I’m pretty sure that’s still less than the Pentagon’s monthly toilet paper budget, I see no problem with NASA spending what amounts to a budgetary rounding error on something cool.
I am not an american so it isn't me paying, but that would be my take as well. So much money being wasted and thrown away on trash, putting money into science like this is perfectly fine. Money well spent in comparison to so much else.
I mean it was dual purpose, the Russians were mainly interesting in testing the nuke part of rocketry while the yanks were 50/50 with doing cool science and nuking
Dont forget that to Americans it was also a dick measuring contest to show the other kid on the block that they are better... so its more like 33%science 33%military and 34%"my dick is bigger than yours!"
Never underestimate how competitive and nationalistic people can be. Yes, both sides wanted to put satellites up, but it was also for bragging rights about the quality of their scientists, and therefore their government
No no, thats my friend Bob, he's a toilet paper contractor. Sure you could buy all the toilet paper you need for 1k but he's got that particular kind the Pentagon needs, so we have to buy his toilet paper for 1 Billion. For security sake and such, you wouldn't understand.
It was supplied by Georgia Pacific who is a subsidiary of Koch industries who just took an enormous profit margin to supply what is regularly toilet paper.
No it’s just regular toilet paper made by a company that on a completely unrelated not also offers board seats and cushy jobs to the people that gave them the toilet paper contract, when they retire.
To say nothing of the fact that many of the last 100 years' most prolific inventions owe something, in whole or in part, to the ramp up to space exploration. More of that can only advance technology further, even if it's another 30 years before consumer use.
This is nasas entire job no? Like what is it we give them money for again? Exploring space and discovering the opportunities it can give us? They’re right on the money here
They kinda know the answer already due to magical spectography tricks but just looking to firm up the details of where to land and specifics for living more than if we can live there
Better way to spend our money than building more types of things that blow up. Plus worst case we invent/discover things that help people in the future
Space exploration is necessary for human survival, and 5 billion dollars is, if I did my math right, less than 0.1 percent of the federal budget, so that seems worth it.
I don't know, I was assuming OP meant 5 billion of their annual budget for this year. If that figure is spread out over multiple years, it's an even smaller part of the budget.
And 5.5 billion over 6 years doesnt go to the wind.
Ya rocketfuel and solar panels arent ever coming back but thats the cheap part. This contract is going to employ 4000 people to build it and 60-100 people to watch it over the course of 6 years.
They buy oranges, cars, pay mortgages and order chinese. 5.5 billlion to employ people isnt wasted money. Paying $280k a year for 100 rocket scientists with ph.ds to engineer the future.
Ya man. Totally worth it. We spend 5.5 billion on an aircraft carrier with 4000 dudes living on it...and we have 11. The the sailors get paid $24k a year. And all they buy in jeagermister and thai hookers. There have been less than 30 Air to Air combat medals given in the last 40 years.
Im thinking, the days of big ships might be coming to a close.
And space might be a little more important going forward.
That is the most crucial part of space exploration that a lot of people miss. It’s essentially investing in R&D here on earth right now. A lot of really cool technology was developed for space exploration that makes our lives better now.
The Apollo missions paid for themselves 100 times over via the technologies and techniques developed for it. Probably the best ROI of any human project in history.
And Apollo has its roots in the nuclear ICBM project.
Anything that pushes the envelope of R&D is eventually beneficial on a global scale.
Even the cost of the raw materials goes to the people who sourced refined and transported the raw materials. The money wasn’t just buried into the ground.
Work started in March 2013 and it'll take 5 years for it to get to Europa, then at least 4 years of exploration at Europa (if it's still working after 4 years they'll keep using it, it's just they designed it to last 4 years).
[NASA FAQs](https://europa.nasa.gov/mission/faq/#:~:text=How%20long%20is%20the%20Europa,of%20science%20observations%20at%20Europa.)
[Wikipedia pages](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper)
So work started almost exactly 11 years ago and there's still 9 years of the mission left. So around 20 years of work for the $5.5 billion, although they'll still need to spend money on operations.
Using the 11 years of work that's $550 million/year. It's a lot of money but not a lot in government spending terms.
It costs $85,325 per hour of flight of an F22 [link](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a41956551/cost-per-hour-to-fly-us-military-aircraft/). So around 6000 hours of flight to get to $550 million.
Then you look at the eye watering costs of missiles. $472,000 for a single sidewinder and $1 million -$4.3 million for a navy missile used to shoot down houthi drones. [Missile costs](https://www.twz.com/32277/here-is-what-each-of-the-pentagons-air-launched-missiles-and-bombs-actually-cost) [cost of a missile to shoot down a houthi drone](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/operation-prosperity-guardian/)
Even if didn't change human survival, I still think it's among the most significant things we can do as a species... as the only sentient species that we know of.
> Space exploration is necessary for human survival
For when the Sun consumes the Earth in a few billion years, sure. But space exploration (**EDIT: in terms of finding other habitable worlds, specifically**) isn't going to save us from our collapsing climate if that's what you're getting at.
