What do you perceive these technological spin offs to be RObert that might be of benefit to saving our world? Tapping into the earths electrical fields to give unlimited electrical power to the ordinary household? No sign of that yet. Anti-gravity that might lift huge cities above the earth so the forests can re-grow. No sign of that yet. All the while NASA fiddles with their great "outward dream" people are tearing up the forests, the great breathing areas are going. New tech wont stop that. Who is going to say to India, China, South America, Malaysia and the Phillipines...."you have to stop now. You can have no more economic growth because youre killing the planet by killing the trees". Its the words that start wars. NASA is simply running out of time. I believe they know the space race is already lost. Mars is too far. The time to get there too long. What is truly needed is a change in the hearts of men and women towards Creation and towards each other. Unless we get that the world is lost. Science believes it can save us but only a heart change is really going to do it. Man cannot govern the planet outside of God.

A reality check.

NASA's 2008 budget will be of the order of $17 bn.

http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/

That's a lot of money but for an economy the size of the US, $13 trillion, it's peanuts. It's ONE SIXTH the annual cost of the Iraq war.

If you want an example of what's REALLY helping keep people in third world countries in poverty consider the tens of billions spent on agricultural subsidies. Europe is the worst offender but the US is no slouch.

See for example:

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/trade/subsidies/

First world agricultural subsidies are actually worse than simply barring third world countries from markets. They lead to overproduction and a general drop in commodity prices. They also force third world countries to focus on crops like coffee.

A lot of what passes as "food aid" is really dumping US and European food surpluses on third world markets. Real food aid would focus on developing local agriculture which means opening markets.

You have chosen a rather strange target Gibo. One that's almost irrelevant to the issue of global poverty.

BTW unless I am mistake Australians spend almost as much on beer and other alcoholic beverages as NASA spends on space exploration. Perhaps if every Australian donated 10 cents for every dollar he or she spends on beer to projects aimed at alleviating third world poverty we could make a difference.

Gibo,

The churches could end poverty at a stroke by selling off their massive real estate holdings, worth thousands of times Nasa's budget, but that isn't going to happen.

Your argument that it is NASA fault that massive land clearing is going on in Asia is insane. NASA is not responsible for those decisions. It is as much your fault as it is NASA’s.

Whilst there is little doubt that climate change is a fact, the consequences are not yet known. Despite what AL Gore would have you believe we are not in imminent danger of being inundated by the oceans. It was extremely dishonest of him to pretend we might be. I am not going to debunk all his claims, but suffice it to say, that when it came to the consequences of Global warming, Gore found the truth a little inconvenient himself. Read the ICCC reports if you don’t believe me.

The advantages of pure scientific research are never predictable precisely because they are investigating areas never before surveyed. And the discoveries of pure science have enriched our lives tremendously, both materialy and spiritualy.

I think we are now getting closer to your real objection to NASA’s space program. The current evangelical movement has begun an attack on the sciences, jealous of their role in modern society. The Creationism rubbish as well as the denial of Darwin theories are religious attacks on what they see as paganism.

You have no evidence whatsoever that society will not be around long enough for man to travel to Mars. This is simply another doomsday prediction, among many put forward by those who are foolish enough to believe in the literal translations of revelations. Remeber Jonestown?.

Your argument neatly jumps the bandwagon of the green movement to frighten more people into converting to Christianity. This is truly the ugliest part of Christianity and is nothing new.

Don’t you think your lot has done enough scaring people with your fantastical visions of hell and the imminence of the worlds end?

Save your theological predictions for fellow travellers and leave science alone

Gibo, we won't know what the future outcomes will be. We can take some guesses but we can also look back at the last time NASA pushed outwards and the spin off's from that. I read a book some years ago on the spin offs from the moon landings but am hazy on the specific details.

My recollection of the key points is
- Estimates of easily tracable financial spin offs of around 30 times (some estimates much higher) the cost of the program.
- The development of much of our modern medical technology was boosted by the work done to put man on the moon.
- Big efforts towards minaturisation of electronics and development of more powerful computers have had massive flow ons to our time.

Looking forward, we might see some really good work done on growing food in confined spaces. We will see further advances in medical technology as NASA and others work out how to monitor and preserve the health of astronauts. We may learn some things about propulsion systems as NASA works out how to power craft through the atmosphere of MARS.

We don't generally know before a big effort what the spin off's will be to other area's. We do know from past experience that the spin offs will come.

Exploring space is such a nicer way of learning those kind of lessons than fighting wars.

Others have pointed out that the link between NASA and land clearing is either tenuous or non existant.

R0bert

My real complaint, stevenlmeyer, was the fact that the US isnt looking after her poor people (she has become decadent, more so in the last 20/30 years). In the back streets of LA, just out of sight from the tourist, are desperate people actually living in boxes and leanto's, supported almost entirely by local church charities (good one Arnold, you look after California real well). I also wanted to talk about the great NASA fantasy. I think the NASA fantasy is also a great deception that other nations have been conned into dreaming about. As a born again christian I have to look at everything from a Holy Bible point of view. NASA sticking their heads in the stars with their great "outer space/escape the earth for a glorious high tech future" dream is offensive. It resists Gods Word which points to the great spirit war here on earth (Ephesians 6:12-18) and the need in each life to make a decision for Jesus Christ, the Man Who was on the Cross for our sins. The outer space dream is an antichrist vision. It cant be fulfilled in the time God has appointed for the war on earth and it would suck all of the resources from the earth to attempt to fulfill it. My belief is that soon NASA is going to slow to a halt and then become defunct. This being done by God to get mans attention back to the earth and the spirit war and to Jesus the Saviour. Planet hopping was always impossible. Everything was too far away; and God Had His Plan that WILL be fulfilled. The Book of Revelation, as one very wise pastor said, is all about God getting mans attention back onto His Plan and Jesus Christ. We got conned... by the scientists and space dreamers who had rejected the Holy Bible and Gods Plan for earth.

I wasnt saying Paul.L that NASA was responsible for the loss of the forests in asia, or anywhere else, just that they were so full of their precious personal fantasy that they, as a powerful group of men and women who had the oomph for doing good with the environment, were so distracted that the loss of the forests was actually happening without their help to stop it. Brilliant minds but adrift amongst the stars. They are deserting the planet, in their hearts, to dream of being Captain Kirk. Its a black comedy. Gods Plan will be filfilled and all who dream of other things, will be brought back down to that Plan.