Who else is outraged that we spent over $3 billion dollars to take pictures of Saturn?

Question

I heard this story about a mission to send a spacecraft to the planet of Saturn to find out what the surface is made of, amongst other things. It took months for the spacecraft to arrive because Saturn is so far away. The spacecraft took the pictures and we recently got them back. The biggest problem was that the whole mission cost us over $3 billion dollars! $3 billion dollars for pictures of Saturn?! Are you f@*king kidding me? Let's be honest here. Why does anybody care what Saturn is made of? It's not like we can live there someday. Was it really worth all that money to learn more about some planet that no one really cares about? I just hope the taxpayers' money wasn't used to fund this expedition. Here's a message to NASA: Stop wasting billions of dollars for these scatterbrained missions! There's nothing out there that we can use. If you find the cure for AIDS and cancer out there, then I'll owe you an apology. But I wouldn't bet on that. What do you think of this?

Answer 1

We won the race to the moon and the Cold War is over. There are no more good reasons to waste Americans hard earned tax dollars. I find it hard to even justify these reasons. The spending on these missions has been indoctrinated further into the budget year after year, strengthened by previous years of inflated costs for what are experiments that do not stimulate the general public I'm sure. Why? They do not serve the public for any other reasons than to a) spawn a few "ooh and aahs" from the masses and b) pay the salaries of these overpaid goverment contractors. I don't care how many doctorates you have, in whatever sciences; your lunar shelters, $3b pictures of Saturn, and $500b trips to Mars are a waste......we as a people generally don't care for or about your costly science experiments. This money should be spent saving the environment in which we live! Not exploring environments that we, as a whole will never live in.

Answer 2

Human beings wouldn't have most of the luxuries due to technology that we have today if it wasn't for NASA. It's not so much that we find technology in space, but the drive to explore and push the limits of our grasp into the cosmos drives innovation and technological advancement to a level second only (and maybe even equal to or surpassing) to warfare, and warfare does not usually result in a lot of technology that benefits humankind as a whole.

Also, pictures from Cassini have been flowing in ever since it arrived at Saturn over a year ago. The data we gathered from the Huygens probe that landed on Titan (that Cassini brought with it) was invaluable for understanding more about what is probably the one world in our solar system that is most similar to Earth after Mars.

Also, as the first answerer has said, it is not as if we stuck 3 billion dollars in a probe and then spread it all around Saturn. That money was spent inside our economy, and drove innovations to create the equipment that we sent out there. Every spaceflight, manned or otherwise teaches us things that we need to know for that first moment when we send human colonists to another world to live.

And for all the things that the US Government spends money on that one could be outraged over, a paltry 3 billion (it really is pennies relatively speaking) for a science mission to explore the Saturnian system seems like an odd choice to pick. We spend orders of magnitude more than that on a war that many people feel is benefitting no one and is causing the deaths of many people, yet there are people who feel compelled to express outrage over such a small amount of money spent on a venture that drives innovation, encourages technological discovery, and enhances human knowledge of the cosmos we live in all without killing or injuring anyone. Someone needs to get their priorities straightened out.

Answer 3

I'm sorry you have no intellectual curiousity whatsoever.

Do you think those dollars were thrown into Saturn somehow? That money paid researchers, scientists, engineers, contractors, laborers, students, and educators. It was spent here, on Earth, in the US economy. It paid many people's salaries, not only the above but cooks and janitors and carpenters and real estate agents. It bought materials and fuel. Really, THINK before making stupid statements like this.

3 billion dollars is peanuts to the US economy. We spend that every day in Iraq, killing innocent people. Which would you rather have? Pictures of Saturn, or a whole bunch of dead kids?

Answer 4

First of all, you clearly have NO clue as to what space probes cost, and what they do. 'Pictures' is but one small piece of all of the data that they return to us, and by studying other planets, we also learn useful things about our own. Next, as has been pointed out to willfully ignorant you, not only does the whole space program cost but pennies next to the huge gross wastes of cash that is much of the actual US budget, but in terms of technology gained, the space program MAKES money. So, you want to cut off your nose to spite your face. That would be, well, dumb. Next, yes, natural resources on Earth ARE finite. Why is oil now $100 a barrel ? Because the supply is DROPPING. The same applies to many other resources. Your paranoid delusions are your own problem, see a good mental health care professional, but they have nothing to do with space. And, at the final point, every $$$ spend for space activity is spent RIGHT HERE ON EARTH, providing good jobs, and building real things, which is a task that isn't much done in the US anymore. The war on Iraq cost the US at least three TRILLION $. In the total history of humanity, that much hasn't been spent on space, in total, ever, and that's counting every nation, not just the US. Until you can show some concern for wasting trillions of $, picking at productive uses of billions is willfully ignorant. Oh, and as for TV, and phone communication: Before satellites, getting a transmission across the ocean was hard, and offered little bandwidth. Do you know how the US saw the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953 ? Film of the ceremonies was put into a fast jet plane, flown across the ocean, and then given to the TV networks. So, you got to see such lives events a half day afterwards. You're ignorant. That can be fixed. But, it's your job to become less ignorant. Space spending isn't responsible for that, either.

Answer 5

outraged spent 3 billion dollars pictures saturn

Answer 6

The war in Iraq is costing the US more than what some countries have in their economy. The space program has always been expensive because it is in our nature to advance and explore the unknown or so we are told.The trouble is we are slowly destroying the very planet we live on.
Maybe we are looking for a suitable world to inhabit when all resources on earth have gone. I am all for going ahead to explore as long as some of that money is being used to help repair the damage already done

It's amazing when you think about it ,mankind has come a long way and invented things to make life easier for us .Yet how could we damage our very existence by indiscriminate actions having devastating consequences?

Answer 7

I think it's justifiable. If we could one day colonize Saturn it would not have been a waste.

Why do you rail about how many billions of dollars we waste on illegal immigrants? Just look at how much money we spend on printing zillions of forms in 3 different languages, how much we pay for illegals skipping over to this country to drop babies in our hospitals just to give their offspring citizenship, and if you look at all the crime caused by these folks, you would think 3 billion for Saturn folks is CHEAP.

Answer 8

I am far more outraged by the fact that Bush is asking Congress for HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS MORE, for the war in Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction; many thousands dead, and more to come. What next, Iran, Syria, or North Korea? The NASA budget has already been slashed to the bone.

Answer 9

Only 3 billion on a scientific research? Not even enough.

How many more billions do we actually spend on wars?

Answer 10

The monies spent by NASA on all of their projects has created the techno industry we have today by pushing the technology to achieve these feats....the spin offs business wise have paid back 10,000 fold the expenses of space exploration.....it is attitudes like yours that holds back mankind and ties the hands of real science and exploration. ... You are the type who would have ney - said Magellan, Colombus, Smith, and a host of other explorers over the centuries that have pushed the envelope and dragged the rest of society into a more modern world.....