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Many Americans think NASA should prioritize asteroid hunting instead of moon

businessinsider.com

11–20 of 33 posts

Re: Many Americans think NASA should prioritize asteroid hunting instead of moon

#13
post #8

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NASA relies entirely on public funding. What the public wants for space (if anything) is a reasonable question to consider.

Why? People don't know what they want. If they know, they don't know why. Almost never.

Re: Many Americans think NASA should prioritize asteroid hunting instead of moon

#14
post #7

Many Americans think cloud storage involves actual clouds. The prevailing view in the 60's among the public was that moon landings were a waste of money. These decisions should be taken by scientists and experts. I think it's important to have these advancements. Not to mention, asteroid hunting will be a lot more effective from the moon anyway, since it has high visibility due to a lack of atmosphere and a low gravi…

> These decisions should be taken by scientists and experts.

Who decides which expert to listen to? Because we have experts on both sides of this issue.

> Not to mention, asteroid hunting will be a lot more effective from the moon anyway, since it has high visibility due to a lack of atmosphere and a low gravity which makes escaping the orbit a lot easier.

This is just futurism-level techno babble used to justify imposing YOUR desires onto the population by making your goal a mandatory step before we get to do what the majority of the population actually wants. The reality is that building anti-asteroid orbital defence is cheaper, faster, more versatile, and plain easier than building a base on the moon.

Re: Many Americans think NASA should prioritize asteroid hunting instead of moon

#15
post #7

Many Americans think cloud storage involves actual clouds. The prevailing view in the 60's among the public was that moon landings were a waste of money. These decisions should be taken by scientists and experts. I think it's important to have these advancements. Not to mention, asteroid hunting will be a lot more effective from the moon anyway, since it has high visibility due to a lack of atmosphere and a low gravi…

> These decisions should be taken by scientists and experts.

How about letting the people who pay for it decide?

Re: Many Americans think NASA should prioritize asteroid hunting instead of moon

#16
The logical continuation of Apollo would've been to build a base near the lunar south pole (what Artemis is trying to do now). The presence of water and other resources there makes it a good staging ground for future deep space missions, including asteroid mining. Not to mention there are now political/strategic factors such as China's recent accomplishments in lunar exploration reinvigorating the 'need' for us to get back there.

Re: Many Americans think NASA should prioritize asteroid hunting instead of moon

#17
post #14
post #7

Many Americans think cloud storage involves actual clouds. The prevailing view in the 60's among the public was that moon landings were a waste of money. These decisions should be taken by scientists and experts. I think it's important to have these advancements. Not to mention, asteroid hunting will be a lot more effective from the moon anyway, since it has high visibility due to a lack of atmosphere and a low gravi…

> These decisions should be taken by scientists and experts. Who decides which expert to listen to? Because we have experts on both sides of this issue. > Not to mention, asteroid hunting will be a lot more effective from the moon anyway, since it has high visibility due to a lack of atmosphere and a low gravity which makes escaping the orbit a lot easier. This is just futurism-level techno babble used to justify imp…

> This is just futurism-level techno babble

Is it? It seems pretty understandable to me. No atmosphere means easier to spot rocks

Less gravity means easier to launch rock deflection mission with more mass.

> Who decides which expert to listen to

Right now? Our democratically elected officials do, by way of appointing a head of NASA, and also each time NASA wants to approve budget items

Re: Many Americans think NASA should prioritize asteroid hunting instead of moon

#18

NASA should spend more time developing warp drive. That's a technology that will actually revolutionize humanity.

There's no leads to follow that could reasonably get us there. What's the point spending time on it?

NASA does engineering, not scifi.

Re: Many Americans think NASA should prioritize asteroid hunting instead of moon

#19
post #7

Many Americans think cloud storage involves actual clouds. The prevailing view in the 60's among the public was that moon landings were a waste of money. These decisions should be taken by scientists and experts. I think it's important to have these advancements. Not to mention, asteroid hunting will be a lot more effective from the moon anyway, since it has high visibility due to a lack of atmosphere and a low gravi…

And most people think the asteroid belt looks like Star Wars instead of 4 big rocks and a bunch of dust with a whole lot of nothing in between.

> Not to mention, asteroid hunting will be a lot more effective from the moon anyway

But, why? There are science reasons to study them, but not much more. We're not short of any of the compounds they contain. Mining them would take enormous amounts of energy and time because they are way the hell out there. They're too small to provide stability for a manufacturing base.

We need to inhabit the Moon and Mars long before we inhabit the asteroid belt.

Re: Many Americans think NASA should prioritize asteroid hunting instead of moon

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA relies entirely on public funding. What the public wants for space (if anything) is a reasonable question to consider.

Why? People don't know what they want. If they know, they don't know why. Almost never.

Of course people don't know what they want, but saying people don't know enough is irrelevant. What is relevant is the capacity you may have at convincing them they should follow your lead. That's it.
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