Comment by 9dev
4 hours ago
Sure does. R&D investments have a massively larger RoI than military spending - and you won’t be paying off that debt by trying to be frugal. The only way is forward, and bombing schools in Iran isn’t that. It might not be Mars either, but at the very least some interesting science falls out of it, and perhaps some interesting products out of that.
The way we spend military budget is inefficient yet, Americans grew in 90s not to say eu people tend to believe we live in the rosy world of friendly people , despite countries like North Korea , Iran , Russia , and even China to a certain extent.
I don’t think the debt has much to do with it, but I’m annoyed by the opportunity cost.
Put another way, I’m pretty sick and tired of planing 30 year long missions, with all the money an engineering and human resources, for rocks.
It was almost certainly not going to tell us conclusively about past life on mars. And if it could, let humans collect it.
The next person who suggests an $11B mission for rocks should get smacked with a yardstick.