Science The Webb Space Telescope is 100x as powerful as the Hubble. It will change astronomy.

PC Gamer: The James Webb Telescope's hard drive can't store Warzone, but it will withstand the horrifying effects of cosmic radiation.

 

This would be a really great response to my post about solipsism.

 

Neil & NASA Explain James Webb's First Images

 

This is clearly the artist formerly known as Prince

 

Engeers rule.

 

https://people.com/human-interest/f...ge-of-distant-star-was-actually-just-chorizo/

 

‘Historic’ James Webb images show exoplanet in unprecedented detail

Historic is a bit of an understatement.

 

Webb captures a cosmic tarantula

 

I’d rather they use the money for all of this on things that benefit society. Feed people for instance. Provide housing. Pay teachers more. Pretty pictures doesn’t seem important enough.

 

Science is why we have the means to feed people, produce clean energy, extend lifespans, prevent or cure disease. It is vastly beneficial.

 

They can do all of that without diverting anything from any sciences. In fact, investing in those sciences has paid dividends.

https://space.nss.org/settlement/na... on,driving productivity growth is technology.

 

Thats helpful. Sounds like a piece written by astronomers or space people. Would we not have these things from "going to space" without going to space? Maybe. Maybe we only can generate small refrigerators because we launched ourselves into space. I dont know. I think we spend too much on the military too. Just sooooo much money and meanwhile people in Mississippi dont have water. Kids live on streets. Our education system sucks ass. Could we pay for all that AND go to space, sure. But wouldn't it be great if they froze spending on military (and in my mind NASA) for a year and pumped it into schools and homeless? I'll take that instead of the HD pictures of Saturn's rings.

 

Lack of money isn't why we aren't helping those people. We have more than enough.

We don't help those people because it makes us feel better that there are people below us. That's the honest to goodness truth of it.

We can't give homeless people housing, even though it costs us 4x more to allow them to be homeless. Why? We know it works. We have seen it done multiple times in multiple places.

So why?

Same thing with the war on drugs.

That's what it all comes down to. Those kids who need help can't compete with my kids so, that's a good thing for me. And then they'll be cheap labor I can exploit to become a millionaire.

Healthcare. Same thing. We could give Healthcare to everybody in the country, for less than we currently spend. Canada currently does it for less than our government currently spends on healthcare here in the US.

We can't have that. Because... Eff them. That's why. I got mine.

 

Let us not forget the US spends more on military than the rest of the world combined. And most of it is not going to help Ukraine.
And giant tax cuts for the rich that the rest of us pay for in reduced services.

 

This is true. And if that allows us to retain being the world's reserve currency and control shipping lanes while bringing the rest of the world into a clean energy power future of abundance that would be fine.

But we've been pulling back from that since we won the cold war.

 

I've heard this general opinion many times over the years.

NASA's budget for 2021 was a little over $23.2 billion, which represented around 0.35% of the $6.8 trillion the US spent in the fiscal year.

Of the .35% that goes to NASA, about 1.5% to 4% was spent on the Webb telescope yearly.

Here's a good article about the benefits of astronomy. It's important that the US try to stay a leader in science and technology.

There are a lot of things wrong with this country, NASA isn't one of them.