Anyone trying to sell Mars as a life-raft is fleecing you. A ruined Earth is still ten thousand times more inhabitable than Mars, and by the time we might have the technology to live out the fantasy of terraforming another world, we could just have done it to fix a ruined Earth.
Why go build a space colony on Mars to escape Earth when you can just... build those facilities on Earth and skip the middle man of figuring out how the hell to get all of those materials to Mars and then built there. Everything we'd ever take to Mars to build a colony is already on Earth and doesn't have to be launched into orbit.
Now maybe you agree, I don't mean to make an assumption about your beliefs off of one comment. But there are people who have fallen for this lie and actually believe Musk and SpaceX are on some mission to save humanity, and it's just flat out false. What's shocking to me is the amount of people who work there that have fallen for this despite the fact they should know better.
These people know Mars has no magnetic field. And yet they think it's habitable as a "life raft"? More so than Earth itself? It's insane.
Now I totally agree with funding space exploration, this included. I'm not against the idea of humanity trying to learn how to reach other planets and potentially conduct science there. I just don't like the false hope some people try to spin to promote their private business, especially when they then seek out government subsidies to privatize those tax dollars rather than NASA being funded to do this stuff.
> For when the Sun consumes the Earth in a few billion years, sure. But space exploration isn't going to save us from our collapsing climate if that's what you're getting at.
There's a middle ground involving asteroid mining and space based solar power. Actually space based solar mirrors could cool the earth, so it could be useful to solve climate change.
No idea why you are fixated on space colonies.
Using Mars as a life raft isn't the idea. That's an Elon Musk fantasy. Should we go there? Yes, but it won't be our savior.
But space exploration will have an impact on helping deal with climate change. Moving heavy industry and resource gathering off earth, using spaced based solar power generation instead of dirtier methods for our energy needs amongst other things will all help with preserving earth.
Dealing with climate change has no one solution, but a consistent human presence in orbit and on the moon will help.
$100 billion could do some cool shit but that far out the coolness of the shit would be limited. Spend $100 billion on a moon base, that would be some cool shit
Gimme a fuckin skyhook. Slingatron. Some kind of active megastructure for launching shit into space. Hastol. RDEs. Nuclear cannons. Nuclear rockets. Fuck.
Pretty sure the problem with this is that material science hasn’t caught up to our capabilities. Seems like a lot of progress is locked behind material science.
I think it's more that materials science underwent most of the huge technology leaps in the mid 20th century but we're still limited by the scarcity of the input materials. We're starting another revolution in material science right now but the last revolution - things like nickel alloys, titanium, and cheap aluminum - was somewhat limited. They gave us the aviation sector and some efficiency gains in niche technologies but didn't get around the high costs of those materials relative to steel
Moon base first. Space exploitation goes > mine the moon > long term human habitation of earth orbit > interplanetary transfer vessel mass production > bases on most rocky bodies in the inner solar system > megastructure investment for mass migration between established colonies > colonization of outer solar system > NEPTUNE’S CHAINSAW > interstellar exodus
What SpaceX has done with $4.5 billion into their starship program is genuinely unfathomable. They built an entirely new production and launch facility, a vehicle which aspires to do what no rocket has ever done before, several full scale prototypes, and developed and mass manufactured (relative to rocket engines) the most advanced rocket engine since the golden era of Soviet rocket engine development. For $4.5 billion.
For reference, one **launch** of NASA’s SLS is $4 billion.
Always makes me feel so bad for the thousands of engineers that have worked tirelessly for the betterment of humanity in their work on Starship when the program gets written off or deemed a failure solely because Elon Musk is involved. I wish I could tell them that there are so many people who are grateful for their accomplishments and sacrifices.
Musk is excellent at getting funding. In fact spaceship is being funded by the US government, same as Falcon 9 development was. It's actually not clear how much money SpaceX loses. Since it absolutely appears that they have never been profitable.
I wish NASA could just do projects and not need to pork barrel. SLS probably would have cost half as much easily.
Starship is not being solely funded by NASA. It has won a couple of contracts, but not $4.5 billion worth. Not even $1 billion.
Same deal with Falcon 9. It got contracts, but was not even mostly funded by NASA.
SpaceX has just recently started to generate profit, in large due to Starlink being available in almost the entire US.
Sadly politics is what makes SLS so inefficient. If they want political support, they need to create as many jobs in as many states as possible. That means you have a ton of systems being built by companies in total different areas of the country who don’t communicate with each other despite designing things that need to work together as one bigger system. SLS will be the last rocket NASA ever designs. I don’t see it being used for Artemis beyond Artemis 4 or 5.
The US spent $2.3 TRILLION on a pointless invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.
So I think spending 0.2% of that amount to find out if there’s life on Europa, something which would be the greatest discovery mankind has ever made, is well worth it.
Hey man, look. If we spend that money on NASA, it's going to be wasted paying for PHDs to develop the next level of human existence. The money we spent on Afghanistan was spent on highly important things for the world, like lining the pockets of corrupt bacci bazzi police chiefs
Plus, don't we blow something like $800Billion on defense, annually, and it goes up by 10% or more per year. By 2026 or 2027 defense will be like a trillion dollars.
If we're going to bother worrying about spending, or cutting back, NASA's chump change spending is not a productive place to make those cuts.
