FTS Scientific Calculator

[Tiberius]

Are you telling me, Thaumaturgy, that $170,000,000,000.00, given to NASA, went a long way toward the cost of developing fire-fighting and breathing apparatuses that saved countless lives, etc.?

Okay ... I contend that, if that 170 billion would have been given directly to the firefighters, they could have done the same thing for a lot less.

What say you?

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Given to NASA, and this equipment is a byproduct; but given directly to the source, and the same equipment would be invented with less.

Except that equipment wasn't the only thing that was developed with that money, was it? There were many new technologies developed, and as part of a government program that helped to establish jobs that probably wouldn't have been made if it was in the hands of some start up company developing the same thing.

Oh, and we got a whole bunch of data about space as well.

So, to sum up...

That money provided LOTS of new technologies! I hope you remember that!

 

[Lillen]

Ebba Grön - Uppgång & fall - YouTube

 

[GrannyM]

I'm just tired of seeing people walk on the moon, while others starve elsewhere.

Especially when ... in the rare times you can get an educatee to consider the plight of others ... their "remedy" is: "Get an education."

It's easy to turn away from your monitor at Mission Control for a moment and say, "Oh ... them ... ya, get them an education and they'll work out their own problems."

Well, you can still die of starvation, knowing E=MC[sup]2[/sup].

How very odd your "concerns" are! The Apollo Program is long defunct - in fact, the entire US Space program is a mere shadow of its former self, and China is building its own program that will surely outpace ours in the future. Followed, no doubt, by India. Both those nations seem much more serious than we are about building a national infrastructure - including an educational infrastructure - that will ensure that their people can feed themselves.

You remember the old parable: Give a man a fish . . .

Meanwhile, the wealth of this nation is not being used for anything productive at all - and the rolls of our own hungry are growing every year.