Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Philae has landed

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 309 posts

Re: Philae has landed

#161

Post by bennyg »

innguest wrote: post #153
cmc31 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(stolen money should not be spent in more or less important things, it should be returned to their rightful owner so they can choose what to do with what they've earned) Just to be clear.. Your issue is not that money from taxes is spent on scientific research and space exploration, but really that you have to pay taxes?

My issue is, whoever wants to accomplish something that takes a lot of money to make happen, should do like ARKYD and make a kickstarter or any other peaceful alternative, that allows for every individual to choose whether they'd like to participate. My issue is that running to the government, just because it already has guns in place pointing to every individual's head in case they don't pay, and saying "we'll steal…

It's not 20 more cents... It's actually less money over time. I feel like this argument is really working against you rather than in your favor.

Extreme libertarianism is awesome in theory, but fails hard in reality. Income tax, when used smartly, can be one of the greatest things a nation has at its disposal.

Re: Philae has landed

#162

Post by ommunist »

Gravityloss wrote: post #5

"where were you when Philae landed?"

Actually watching the live Rosetta event from Darmstadt. And I am about to drink for the success of this mission right now. Still can't believe it happened. SO much work, 10 years of work. This is how international large scale co-operation should be.

Re: Philae has landed

#163

Post by dwild »

icebraining wrote: post #141
dwild wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does space exploration has the potential to transform civilization? Yeah it actually does. It represent funding in research, it represent dreams, it represent our future. It's also an amazing collaborative project between countries. Also let not forget that NASA only represent 0.5% of the US federal budget. Do you really want to lower your federal tax by 0.5%? Seriously? Please lower your entertainment budget, stop a…

I'm in favor of the space exploration spending, but your argument is terrible. (S)he could just as easily reply that if you believe that space exploration has so much potential to transform civilization, why don't you donate all your entertainment budget & etc to NASA?

He said that it wasn't worth it because it doesn't really transform civilization. That's his point. If it's the criteria to fund something, then how his expense can be worth it too?

Why don't I donate all to NASA? Because I never said that it was worth our money more than something else that worth more than what my entertainment is worth. (Sorry if it a little hard to understands, english isn't my first language, I'm still working on it).

Also I never said that it has so much potential, I'm curious to know where you found this in my comment. What I said is barely enough to said that it can actually compete against his alternative, I was really counting on the fact that it was only representing 0.5% of the budget to make it seems worthwhile.

EDIT: Hopefully you still haven't read this comment, I found a better way to explain what I said.

He said that it wasn't worth it because it doesn't really transform civilization.

I said that it was clearly worth its 0.5% of the funding.

I also said that if it's not worth it because it doesn't really transform civilization, how could his own budget can be justified (and to avoid him answering that in a way, his job does transform civilization enough to be worth his salary, I only included expense that could be avoided without affecting too much his job).

Re: Philae has landed

#164

Post by rmc »

innguest wrote: post #107
return0 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 'd dare you to specify what's more important where your money should be spent.

Why is the criterion importance? How about, governments shouldn't require protection money from its citizens? The way it used to be before 1913.

There were taxes before 1913

Re: Philae has landed

#165

Post by innguest »

bennyg wrote: post #161
innguest wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue is, whoever wants to accomplish something that takes a lot of money to make happen, should do like ARKYD and make a kickstarter or any other peaceful alternative, that allows for every individual to choose whether they'd like to participate. My issue is that running to the government, just because it already has guns in place pointing to every individual's head in case they don't pay, and saying "we'll steal…

It's not 20 more cents... It's actually less money over time. I feel like this argument is really working against you rather than in your favor. Extreme libertarianism is awesome in theory, but fails hard in reality. Income tax, when used smartly, can be one of the greatest things a nation has at its disposal.

> Income tax, when used smartly, can be one of the greatest things a nation has at its disposal.

A nation is just its people. People are already in possession of this money before the income tax takes it from them. I agree that this money can be one of the greatest things that people have at their disposal, which is why I'm arguing we should not let government handle it.