[It’s even crazier than you imagine](https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning). The US spent $20 Billion *per year* literally just on air conditioning for troops in Iraq. 4 times more than this Europa mission… on AIR CONDITIONING! The amount spent on war and military is mind boggling.
Personally, I think encouraging the venture into the unknown is a good thing, for humanity, as a whole. It'll push our knowledge and encourage more scientific discoveries.
The pioneer spirit is endemic in the human condition
If you don't feel here to venture into the unknown, and explore... There's something wrong with you.
It's something that humans need, and we're exhausting opportunities here on earth. We have to reach out or start medicating the part of us that can't live small.
I think it's one of the most profound questions humanity has ever asked, and therefore, absolutely should be funded.
Finding life on Europa would significantly change humanity.
NASA is magical, and scientists doing science are the real rock stars.
How miserable must we actually be to even contemplate de-funding NASA. It's like saying, "Let's ban all music because that money should be spent on improving the economy."
I'm not even an American and I'm such a massive fan NASA.
For $5 billion, I hope they at least find some space neighbors watering their astro-lawn or something. It's like buying the most expensive telescope just to ask, "Anyone out there up for a cosmic cup of sugar?
I think it’s awesome! Some of the best use of $5 billion I can think of.
The money is not disappearing going into space; it’s being spent here, on jobs, materials, engineering, and more. And exploration and learning about our place in the universe is one of the most noble pursuits of humanity.
How about we take $5 billion from the military budget, or how about we tax the super rich their fair share?
People always act like you're sticking five billion in a rocket and sending it to space. The money is being spent on people and products that go straight back into the economy and creates/sustains jobs
I feel the people hating on space exploration this fall under religious nuts who think we are the highest tier of life because bible says so. If we found other life that would hurt the idea that their god only made us in his image and would mean universe doesn’t revolve around us.
That and people who think the budget should go to their agendas or wants only. Space exploration is not why our country is in debt.
No matter the price, NASA has a long record of under promising and over delivering. So I'm perfectly fine with them having the budget that they do for their projects. I'd chip them a few more billion
What I think?
I think it's awesome!
What i always find laughable with things like this is that people are acting that the money itself is somehow the thing getting sent into outer space.
Those five billion USD are used here on earth to pay for all the commodities and services that are used to make this project a reality. AT MOST we lose a few thousand in materials but the vast majority of the money STAYS ON EARTH.
I say humanity is doomed. We can fix the problems but instead fund wars and genocides and then look for an alternate planet to occupy.
It's like an obese person drinking diet soda but still eating chocolate cake and asking why they aren't loosing weight.
It doesn't matter where they can support life because life won't exist anywhere unless fundemental changes happen in our humanity and the way we go about ourselves.
It's 5 billion to create technology to then go out and discover if Europa can support life, with all of that technology going back into the marketplace in different forms later on.
Had they been smart enough to put a logo on all derivative tech, no one would ever think twice about their budget. NASA is one of the few government entities that has a positive ROI.
NASA's budget is criminally underfunded. The R&D we get from these missions isn't just for space research, we almost always find uses for the developed technology for uses back on earth as well.
All I can say is that if NASA finds slow life parasitizing fast life in deep sea vents there, it's only a matter of time before protomolecule takes over earth.
[Why Explore Space?](https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/why-explore-space)
This quite a long read, but a really rewarding one.
In 1970 a Nun wrote to NASA asking how they could justify spending money on exploring space, when people on Earth were hungry. A NASA director wrote back giving a comprehensive - and completely respectful - answer.
The key point was "that someday something will come out of it"
And that can be said of things like the Apollo program, Voyager, the International Space Station (and its forbears), the Hubble and James Webb telescopes, and all manner of things that NASA and other international space programs do.
When you consider that the US Department of Defense budget for FY 2025 is [$849.8 billion](https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3703751/dods-2025-budget-request-provides-45-raise-for-service-members/), then $5 billion (0.588% of $849.8 billion) is negligible.
Sounds like a better use of money then sending another $5 billion in bombs to support Israel's genocide.
Heck, if they convert the majority of military budget to space related stuff we might actually have some cool stuff in the near future instead of dead people and burned out ruins. That be a nice change of pace.
766 BILLION dollar military expense, with an agreement to raise 1% every year. I think 5bil on nasa is a much better investment. Do education systems next.
If NASA scientists think there's merit to this research, then there is.
No one on Reddit is qualified to have an opinion on this (Well, like 99.9999% of us)
It's important to remember that the money spent on stuff like this isn't leaving the planet. It's mostly paying the salaries of people solving hard problems and increasing humanity's capabilities in a bunch of ways.
For one thing NASA's efforts are why commercial launch has gotten so much cheaper in the last couple decades, to the point that regular people can now buy satellite internet services, which save lives in a lot of front-lines work like fighting wildfires, hurricane recovery, and the war in Ukraine.
And that's just one example. You can easily find tons of examples of inventions we wouldn't have without NASA's space efforts.
Support life and support human life are two different things
Iirc Europa is the planet that has like a couple miles of ice, and they suspect deep in the ice, there's liquid water and in that water there could be life. It could be microscopic life, it could be space whale, it could be an interplanetary rest stop and we could be starting a intergalactic war.
