Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were taxes before 1913
Not really though. Microscopic compared to today.
Then undoubtedly they correlated with better life standards by a large margin.
Philae has landed
271–280 of 309 posts
Re: Philae has landed
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok I'll bite. Do you really believe space exploration has "no benefit whatsoever", or are you just trolling? A cursory Google search returns all kinds of counter-points to your claim. If you really do believe this, perhaps some brief research of your own will change your mind..
Have you searched the other side of the argument? Perhaps then you'll understand why we're against this.
Just trying to see your perspective, here: the LHC costed $15B of tax payer money; the NIH invests ~$30B every year in medical research. Do you also think those are example of how to waste money?
Re: Philae has landed
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're kidding right - this would have lowered my taxes by about 20 cents a year, or 3E50 total. Careful not to spend it all at once. So much for lowering taxes. Simply put, Rosetta's budget was about 70m Euros per year over 20 years. That's like funding maybe two schools, or one hospital ward, spread over the whole EU. None of these enrich humanity as much as Rosetta is. As for employment, well, the project is creat…
>That's like funding maybe two schools, or one hospital ward, spread over the whole EU. None of these enrich humanity as much as Rosetta is. Really? You're basically saying you'd prefer a robot on a comet over thousands of healthy and educated peers. Who are you to decide this?
> Really? You're basically saying you'd prefer a robot on a comet over thousands of healthy and educated peers. Who are you to decide this?
Coming from an American this is pretty ironic. The choice in ESA-funding countries isn't between two schools and illiterate children, it's between further improvement to two good schools already affording excellent social mobility and a comet landing.
As for who decides this, the voters do as part of the democratic process.
Re: Philae has landed
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it is the threat of force to take property from someone against their will. No it's not. It's the threat of force against people who use that market and then refuse to pay the fees they owe. Any service can (and would) do the same via the legal system. I've never paid the US government a penny, because I don't use their market. > We were born into this system and we never agreed to it. You certainly have the option…
You're making a false equivalency between the State and other market actors. You may not be using the US government's services, but you're probably using your own government's. Forcing a service on people (say the War on Drugs) and then demanding payment through taxation is different from competing in the market. Even if you cite paying a fee for using the roads--not too controversial--to gain a monopoly on road-buil…
If you don't like what your government spends tax money on, you have the power of the vote to (try and) change it - vote for the guy who is against the militarisation of the police forces, in favor of controlled legalisation of some drugs, and willing to shift the tax money to programs helping addicts out (and the underlying problems that cause drug addiction, like poverty, unemployment, culture, etc).
As for non-government stuff, you vote with your wallet.
Re: Philae has landed
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Real world benefit? In 20 years, we move the production capacity of China to space, and everyone, anywhere on the Earth, has the ability to order a product, remotely assembled on our comet moon, for direct delivery. sigh A man can dream.
It would honestly be faster to ship it overseas.
I'm quite fine with putting stuff in a holding LEO with robots and having it sit there, waiting for delivery by parachute to my pals and I while we sit in the bliss of an industry-free paradise here on Earth. If we move all the poisonous things to space, where it belongs, we make a better Earth. You bet I'd love to be designing package delivery systems which bring me my new softhard from space. Put all manufacturing on a comet, use its resources (which are plenty) with robot bases, send the result back to a recovering ecosphere, the only one of its kind, here on Earth.
Re: Philae has landed
#276Earlier 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…
We live in a Republic, in the United States at least. As a result, you have elected certain people to represent you. Basically, you have given your proxy to someone. NASA, or any other organization, then goes to the person you've given your proxy vote to, and convinces them and leads by example, asking for money peacefully. The person votes for it, and by extension YOU vote for it. Nobody's stealing anything; you vot…
Unless you abstained from voting, in which case you don't get to complain either.
Re: Philae has landed
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
How toxic an existence do you have to lead to put your own petty greed over one of the few great frontiers of human scientific progress?
Cultural progress too! I'm an American, and I'm fascinated by space exploration. These kind of endeavors bring people together and make us look at the Earth as one entity that we all need to live on. It brings people together by strengthening trust through a common goal and achievement. Now, as far as the "hur-dur my tax monies..." argument. I wonder if he has heard of the asteroid mining company in the US. Planetary…
I hope this mission (and hopefully future missions like this) will either confirm or deny a claim like that - TBH, large claims like that kinda sound like space mining companies trying to get people to invest large amounts of money into their business.
Re: Philae has landed
#278Amazing job! This might be a silly question but are their any ideas as to the actual real world benefits we could see from this? The director-general of the ESA said "This is a big step for human civilisation" so I presume there is some idea of what they expect to gain from this mission? Edit: Thanks for all the replies! I'm at work now but will take a look at them this evening.
Check out this gif of the orbital maneuvers required for Rosetta to reach its destination: https://i.imgur.com/TUkKuhf.gif This probably won't be very impressive in a few hundred years, but for now it's a remarkable engineering achievement.
Please don't use .gifs for videos, :(
Re: Philae has landed
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to talk about spending priorities, how about the folly of the Iraq war, trident, etc. those cost huge amounts more than this mission? Not everyone has the same priorities as you. Thank goodness at least some of our money is spent on things which might benefit humanity in the long term , like discovering how the solar system was formed or whether life was formed on earth or elsewhere.
...where did I indicate I would rather spend that money on war and weapons? My comment actually states: "Don't get me wrong I'm all for these kinds of missions". As for your long term benefits: Great so we find out how the solar system is formed or where life was formed - now what? Those are really cool things to know but what do we do with that information? The reason I'm curious about this is that although I want t…
"Don't get me wrong I'm all for these kinds of missions"
Which you then contradicted by whining about not seeing the benefit of it; you're clearly not all for this mission or you wouldn't have derailed this top thread with your concern troll.
There doesn't have to be a tangible, short term benefit for these missions to be considered worthwhile by the majority of humanity, so your question is irrelevant to them. If you can't see the benefit to us of finding out when and where life was formed, I can't help you.
Re: Philae has landed
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Improved understanding of our solar system, its history and our place in the universe is a real benefit that soon will be available for anyone. Comets are generally very old, so can enable us to learn a lot about solar system's history. Achieving engineering capabilities required to land on comets is a step forward for human civilization. I consider the above to be actual real world benefits. If they are not, I'm not…
Thanks. I would definitely consider the second point a real world benefit but if we are going to spend over $1bn to learn about the solar system's history I take it we are hoping to discover something that actually has benefits to humanity (e.g. when the money could have had more immediate impacts treating disease or helping the poor etc.). Don't get me wrong I'm all for these kinds of missions I just thought that to…
Ernst Stuhlinger wrote this letter on May 6, 1970, to Sister Mary Jucunda, a nun who worked among the starving children of Kabwe, Zambia, in Africa, who questioned the value of space exploration. At the time Dr. Stuhlinger was Associate Director for Science at the Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Alabama.