Why are you against peacefully convincing people, making your case, asking for money, and then using that money for what you want? Don't we see time again with kickstarter that this works? Why do you cling to old economic ideas of redistribution of wealth to fund space programs which are supposed to be forward-thinking and future-looking? You don't think the future is decentralized, including the funding of big projects? Wow.

Re: Philae has landed

#166

Post by ajuc »

spdy wrote: post #20

For anyone who wants to see how they got there http://sci.esa.int/where_is_rosetta/ pretty mind blowing for me to plan ahead 10 years

And to near miss planets 4 times in that period just right to steal some momentum from them through gravity...

Re: Philae has landed

#167

Post by wozniacki »

bane wrote: post #139
kartikkumar wrote: post #53

Absolutely stunning feat of engineering. My bosses are on the drill team for Philae and were amongst the nervy faces being beamed all over the world. Great example of what European nations can do when politics don't get in the way. ExoMars [1] and Bepi-Colombo [2] are perfect examples of the inverse. Look forward to the first pictures from the surface. I'm at the Division on Planetary Sciences (DPS) meeting [3] in Tu…

I agree, stunning stunning bit of science and engineering. Everybody involved in this should be beaming with joy. Once again the light of reason continues to chase away humanity's ancestral boogiemen.

I wish we lived in a world where the layman - the Joe Nobody - could grasp how truly momentous this is.

Too often the gravity of such endeavors is lost too quickly, from our collective imagination.

We need to reanimate the sense of wonder among the non-science inclined people everywhere, to make more of these efforts possible.

Live feed of the press conference which should start in a bit:

rosetta.esa.int

Some cool links:

http://wpc.50e6.edgecastcdn.net/8050E6/mmedia-http/download/...

http://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/avZGG4q_460sa_v1.gif

http://sci.esa.int/where_is_rosetta/

Re: Philae has landed

#168

Post by mikeash »

innguest wrote: post #107
return0 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 'd dare you to specify what's more important where your money should be spent.

Why is the criterion importance? How about, governments shouldn't require protection money from its citizens? The way it used to be before 1913.

I was unaware that taxes were such a recent invention. Clearly I've been misinformed about history. What other insights can you provide?

Re: Philae has landed

#169

Post by kartikkumar »

innguest wrote: post #153
cmc31 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(stolen money should not be spent in more or less important things, it should be returned to their rightful owner so they can choose what to do with what they've earned) Just to be clear.. Your issue is not that money from taxes is spent on scientific research and space exploration, but really that you have to pay taxes?

My issue is, whoever wants to accomplish something that takes a lot of money to make happen, should do like ARKYD and make a kickstarter or any other peaceful alternative, that allows for every individual to choose whether they'd like to participate. My issue is that running to the government, just because it already has guns in place pointing to every individual's head in case they don't pay, and saying "we'll steal…

This is slowly but surely happening, with platforms like Experiment.com [1]. The main issue that I've seen so far is that campaigns that center around raising funds to pay a scientist's salary don't seem to be working. Whether that's a case of providing better explanations as to why the money is well spent, or whether it's a culture issue, I'm not sure.

End of next year I'm going to have to job hunt again and I'm thinking of trying to crowdfund a postdoc position.

So in short, I think the transition to more crowdfunded science will happen, but as with many things that change the foundation of how science is done, it's a gradual process.

[1] https://experiment.com/

Re: Philae has landed

#170

Post by tim333 »

tedks wrote: post #123
rybosome wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nations have a long history of funding exploratory ventures. It is generally understood that the process is useful for a variety of reasons: it creates jobs, there is a small chance that something practical could be discovered, and most importantly it satisfies a basic human need to know more. With this mission in particular, we may be able to answer some very fundamental questions about the arrival of organic compou…

Hijacking the top comment in this subthread to make a meta-complaint: The comment-parents viewpoint is perfectly valid, but has been censored because of disagreement within the broader HN community. For all the talk about "free speech" that HN does when the topic is, say, not objectifying women, or making racial minorities feel included in tech, it certainly seems to perform an about-face when confronted with... obje…

I think it's being flagkilled for hijacking the top comment which seems bad from and probably deserves it.

re "free speech" a corollary is that those reading said speech are free to call it dumb

Post reply on HN