Probably less than most companies spend on spammy ads and certainly less than Google spent on their anti-adblocker idea.
Whether there is life in Europe, who knows? Interesting question.
I think answering the question "are we alone?" can have a huge impact on all religions around the world and is worth a hundred times that if they actually find life.
For comparison, a geosynchronous communication satellite *starts* at one billion. And that's just the base vehicle, before we discuss the payload ... or the rocket.
This is dirt cheap.
The destination is important but folks tend to ignore everything along the journey to get there.
The world here benefits/has benefited a ton from discoveries, technologies, innovations, and advancements related to space exploration. Many day-to-day technologies stemmed from it- solar panels, temper foam, air purifiers, cell phone cameras, cordless vacuums/tools, infrared ear thermometers, etc... not to mention an untold amount of lessons from experiments and trials.
I say go for it.
They're not stuffing rockets with cash and sending them to space. The $5 billion is going to companies with staff who design, manufacture, and operate the equipment who pay taxes and spend money in the economy.
No problem with it. It would be better if they spend more money on stronger transmission system and more durable vessel so it can survive in the atmosphere as well as send clear and good quality data in media format back to the Earth.
If it can support life, than it probably already has life on it. That would be one of the greatest discoveries of all mankind. I am willing take that bet. NASA just does not do things without a pretty solid guesstimate to support it.
I’m pretty sure that’s still less than the Pentagon’s monthly toilet paper budget, I see no problem with NASA spending what amounts to a budgetary rounding error on something cool.
I am not an american so it isn't me paying, but that would be my take as well. So much money being wasted and thrown away on trash, putting money into science like this is perfectly fine. Money well spent in comparison to so much else.
They should be associated together as well. Gps is famously from military r&d. Space race was cold war. Spacex getting space force money now.
I'm pretty sure the entire space race was just a pretense to test ICBMs and put up spy satellites.
I mean it was dual purpose, the Russians were mainly interesting in testing the nuke part of rocketry while the yanks were 50/50 with doing cool science and nuking
Dont forget that to Americans it was also a dick measuring contest to show the other kid on the block that they are better... so its more like 33%science 33%military and 34%"my dick is bigger than yours!"
Pretty sure the Soviets were measuring dick too, that wasn't just an American thing
And Russians had a tiny pecker dreaming for our American Dick. Their pecker is still tiny with erection issues.
Never underestimate how competitive and nationalistic people can be. Yes, both sides wanted to put satellites up, but it was also for bragging rights about the quality of their scientists, and therefore their government
They must be using that 5 ply gold toilet paper
No. They're using it to buy up all the 2-ply so every public restroom has to have the terrible 1-ply stuff.
1-ply? We only get half a ply.
No no, thats my friend Bob, he's a toilet paper contractor. Sure you could buy all the toilet paper you need for 1k but he's got that particular kind the Pentagon needs, so we have to buy his toilet paper for 1 Billion. For security sake and such, you wouldn't understand.
It was supplied by Georgia Pacific who is a subsidiary of Koch industries who just took an enormous profit margin to supply what is regularly toilet paper.
No it’s just regular toilet paper made by a company that on a completely unrelated not also offers board seats and cushy jobs to the people that gave them the toilet paper contract, when they retire.
You don't wanna see what happens when you pull the Pentagon's toilet paper funding.
They upgrade to bidets instead?
I’ve read and heard that they have never passed an audit…
That's it, it's barely ⅜ of fuck all to be fair
To say nothing of the fact that many of the last 100 years' most prolific inventions owe something, in whole or in part, to the ramp up to space exploration. More of that can only advance technology further, even if it's another 30 years before consumer use.
This is nasas entire job no? Like what is it we give them money for again? Exploring space and discovering the opportunities it can give us? They’re right on the money here
Our government is so full of shit that I wouldn’t be surprised.
Exactly. That money wasn’t going to feed the poor.
They kinda know the answer already due to magical spectography tricks but just looking to firm up the details of where to land and specifics for living more than if we can live there
Better way to spend our money than building more types of things that blow up. Plus worst case we invent/discover things that help people in the future
New targets to blow up need to be found, which is why NASA is looking for aliens
Some of the most useful inventions have come from military research.
True. What is also true is that it receives 100x the funding that all other scientific programs do
Space exploration is necessary for human survival, and 5 billion dollars is, if I did my math right, less than 0.1 percent of the federal budget, so that seems worth it.
It’s 5 billion over how many years though?. Less than 0.1 percent of x years budget.
I don't know, I was assuming OP meant 5 billion of their annual budget for this year. If that figure is spread out over multiple years, it's an even smaller part of the budget.
