Comment by palata

4 days ago

I understand why they want to fly. I don't understand why the people is fine paying taxes for that.

Why does Rice play Texas?

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

https://www.rice.edu/jfk-speech

Some are.

Money being fungible and all, the rest can pretend their tax money is going exclusively to their favorite programs, whether that's healthcare or environment or building roads or starting wars or funding more startups or whatever.

The space program has created some great technology we use every day now.

  • That we probably could have developed without the space program for a fraction of the cost, if we're being honest.

    • > That we probably could have developed without the space program for a fraction of the cost, if we're being honest

      I don't think so. Some people are good at small tasks and stewardship. Some people want to ambitiouslyl build. If there isn't a space program, the engineers who were inspired to join NASA cannot be assumed to have gone into semiconductors or material science. They probably wound up, in the alternate timeline, bureaucrats or financiers.

      8 replies →

Bro, of all the stupid shit we spend taxes on ($50 billion on corn subsidies), you're mad about space exploration?

  • I will guess that farm subsidies go to... well, farming. Doesn't sound completely ridiculous at first sight.

    > you're mad about space exploration?

    Exploration? It's not exploration at all: it's sending 4 humans for a 10 days trip around the Moon. I wish they used the money for actual space exploration, though.

    • > will guess that farm subsidies go to... well, farming

      Or not farming. Lots of CRE. Also constant bail-outs because e.g. the soybean farmers got tariffed. Also ethanol.

Independent of how scientifically awesome this is, this is probably the most cost effective long term propaganda. Why waste money on posters when you can orbit the moon.

The amount of my taxes that went toward people flying on this trip is so small to be not worth considering.

I'm much more concerned about my tax dollars going toward the US military, especially with Trump wanting another $200B so he can murder more people in Iran while making the world and the US measurably less safe.