Beery1 wrote:Yawn!
Without satellites, you do realize don't you, that we wouldn't have our cell phones and we wouldn't have the internet and we wouldn't have GPS and we we'd still just have 3 antenna channels on the TV.
Without satellites, we wouldn't be able to study the earth and climate change. We wouldn't even be able to warn people of approaching hurricanes.
We couldn't do most of global climate science, without satellites.
I'm not sure what your view is -- are you against all technology? Do you think there never should have been a Sputnik in the first place?
Are you not at all interested / excited about developments in quantum physics, and just understanding the universe and the big questions of what's out there and why we are here? And, sending probes to those exciting moons around Jupiter and Saturn?
You wouldn't think that's cool? Some video coming back showing the ocean under Europa's ice? Or, finally finding life elsewhere in our solar system?
And another thing, climate scientists are actually learning a lot from Cassini and studying weather on Saturn's moons. That's useful information to help us understand the earth more, and our climate.
Satellites are not a boondoggle, obviously, they are integral to your daily life.
SpaceX can launch those satellites cheaper than anyone else in the world. They've got clients lined up, years in advance. That's business that would otherwise have gone to Russia, or the Euro space agency, or China, or others.
Stephen Hawking has said before that humanity must colonize out into space or we will go extinct, probably within 1,000 years. Or it could be a few years from now -- earth is overdue for one of those extinction level asteroid impacts.
This is a doomer forum, well asteroid doom is real it's not sci fi or a joke and the government knows it and spends a lot of money tracking them (with the hope that maybe something could be done, if we are faced with that extinction impact, 5 or 20 or 50 or 70 years from now).
If you think space is just all boondoggle, then you should be glad there is a SpaceX that is *trying to cut all these costs by 1/3 and more*. The federal gov has already wasted billions on Mars missions that never happen. SpaceX's Falcon 9 heavy can do it, right now. Though the way the government works, they'll just fund Boeing or Lockheed to waste a billion dollars for ten years and then Congress will cancel it anyway.
What Musk is doing is very exciting. He's the rare big dreamer that can put his dreams into fruition. That's like another Thomas Edison. We need people like that. That's part of what "Atlas Shrugged" was about -- don't flood out the dreamers in a sea of mediocrity and bureaucracy and government contractor kickbacks and corruption.
(and no I'm not buying into the Repub makers and takers thing, but I also recognize that there are exceptional people in this world, and it's a tragedy for all society when they get squashed by people who can't understand it.
But anyhow, I know you guys aren't interested in space, this is news with Musk because of the issue about Russian rocket engines right now. And if a new cold war is brewing, then this is the kind of American we need. Can do. Innovative. Another Wernher von Braun, Musk is a guy that started a company to get mankind to Mars and I just think that's cool.
And he wants to see Americans making their own rocket engines again, not buying Russian. He wanted to see Americans able to get themselves to space again, without Russian help. And he went out and did it, and his company developed the 7 seater Dragon capsule and they designed new engines from scratch and they build them themselves.
His competitors buy Russian engines and we're sort of screwed now that Putin doesn't want to sell the Air Force or NASA contractors rocket engines, anymore. So there's Musk -- he had the vision to make something better than Soyuz, he had the vision to make his own engines. He was right.)