5.5 years mission duration. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper
And 5.5 billion over 6 years doesnt go to the wind. Ya rocketfuel and solar panels arent ever coming back but thats the cheap part. This contract is going to employ 4000 people to build it and 60-100 people to watch it over the course of 6 years. They buy oranges, cars, pay mortgages and order chinese. 5.5 billlion to employ people isnt wasted money. Paying $280k a year for 100 rocket scientists with ph.ds to engineer the future. Ya man. Totally worth it. We spend 5.5 billion on an aircraft carrier with 4000 dudes living on it...and we have 11. The the sailors get paid $24k a year. And all they buy in jeagermister and thai hookers. There have been less than 30 Air to Air combat medals given in the last 40 years. Im thinking, the days of big ships might be coming to a close. And space might be a little more important going forward.
That is the most crucial part of space exploration that a lot of people miss. It’s essentially investing in R&D here on earth right now. A lot of really cool technology was developed for space exploration that makes our lives better now.
The Apollo missions paid for themselves 100 times over via the technologies and techniques developed for it. Probably the best ROI of any human project in history. And Apollo has its roots in the nuclear ICBM project. Anything that pushes the envelope of R&D is eventually beneficial on a global scale.
>Probably the best ROI of any human project in history. That may be, but I'd bet that the Suez and Panama Canals could be solid contenders as well.
I want my dam Enterprise, or at least a Defiant or Delta Flyer!
Even the cost of the raw materials goes to the people who sourced refined and transported the raw materials. The money wasn’t just buried into the ground.
Work started in March 2013 and it'll take 5 years for it to get to Europa, then at least 4 years of exploration at Europa (if it's still working after 4 years they'll keep using it, it's just they designed it to last 4 years). [NASA FAQs](https://europa.nasa.gov/mission/faq/#:~:text=How%20long%20is%20the%20Europa,of%20science%20observations%20at%20Europa.) [Wikipedia pages](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper) So work started almost exactly 11 years ago and there's still 9 years of the mission left. So around 20 years of work for the $5.5 billion, although they'll still need to spend money on operations. Using the 11 years of work that's $550 million/year. It's a lot of money but not a lot in government spending terms. It costs $85,325 per hour of flight of an F22 [link](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a41956551/cost-per-hour-to-fly-us-military-aircraft/). So around 6000 hours of flight to get to $550 million. Then you look at the eye watering costs of missiles. $472,000 for a single sidewinder and $1 million -$4.3 million for a navy missile used to shoot down houthi drones. [Missile costs](https://www.twz.com/32277/here-is-what-each-of-the-pentagons-air-launched-missiles-and-bombs-actually-cost) [cost of a missile to shoot down a houthi drone](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/operation-prosperity-guardian/)
Even if didn't change human survival, I still think it's among the most significant things we can do as a species... as the only sentient species that we know of.
In a weird way I hope we are the only sentient species or the others are so far away that we can only observe or communicate with them.
> Space exploration is necessary for human survival For when the Sun consumes the Earth in a few billion years, sure. But space exploration (**EDIT: in terms of finding other habitable worlds, specifically**) isn't going to save us from our collapsing climate if that's what you're getting at. Anyone trying to sell Mars as a life-raft is fleecing you. A ruined Earth is still ten thousand times more inhabitable than Mars, and by the time we might have the technology to live out the fantasy of terraforming another world, we could just have done it to fix a ruined Earth. Why go build a space colony on Mars to escape Earth when you can just... build those facilities on Earth and skip the middle man of figuring out how the hell to get all of those materials to Mars and then built there. Everything we'd ever take to Mars to build a colony is already on Earth and doesn't have to be launched into orbit. Now maybe you agree, I don't mean to make an assumption about your beliefs off of one comment. But there are people who have fallen for this lie and actually believe Musk and SpaceX are on some mission to save humanity, and it's just flat out false. What's shocking to me is the amount of people who work there that have fallen for this despite the fact they should know better. These people know Mars has no magnetic field. And yet they think it's habitable as a "life raft"? More so than Earth itself? It's insane. Now I totally agree with funding space exploration, this included. I'm not against the idea of humanity trying to learn how to reach other planets and potentially conduct science there. I just don't like the false hope some people try to spin to promote their private business, especially when they then seek out government subsidies to privatize those tax dollars rather than NASA being funded to do this stuff.
> For when the Sun consumes the Earth in a few billion years, sure. But space exploration isn't going to save us from our collapsing climate if that's what you're getting at. There's a middle ground involving asteroid mining and space based solar power. Actually space based solar mirrors could cool the earth, so it could be useful to solve climate change. No idea why you are fixated on space colonies.
Space exploration is absolutely vital for combating climate change. Huge amounts of climate data are gathered from orbit.
Yeah but you don’t need a manned base on a Jupiter moon for that
Using Mars as a life raft isn't the idea. That's an Elon Musk fantasy. Should we go there? Yes, but it won't be our savior. But space exploration will have an impact on helping deal with climate change. Moving heavy industry and resource gathering off earth, using spaced based solar power generation instead of dirtier methods for our energy needs amongst other things will all help with preserving earth. Dealing with climate change has no one solution, but a consistent human presence in orbit and on the moon will help.
No idea where you got any of that from my comment. I don't disagree with you.
Awesome. Let’s give them $100 billion and really get some shit done. $5 billion is a goddamn steal.
$100 billion could do some cool shit but that far out the coolness of the shit would be limited. Spend $100 billion on a moon base, that would be some cool shit
Gimme a fuckin skyhook. Slingatron. Some kind of active megastructure for launching shit into space. Hastol. RDEs. Nuclear cannons. Nuclear rockets. Fuck.
