- Joined
- Oct 1, 2005
- Messages
- 38,750
- Reaction score
- 13,845
- Gender
- Undisclosed
- Political Leaning
- Libertarian - Right
Sure, the achievement itself is a worthy human goal. Why does that mean we can't wait until the technology is actually economically feasible before we commit to it? What's so special about right now? Mars isn't going anywhere.
You will always be able to make that argument.
We should do it now because we can.
Wrong. Every government dollar spent on a trip to Mars is one less government dollar that can be spent on something that actually helps society here on earth. Which is really holding back progress - staying home or wasting upwards of a trillion dollars on a trip to Mars?
What do you mean, "wrong"? You basically just said exactly what I was objecting to.
My guess is, there will NEVER be a "right time" in your estimation. There will ALWAYS be other priorities, other "better" or "more useful" things to spend the money on. Which is exactly what I said.
There WERE reasons for all of those things, unlike going to Mars. Even at the time, people could recognize the utility of airplanes and automobiles.
A few visionary people did. For the most part, it was dismissed as folly and fantasy and without any real benefit.
None of those things cost taxpayers a trillion dollars.
And who says going to Mars will cost a "trillion dollars"?
None of those things were done decades before they were economically practical. If the ancient Romans had decided that instead of building aqueducts, they were going to build a flying machine that could cross the ocean, they would've been wasting their money. Societies typically don't want to bite off more than they can chew, and for good reason.
The Romans frequently "bit off more they could chew" from an engineering standpoint, and that's WHY they had aqueducts in the first place.
It's a preposterous analogy anyway (and you've been making a lot of those lately). Even by your own estimation, the technology leap is decades away, not centuries. And that's only if we put it off, like you'll perpetually insist we "must."
Because there will always be something "more" to do, some other problem to tackle "first."
Sorry, but not being boring isn't a good enough reason to spend an unimaginable amount of taxpayer money when there ARE things the money could be spent on that WILL help people.
Yes, yes, yes. "Can't, can't, can't, can't, can't." "Not now, not now, not now, not now." "Wait, wait, wait, wait."
Do you think we'd have gone to the Moon at all if this argument had prevailed? It was out there. Why, Walter Mondale tried to kill NASA quite vigorously exactly because of this.
If we hadn't gone to the Moon, if they HAD killed the program, there's a great deal we take for granted today which we wouldn't have.
I think that most of the people criticizing the "wait, wait, wait" mentality are just trying to hide their own selfish desire: THEY have always thought about going to Mars, and want to see it happen in their lifetime regardless of the costs to the public.
It's about the advancement of humankind, rather than its stagnation. It's about saying we've "waited" long enough. It's been 40 years since the Moon landings; it's time to move on. The only reasons to wait are pencil-pushing, bean-counting, unimaginative, unadventurous, pessimistic worry-warts.
But, if you don't have the vision, you don't have it. Not everyone does. I guess the world needs playground minders, too.