No, I just want to try and understand why I hear consistently from the right that the government should stay out of our affairs and that government will never be as efficient as the private sector. And I'm not totally disagreeing with that. But NASA is something that often conservatives think we should be supporting and that confuses me. For the supposed budget hawks, how much return are we seeing on every dollar we spend with NASA? Again I'm not totally against the idea but to cry foul over government wanting to exercise some oversight over an out of control insurance system but to give it the pass on military and space exploration just seems a bit inconsistent to me.
I think the return on investment with NASA has been pretty good. In overcoming issues of space exploration, technology has been greatly advanced. Telecommunications is resting solely on the back of NASA. NASA is basically infrastructure much like interstate highways. I don't view healthcare in that light.
Yep. In the olden days, governments (the crown) would often be the sponsors of the arts. Nowadays, even though the arts have real value to a society and to culture, it seems improper for government to spend our tax dollars on such things.
On the other hand, I personally believe that there are many good, solid, legitimate reasons to endorse the concept of government sponsorship for and support of the sciences. It is actually complicated, however, since it is also true that the periodic withdrawal of such support can have major impacts on the ability of the scientists to continue such studies. To that extent, sadly, politics getting intertwined into the field of scientific study can be unseemly or worse.
When it comes to space exploration, NASA has done a terrific job. Has there been some waste along the way? No doubt. But the reaction to such waste should be to implement procedures and protocols that make such waste more difficult to produce. The reaction should NOT be to toss the baby out with the dirty bath water.
Putting the issue of waste aside, I fully agree that we have gotten a LOT of bang for our bucks. It might be a bit misleading to look at it as a matter of Return on Investment, but even so, that is one measure of the propriety of government involvement in the field:
We have DirecTV in our house. I have Sirius Radio in my cars. I use my cell phone a LOT. We have microwave ovens. We have Velcro. We have computer technologies of amazing complexity and sophistication. We have for the first time in human history the glimmer of the hope that we might be able to PREVENT an extinction event like a giant asteroid striking our planet. We have advanced our abilities to peer into the cosmos and even look back in time in that process.
Yes indeed. The huge impacts and benefits we have derived from our government-sponsored policy of space exploration more than justifies all we have spent on NASA since its inception. From a PURELY politically philosophical point of view, it might be that, despite all those benefits, conservatism should reject government involvement in the field. If that's the case, then I fall short of a 100% conservative standard because I embrace the government's involvement in the field of scientific advancement. But I suspect that a refinement of the definition of "conservative" is the better conclusion to be drawn.
In the meantime, I look forward to seeing greater private capital investment in this emerging sector. Capitalism and Space Exploration could very well be "perfect together."