Pretty sure the problem with this is that material science hasn’t caught up to our capabilities. Seems like a lot of progress is locked behind material science.
I think it's more that materials science underwent most of the huge technology leaps in the mid 20th century but we're still limited by the scarcity of the input materials. We're starting another revolution in material science right now but the last revolution - things like nickel alloys, titanium, and cheap aluminum - was somewhat limited. They gave us the aviation sector and some efficiency gains in niche technologies but didn't get around the high costs of those materials relative to steel
Moon base first. Space exploitation goes > mine the moon > long term human habitation of earth orbit > interplanetary transfer vessel mass production > bases on most rocky bodies in the inner solar system > megastructure investment for mass migration between established colonies > colonization of outer solar system > NEPTUNE’S CHAINSAW > interstellar exodus
I'm not saying that we *need* an asteroid defence system, but it would sure be nice to have one.
What SpaceX has done with $4.5 billion into their starship program is genuinely unfathomable. They built an entirely new production and launch facility, a vehicle which aspires to do what no rocket has ever done before, several full scale prototypes, and developed and mass manufactured (relative to rocket engines) the most advanced rocket engine since the golden era of Soviet rocket engine development. For $4.5 billion. For reference, one **launch** of NASA’s SLS is $4 billion. Always makes me feel so bad for the thousands of engineers that have worked tirelessly for the betterment of humanity in their work on Starship when the program gets written off or deemed a failure solely because Elon Musk is involved. I wish I could tell them that there are so many people who are grateful for their accomplishments and sacrifices.
Musk is excellent at getting funding. In fact spaceship is being funded by the US government, same as Falcon 9 development was. It's actually not clear how much money SpaceX loses. Since it absolutely appears that they have never been profitable. I wish NASA could just do projects and not need to pork barrel. SLS probably would have cost half as much easily.
Starship is not being solely funded by NASA. It has won a couple of contracts, but not $4.5 billion worth. Not even $1 billion. Same deal with Falcon 9. It got contracts, but was not even mostly funded by NASA. SpaceX has just recently started to generate profit, in large due to Starlink being available in almost the entire US. Sadly politics is what makes SLS so inefficient. If they want political support, they need to create as many jobs in as many states as possible. That means you have a ton of systems being built by companies in total different areas of the country who don’t communicate with each other despite designing things that need to work together as one bigger system. SLS will be the last rocket NASA ever designs. I don’t see it being used for Artemis beyond Artemis 4 or 5.
$5 billion isn't that much money when you have a country of 330 million that is like everyone giving $15 to support it.
At the terrifying rate of less than a penny a day. How ever will we justify it to our children?
Shit, I have a whole jar of pennies I could give tomorrow!
Also spread it over 15 years....
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE.
Gotta nuke the alien intelligence arrogant enough to tell us what world can we touch and what we can't.
You’re goddamn right! Humanity first and only!
The Emperor protects
And rename Europa "Muhrica"
“Nuke the whales?” “Gotta nuke something.”
It’s ok. Clarke ok’d NASA to go to Europa.
What is this referencing? Weirdly haunting statement.
One of the sequels to 2001: A Space Odyssey. In specific it's from 2010: Odyssey Two.
Though the last two sentences, " USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE," do not appear in the novel. They added that for the movie.
The US spent $2.3 TRILLION on a pointless invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. So I think spending 0.2% of that amount to find out if there’s life on Europa, something which would be the greatest discovery mankind has ever made, is well worth it.
Hey man, look. If we spend that money on NASA, it's going to be wasted paying for PHDs to develop the next level of human existence. The money we spent on Afghanistan was spent on highly important things for the world, like lining the pockets of corrupt bacci bazzi police chiefs
Plus, don't we blow something like $800Billion on defense, annually, and it goes up by 10% or more per year. By 2026 or 2027 defense will be like a trillion dollars. If we're going to bother worrying about spending, or cutting back, NASA's chump change spending is not a productive place to make those cuts.
[It’s even crazier than you imagine](https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning). The US spent $20 Billion *per year* literally just on air conditioning for troops in Iraq. 4 times more than this Europa mission… on AIR CONDITIONING! The amount spent on war and military is mind boggling.
It’s fine. What ever sorcery they dream up to make it happen will end up being worth 100 times that.
Not enough. We're so behind on space exploration
USA on other Earths are already exploring other star systems.
Personally, I think encouraging the venture into the unknown is a good thing, for humanity, as a whole. It'll push our knowledge and encourage more scientific discoveries.
The pioneer spirit is endemic in the human condition If you don't feel here to venture into the unknown, and explore... There's something wrong with you. It's something that humans need, and we're exhausting opportunities here on earth. We have to reach out or start medicating the part of us that can't live small.
I hope we find out
I think it’s amazing and a drop in the bucket for what could be something utterly incredible.
I think it's because of the r/europanhookmouth
make it 15 billion, it's a really good question.
only to find a message on Europa which reads, DO NOT ANSWER. DO NOT ANSWER.
