Did you read the article?!
It explained that clearly…

“Wish they wouldn’t say they had something big to reveal, until they have something big to reveal!!”

My wife had the same complaint on our wedding night.

Life might not be found on mars.
But I believe beyond doubt that it exists.
Maybe not in our solar system, maybe not our galaxy but in the vast expanses of the universe.
It would be very primitive to believe otherwise.

Martin take a look at what they had to do to land a car size rover on the red planet. That remark lacks credibility.

Remind us how many billion they spent and how many lives it would have saved if invested in clean water for Africa.

I’m thinking of sending a probe to NASA to search for intelligent life.
I’m sure there must be a neuron in there somewhere under the dust.

“Remind us how many billion they spent and how many lives it would have saved if invested in clean water for Africa.”

Good point, especially when we ignore that as a result of NASA various space missions we’ve directly developed technology such as heart pumps, dialysis pumps among many, many other medical advances, zeolite soil (where plants can be grown independent of infertile soils), understanding and even recognising Global Warming though studying Venus and, again, many many other things that have benefited our health and species.

But yes, down with this sort of human exploration even when the pay back to a government on the technology alone that is developed is considerable.

The billions spent on NASA is a fraction of the overall US Budget. It’s actual a small fraction of its overseas aid budget.

Damien there is more money going to corrupt politicians & the people running aid agencies than it costs to send curiosity. Im not sure if you are aware but these missions benefit mankind including those in Africa. I am by no means an expert in this so if you dont know the benefits of it you havent looked very far. I suggest to you that you do more damage to our brothers & sisters in the developing world everytime you start your car heat your home or take a holiday or eat your dinner than a mission to mars every year. Your point is not well informed & there is no excuse for it when it comes to Nasa.

@Carl…you omit that the space race has always been driven by weapons development programs; right back to V1 and V2 Nazi science divided between the victors of the last round of our sucessive ‘Great Wars for planetary hegemony, and that most of the benefits have been side-effects of these incidental discoveries.
The ‘Cold War’ space race for the Moon was the big-dick imperial face-off between Washington and Moscow after Sputnik 1 shook the US complacency about its ICBM delivery systems. Context please.

@Mjhint
I’m old enough enough and informed enough to have followed the ‘space race’, not without scientific interest, from its pre-satellitic days.
I’m not advocating some Luddite retreat from science, but a change of mindset from competitive weaponisation to co-operative post-national salvage of the collapsing biosystems(the oceans are an unexplored trove of life-forms still, and we are fast desertifying them)consequent to the current lack of human triage in relation to goals selected. Priorities.
I’ll be taking an interest in the microbial fauna of the underside of Martian rocks when the martial artists hand control of the agenda back to prioritising productive creation over destructive nihilism. When clean water is provided to all and adequate food and shelter(no difficult task with our resources if the will were mobilised) I will be as happy as the next to resume perusal of the Doppler shifted quasers.
I hope that clarifies.

Way too obscure for me. I still think you have more chance of fresh water available in mars than in Africa. Resources & money will not fix its problems. I too saw the space race & in my view we need to spend more not less on it. Your view on the oceans is an accurate one but Mars is just as important.

Well, at least we’ve established who is, and who is not, semi informed. And who is thinking half clearly.

If you think the water resources of Africa cannot be maintained and distributed with modern technology, and that the heath of Mars is more important than our oceans…I suggest you re-read your last comment.
And think before replying if you still feel the need.
It is precisely such entropic failure of thought that stops us from solving our human problems and results in our compounding them for lack of reflection. Once again lazy reflex trumps rigorous reflection; will triumphs over intellect. The obscurity is in the accepted ignorance of the beholder. Not uncommon.
Reprocess your own last comment.

@ Damien “Context please”

Context would be nice. Of all the budgetary issues to pick on you pick on the one most conservatives pick on Science and Space, despite tangible benefits to society from those programmes. You give the impression that we either let Africans die or we stop exploration and expanding our understanding (where there are benfits for us and future generations). This simply is not true, so yes, context would be good.

And as Voyager trundles off into deep space at a cost of billions, in 1977 (the year of the mission launch) the US was the largest single donor in a global campaign that eradicated smallpox from the world. Eradicated. Gone. Done long after the big-dick imperial face-off was over, done at the same time when we just put up a craft with a gold record and a small introductory sign just for the craic.

So maybe the context is that the big-dick social cause face-off should also understand the complexities of what happens to all the funding that is given, how effective are the charities and NGO’s who won’t allow auditing or any analysis of their operations or release how much of their funding goes to actual groundwork? How about we get the context on getting the best out of the money that is given (just like NASA and ESA have to with their ever reducing budgets), rather than a glib statement regarding budget that is a tiny fraction of just the US’s budget, let alone other nations.

You finger the crux when you pinpoint the ‘charities and NGOs’.

Political problems being off-loaded to voluntarism. Not unlike the microcosm where locally our taxes are siphoned out to extractive banking tax-havens, while our hospitals shake buckets to fund services. Too busy snouting the funding truffles from the trough to take the trouble to look over the rim. As for US aid, are you aware of the destruction of local economies consequent to ‘aid’ dumping? How much of the aid is ‘sweeteners’ for compliant clients in resource extraction? How much is tied aid and how much military aid?Your presumption of US benevolence is positively heartwarming.

I must be getting long-winded if it takes me three paragraphs to make a glib statement.
But then the reductionist distortions(‘impression’ given) you have produced of what I actually wrote indicate a less than careful reading.
Or a deliberately tendentious one.

Damien I never said I was an expert just an observer. However I do have far more intelligent people than you or I to back up what I say & you being obscure shows a weakness on your side not a lack information on mine.

@Mjhint
I’ll leave you to reconsider the ‘intelligence’ of water seeking on Mars being equally important with the predicament of our dying oceans. Google ’6th great extinction’ before reacting.

Your attitude is equivalent to watching the soap on your neighbours’ TV through your hi-tech binoculars as your house burns around you and your kids.

“And as Voyager trundles off into deep space at a cost of billions, in 1977 (the year of the mission launch) the US was the largest single donor in a global campaign that eradicated smallpox from the world.”

The Voyager program cost $250 million. I am curious where the “billions” figure came from.

Well moviefreak some folks refer to NASA as NADA, i think this maybe one of those times.

There is..they serve the tea in the canteen.