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cactusrexOP•

"Scientists at NASA have discovered a nearly invisible ring around Saturn -- one so large that it would take 1 billion Earths to fill it"...

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Pikajabroni•

That's nice. How will this help people put food on their family?

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GeoManCam•

usually food goes in a person, but hey, maybe if you put it on them it works better. Perhaps we've had it wrong all this time.

2
Pikajabroni•

Thank GW for that one. Seriously, though, with all this talk about health care and people not having any money, how is spending all this money to explore a ring around Saturn going to help anyone other than the scientists who look at it?

2
nobodyspecial•

Provides jobs for the engineers who designed Cassini, the machinists who manufactured Cassini, the antenna network, the cafeteria workers, etc.

Moreover, it moved manufacturing technology forward. One of the discoveries from the satellite programs was that nuts and bolts don't work well to secure critical plumbing. Over time and due to jostling, the nuts worked loose. So JPL commissioned a pipe welding machine that joins two pipes together permanently. The seams are almost indetectable. Turns out, the welding machine turned out to be just the ticket for earth-bound power plants that had the same problem. As a result power outages are reduced.

There's simply no way a-priori to know how esoteric research will pan out but history has repeatedly shown that technological research has paid out in day to day goods being better than they were before.

To my mind, that beats the old New Deal project of hiring men to sweep leaves from one side of the road to the other and then hire another crew to sweep the leaves the other way.

2
Pikajabroni•

I just wanted to see if anyone would answer the question without getting all offended. Gracias. My uncle was a scientist at NASA.

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myinnervoice•

Survival of the fittest. NASA doesn't need to feed anyone but themselves.

1
Pikajabroni•

Which would be why people shouldn't bad when they don't feed NASA.

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