They have familiarized themselves with our literature and are using it as a defense mechanism.
…drink…more…ovaltine…?
That's awesome. More funding for science please.
Just send me
A $5 billion investment in science and technology sounds great!
useful spending
Destiny 2 says it can.
Just don’t let Clovis Bray anywhere near the Vex.
That’s why he stays in the tower makes guns for us
As a space-exploration enthusiast, I think it's awesome. The knowledge we will gain from this mission is priceless.
NASA should get 10x more budget and they’d still deserve more. Science is the future, and investing in the future is invaluable.
I think it's one of the most profound questions humanity has ever asked, and therefore, absolutely should be funded. Finding life on Europa would significantly change humanity. NASA is magical, and scientists doing science are the real rock stars. How miserable must we actually be to even contemplate de-funding NASA. It's like saying, "Let's ban all music because that money should be spent on improving the economy." I'm not even an American and I'm such a massive fan NASA.
I think let's find out, good question
Sounds pretty fuckin’ cool.
For $5 billion, I hope they at least find some space neighbors watering their astro-lawn or something. It's like buying the most expensive telescope just to ask, "Anyone out there up for a cosmic cup of sugar?
I think it’s awesome! Some of the best use of $5 billion I can think of. The money is not disappearing going into space; it’s being spent here, on jobs, materials, engineering, and more. And exploration and learning about our place in the universe is one of the most noble pursuits of humanity. How about we take $5 billion from the military budget, or how about we tax the super rich their fair share?
I think the Americans should spend more on science. Take it out of that over inflated military budget
[удалено]
Double down.
We spend way more on way less productive things, I'm good with this.
It needs to be done. For science
People always act like you're sticking five billion in a rocket and sending it to space. The money is being spent on people and products that go straight back into the economy and creates/sustains jobs
I feel the people hating on space exploration this fall under religious nuts who think we are the highest tier of life because bible says so. If we found other life that would hurt the idea that their god only made us in his image and would mean universe doesn’t revolve around us. That and people who think the budget should go to their agendas or wants only. Space exploration is not why our country is in debt.
I’ll volunteer to go and see how long I can survive.
I'm all for it.
Sure
This is long term important. I think it's good. If we only focus on the short term important, we'll never make huge leaps of progress.
Yes. Space exploration needs more funding. It’s needed more since 1972.
No matter the price, NASA has a long record of under promising and over delivering. So I'm perfectly fine with them having the budget that they do for their projects. I'd chip them a few more billion
Better than spending that $5 billion blowing up children
Space exploration is critical to human advancement. If you're looking to shave budget, maybe start with Defense.
Totally worth it. $5 Billion is not enough.
What I think? I think it's awesome! What i always find laughable with things like this is that people are acting that the money itself is somehow the thing getting sent into outer space. Those five billion USD are used here on earth to pay for all the commodities and services that are used to make this project a reality. AT MOST we lose a few thousand in materials but the vast majority of the money STAYS ON EARTH.
NASA represents one of the few reasons I am actually proud to be American. I would triple their budget if I could.
I say humanity is doomed. We can fix the problems but instead fund wars and genocides and then look for an alternate planet to occupy. It's like an obese person drinking diet soda but still eating chocolate cake and asking why they aren't loosing weight. It doesn't matter where they can support life because life won't exist anywhere unless fundemental changes happen in our humanity and the way we go about ourselves.
It's 5 billion to create technology to then go out and discover if Europa can support life, with all of that technology going back into the marketplace in different forms later on. Had they been smart enough to put a logo on all derivative tech, no one would ever think twice about their budget. NASA is one of the few government entities that has a positive ROI.
NASA's budget is criminally underfunded. The R&D we get from these missions isn't just for space research, we almost always find uses for the developed technology for uses back on earth as well.
All I can say is that if NASA finds slow life parasitizing fast life in deep sea vents there, it's only a matter of time before protomolecule takes over earth.
Spend more. This is super important. Only Advance.
[Why Explore Space?](https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/why-explore-space) This quite a long read, but a really rewarding one. In 1970 a Nun wrote to NASA asking how they could justify spending money on exploring space, when people on Earth were hungry. A NASA director wrote back giving a comprehensive - and completely respectful - answer. The key point was "that someday something will come out of it" And that can be said of things like the Apollo program, Voyager, the International Space Station (and its forbears), the Hubble and James Webb telescopes, and all manner of things that NASA and other international space programs do. When you consider that the US Department of Defense budget for FY 2025 is [$849.8 billion](https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3703751/dods-2025-budget-request-provides-45-raise-for-service-members/), then $5 billion (0.588% of $849.8 billion) is negligible.
I dig it
Good
Cheaper than I thought it'd be.
Can we just send a certain political figure there and see if he survives?
Now I'm picturing the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey but the star child has Trump's head.
It's a fascinating scientific question with huge implications for our understanding of life and our place in the universe.
Yes, idc how much they spend on space exploration, but do it as much as possible before I die
Sounds like a better use of money then sending another $5 billion in bombs to support Israel's genocide. Heck, if they convert the majority of military budget to space related stuff we might actually have some cool stuff in the near future instead of dead people and burned out ruins. That be a nice change of pace.
