run out of the stuff we make our gadgets from and instead of waiting until last minute we should start working towards the goal asap.
I guess you could go through recent Nobel prizes (in physics) and see how many came from astrophysics/astronomy vs. Earth-bound physics? One recent astrophysics Nobel off the top of my head is the discovery of dark energy (whatever it may be) due to supernovae occurrences.
MAGZine|3 years ago
However, many _many_ technologies have come out of the space race and other space related endeavors--you might be surprised.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies
And these are just concrete technologies. A lot of research done to reach the endpoint was, of course, used in many other areas of research. Even just manufacturing breakthroughs--taking something possible "in theory," and actually producing an instrument to do the thing involves a lot of research that bears fruit for basically anyone paying attention.
outworlder|3 years ago
Of course there is! We are not just looking at pretty pictures. We are also refining our understanding of physics.
Dark matter alone is a glaring indicator that we don't understand what's going on nearly as much as we should. Without any telescopes we wouldn't even know that our theories had a problem.
Improved physics understanding has always led to technological leaps. Be it electromagnetism, photonics, or even just relativistic effects. And now, quantum computers.
theptip|3 years ago
> For every dollar invested by the government the American economy and other countries economies have seen $7 to $14 in new revenue, all from spinoffs and licensing arrangements.
https://www.21stcentech.com/money-spent-nasa-not-waste/ (more reading: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/hq/library/find/bibliographies/...)
This suggests that we're under-investing in NASA, since the ROI of the marginal government dollar is surely nowhere near that high. Basically to first approximation, we should start at the bottom of "ROI per marginal dollar" in the federal budget and reallocate those dollars into NASA and other basic research. I suspect agricultural subsidies and military spending are two places where you will find extremely low ROI at the margins.
(In other words I don't think we should be trading off between "big" vs. "small" science.)
elihu|3 years ago
I do agree that the stuff that's immediately practical should be a priority. I'd be in favor of substantially expanding research to solve immediate problems facing humanity (e.g. cancer, climate change, pandemics, energy and food shortages) but I have no objection to our current funding of space exploration.
bowsamic|3 years ago
Bubble_Pop_22|3 years ago
First we consume stuff, then after we have grown so tired of stuff that we can't even fanthom acquiring more stuff we can have a discourse about philosophy.
Learning about the Universe really is philosophy after all.
The only philosophers of that kind that produced an advancement in terms of stuff being consumed are the ones who did it all inside their heads and the only expense they needed was paper and pen (Einstein, Feynman, Bohn, Maxwell..)
They are showing the way by minimizing costs and delivering huge practical benefits.
BudaDude|3 years ago
bckr|3 years ago
justin66|3 years ago
You're drawing a line between astrophysics and nuclear physics?
yrgulation|3 years ago
mturmon|3 years ago
scrumbledober|3 years ago
marcosdumay|3 years ago
It will acquire data pertinent to most of the open problems of physics.
unknown|3 years ago
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