[throwit99]

At the risk of turning political, it's a great example of how our taxes are wasted. Playing with space toys shouldn't be funded with taxpayer money.

I'm sure I'll get downvoted to hell for this, but why should my money be funding this? Sorry, but it has no benefit whatsoever.

edit: Instead of downvoting a dissenting voice, why not argue your case - why should taxpayers fund space toys?

edit2: Well, looks like I'm banned from commenting. Good job dealing with those that don't agree with you...

[ISL]

Your point is not unfounded, and it's our duty as research scientists to justify the value you receive for your money.

There's a famous example where a US Senator asked a similar question of a research physicist prior to the establishment of Fermilab, specifically tailored toward defense application [1].

SENATOR PASTORE. Is there anything here that projects us in a position of being competitive with the Russians, with regard to this race?

DR. WILSON. Only from a long-range point of view, of a developing technology. Otherwise, it has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about.

In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending.

To address your concerns more directly: Basic and exploratory research pushes scientists to extract the very highest performance one can get from known technology. On occasion, that technology can do something exceptional (precision timekeeping, GPS, vaccines, medical imaging, etc.). The highly-motivated people who do this work tend to be willing to do it at low salaries and with limited chance for advancement, simply because they love the field. You can think of it as a low-cost government-run VC fund that aims for the occasional spectacular payoff at multi-decade timescales.

Another key benefit is education: research funding underpins the post-graduate education of most people in the physical scientists. Funding basic research, which companies won't usually touch, furthers the continuous supply of a top-notch skilled workforce for industry nationwide.

Furthermore, in many fields, retaining a trained and knowledgeable corps of scientists is an efficient way to retain the capability to respond to sudden and important societal needs (Manhattan Project, Ebola, asteroid mitigation, Fukushima, etc.).

I'm biased, as taxpayer dollars pay for my work, but I think you're getting a reasonable-to-excellent return on your investment.

[1] http://history.fnal.gov/testimony.html

[eastbayjake]

Fun Fact: Sen. Pastore was the grumpy committee chairman when Mr. Rogers gave that famous speech about the value of public television for children. I don't know if Dr. Wilson swayed Pastore to support more funding, but after listening to Mr. Rogers for six minutes Pastore switched from wanting to cut PBS funding in half to cheerleading for increased funding:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q

[dang]

> looks like I'm banned from commenting

For anyone who's wondering, we haven't banned this account. What happens is that when karma gets low enough to be in outlier territory, comments get auto-killed. This is a longstanding anti-troll measure.

In the future, we plan to have a "moderated" status for comments, rather than "dead", so that the community will be able to fix cases where the commenter is not a troll or has corrected their ways. In the meantime, if you ever notice something being [dead] unfairly, emailing [e-mail] is usually enough to correct it. (Edit: but do please allow for the variable latency of our email stack. We will get back to you, but there's no SLA on when.)

[ajuc]

Roseta mission is 1 400 000 000 euro. London summer olympics costed almost 10 000 000 000 euro. Consider the benefits.

Landing on comets and knowing what materials are there (and how to detect that from distance) will eventually let humanity explore solar system. In next 10000 years it's almost sure there will be at least one global cataclysm (huge asteroid impact, ice age, global warming, methane-producing bacteria boom, some supervulcaon could go off). It's just statistics, we're in borrowed time anyway.

How much would you pay to save human race?

[jafaku]

How can one care about what will happen within the next 10,000 years?

[crazypyro]

Because it has huge benefits and one could argue that the money that was funneled into NASA during the moon landings gave tax payers much more bang for their buck than all kinds of other research, social programs, bank bailouts, etc. These sorts of human achievement defining missions are really hundreds of thousands of hours of engineering dedicated to solving some of the hardest problems we can dream up.

You are way too short sighted if you cannot imagine the enormous benefits of having dedicated engineers, scientists and researchers working on difficult problems that don't have model-able, short-term returns. The exact types of problems that people only concerned with short-term balance sheets avoid like the plague. The exact types of problems that propel our entire civilization into new ages of discovery and technology.

[throwit99]

So effectively, you want to subsidise scientists working on some arbitrary aim (Space exploration), in the hope they'll invent cool stuff you can spin off...

I don't think you need to subsidise science like this.

Did we really get "propelled" into new age of technology half a century ago? Did the moon landing really change anything here on earth? Technology would have advanced just fine without it.

[matthewmacleod]

why should taxpayers fund space toys?

They're scientific research, not 'toys'.

[ommunist]

Because taxpayers are able to pay that much taxes today, because Newton and Leibnitz were playing toys like that some time ago.

[rybosome]

Nations have a long history of funding exploratory ventures. It is generally understood that the process is useful for a variety of reasons: it creates jobs, there is a small chance that something practical could be discovered, and most importantly it satisfies a basic human need to know more. With this mission in particular, we may be able to answer some very fundamental questions about the arrival of organic compounds (or even life) on Earth...surely that's worth spending some money on?