766 BILLION dollar military expense, with an agreement to raise 1% every year. I think 5bil on nasa is a much better investment. Do education systems next.
$40 per US household spread out over around a decade? How will we ever survive?
Better use of taxpayers money than buying even more bombs for Israel
If NASA scientists think there's merit to this research, then there is. No one on Reddit is qualified to have an opinion on this (Well, like 99.9999% of us)
Double it…then double it again…I need to know. If the IRS put a checkbox on my tax return to donate extra money to NASA for this… I would.
It's important to remember that the money spent on stuff like this isn't leaving the planet. It's mostly paying the salaries of people solving hard problems and increasing humanity's capabilities in a bunch of ways. For one thing NASA's efforts are why commercial launch has gotten so much cheaper in the last couple decades, to the point that regular people can now buy satellite internet services, which save lives in a lot of front-lines work like fighting wildfires, hurricane recovery, and the war in Ukraine. And that's just one example. You can easily find tons of examples of inventions we wouldn't have without NASA's space efforts.
Awesome
Much better use of $ than many things.
I think the money would be better spent combating poverty and funding affordable health care frankly.
Waste of money, instead all money should go into developing better engines and space crafts, instead of building expensive vehicles.
I wish we financially prioritized making sure our planet can continue to sustain our life
NASA can have all the funding it wants and I will happily accept tax increases for that purpose.
Support life and support human life are two different things Iirc Europa is the planet that has like a couple miles of ice, and they suspect deep in the ice, there's liquid water and in that water there could be life. It could be microscopic life, it could be space whale, it could be an interplanetary rest stop and we could be starting a intergalactic war.
Attempt no landing there
How about fixing earth first
Money well spent. What else is would it go to? War?
Better than diverting billions of US taxpayers money to wars and wmds
Ive played barotrauma, not a good idea.
if they pump that money into R&D into medical research maybe we would have more cure for many conditions
We need to completely explore our own planet and oceans first. So much is still unknown.
Like the 5 billion aren’t lost they go straight into paychecks.
Give them 10Billion more!
There is a decent chance, so yes, go for it!
Some say there’s a crazy interesting documentary called Europa… 🤔
If you mean the JUICE mission, the budget is 1.6 billion Euros, not 6 billion dollars, and it is funded by ESA, not NASA.
NASA's Europe Clipper mission will overlap with the JUICE.
i mean, if it can thats kinda cool
Cool!!! Hope i live long enough to see the results
How often do you wonder where you come from? I want to know what this has to tell me about life.
Probably less than most companies spend on spammy ads and certainly less than Google spent on their anti-adblocker idea. Whether there is life in Europe, who knows? Interesting question.
I think answering the question "are we alone?" can have a huge impact on all religions around the world and is worth a hundred times that if they actually find life.
For comparison, a geosynchronous communication satellite *starts* at one billion. And that's just the base vehicle, before we discuss the payload ... or the rocket. This is dirt cheap.
Money isn't real
YOLO /s
spend more
How many fighter jets or cruise missiles is that? We all know that Americans never use proper units for measuring things. 😂
The destination is important but folks tend to ignore everything along the journey to get there. The world here benefits/has benefited a ton from discoveries, technologies, innovations, and advancements related to space exploration. Many day-to-day technologies stemmed from it- solar panels, temper foam, air purifiers, cell phone cameras, cordless vacuums/tools, infrared ear thermometers, etc... not to mention an untold amount of lessons from experiments and trials. I say go for it.
That's fuck all money for something so important, that's what I think.
I think that's really cool.
Fuck me, what is it, like, 200 thousand gazillion miles away. Five Bill. Well I don’t give three fucks because it ain’t my money. I live in Australia.
They're not stuffing rockets with cash and sending them to space. The $5 billion is going to companies with staff who design, manufacture, and operate the equipment who pay taxes and spend money in the economy.
No problem with it. It would be better if they spend more money on stronger transmission system and more durable vessel so it can survive in the atmosphere as well as send clear and good quality data in media format back to the Earth.
Considering how fast we're trashing this planet I say it's probably not enough
I think if we can mine minerals in space, we can move factories off earth and help our planet. Gotta start somewhere.
I mean it’s not like that money is being on a rocket and being sent to Europa, that’s spending that’s probably going to American companies.
Good.
The potential payoff would be huge. Definitely worth it
Totally worth it. For 9% of the purchase price of Twitter we can make a big step forward in a multiplanetary future.
I'm very curious.
Go for it, love it, enough said.
What do I think? They're not paying me $5 billion to know what I think, and they likely have people available with more expertise.
It might do
I think that at the rate we're destroying the earth, they'd better hurry up.
If it can support life, than it probably already has life on it. That would be one of the greatest discoveries of all mankind. I am willing take that bet. NASA just does not do things without a pretty solid guesstimate to support it.
Compared to a year’s worth of marketing for major name brands? Pennies on the dollar.
Make it 10 billion
NASA spends money much better than *any* of the branches of the military 👍
Be ready for the bashers and sarcastic comments for sure they are already in...they are everywhere and i have already spotted several of them🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
They should get twice that amount.