You have the right to feel however you want, but a world without curiosity would be pretty sad; the internet wouldn't even exist for us to have this discussion.

[tedks]

Hijacking the top comment in this subthread to make a meta-complaint:

The comment-parents viewpoint is perfectly valid, but has been censored because of disagreement within the broader HN community.

For all the talk about "free speech" that HN does when the topic is, say, not objectifying women, or making racial minorities feel included in tech, it certainly seems to perform an about-face when confronted with... objecting to space science as a policy.

1. Doesn't it seem a little outlandish to have your priorities so far out of whack with respect to the number of non-whites in the world, versus the number of space scientists in the world?

2. Why should the comment-parent be flagkilled for expressing an unpopular opinion?

[sbarre]

Ok I'll bite. Do you really believe space exploration has "no benefit whatsoever", or are you just trolling?

A cursory Google search returns all kinds of counter-points to your claim. If you really do believe this, perhaps some brief research of your own will change your mind..

[innguest]

Have you searched the other side of the argument?

Perhaps then you'll understand why we're against this.

[vdaniuk]

This opinion is short-sighted. There may be zero practical attributable scientific or engineering benefits, though I am sure there will be plentiful.

However, such epic events are extremely inspiring! It is massively televized, broadcasted, discussed on social media and news aggregators. This may be a single trigger that will send many curious young guys and girls towards STEM professions. And we need them inspired, motivated and engaged to build a better world for all humanity.

So yeah, it has at least ONE benefit.

[kbart]

Wasted taxes? Are you serious? The outcome of this mission might be immense considering what possibilities are open if we manage to perfect such technologies. I'd say it's the greatest our race achievement after the Moon landing. Besides, the whole mission budget is only 1 billion euros (~1.2 billion dollars). If talking about wasting tax money, consider F-35 project which cost 1 trillion dollars and still counting, that's 1000 more than this mission.

[acqq]

The unit cost of one single F-35 jet was in 2011 estimated to be around 300 million USD, that is, only three planes would pay for the whole (European, please note, financed by the tax of Europeans!) Rosetta mission.

The US plans to buy 2443 such aircraft (of course, financed by the tax of US citizens). Do they really need so many of them?

The military budget of the US was recently around 660 billion USD per year, that is, the US could finance some 600 Rosettas (each a multiple-decade project) every year with its military budget. Approximating the Rosetta life to 10 years, in these 10 years the US spent 6000 Rosettas for military. Or 18000 of F-35 fighter jets.

[foxylad]

Once upon a time, long long ago, the most powerful dinosaurs got together to consider the proposal of a young pterodactyl. The pterodactyl had come up with the strange proposal that the other dinosaurs should bring her food while she concentrated on devising ways to fly higher.

"Why should we all work harder so you can learn to fly higher?" roared a huge tyrannosaurus, and bit the pterodactyl's head clean off.

So their kind never discovered ways to fly higher, and out of the atmosphere, and all the multitude of skills required detect comets and fly spacecraft to them to find out what they were made of.

And then a comet hit them and they all died.

[tripzilch]

You weren't there. This is not how it happened at all.

The strong and mighty individualist T-Rex was enslaved by the communist mammals. The once idealistic Pterodactyl was forced to evolve into a chicken, bereft of its flight, today kept in captivity by the trillions, bred by robots, for meat and eggs. Their feathers fill our pillows. How ironic that Mankind's dreams are birthed atop their crushed wings.

What gives us the right to land on this comet?

Weren't the dinosaurs there first?

What about our robots? Who fills their pillowcases?

Or, as Eddy Lizzard once wisely said,

"Do you have a flag?!!"

[stellar678]

Here is a nice long list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

[throwit99]

Do you really think that firstly, those technologies only exist because of NASA, and secondly that the cheapest way to innovate is to pick some arbitrary aim (Space exploration) and then spin off lots of innovation from it?

You could do a better job just taking the money spent on space exploration, and opening some innovation/invention centers.

edit: banned now, so I can't add any comments. It's really surprising just how extreme the religion of science is sometimes. Scary.

[return0]

I 'd dare you to specify what's more important where your money should be spent.

[innguest]

Why is the criterion importance?

How about, governments shouldn't require protection money from its citizens? The way it used to be before 1913.

[throwit99]

Health, welfare, lowering taxes, employment.... y'know, things that enrich real peoples lives.

Space toys and exploration are fun for those working on them, but will this event transform civilisation? Nope. Did the moon landing really transform civilisation? Nope.

[fsloth]

It depends. What's your definition of 'benefit'?

[pessimizer]

Good luck pushing that opinion amongst elites who are more likely to be the beneficiaries of space program spending than the victims of austerity.

Space exploration for it's own sake is a self-perpetuating relic of the cold war.

[icebraining]

How is space exploration categorically different from other kinds of scientific exploration?