One way ticket to Mars

[pickdropper]

Agree completely with the above. But just to counterpoint, government can be and is so many times entirely inefficient on so many levels we all could sit here and just type out program after progam after program of total waste, outright fraud and uttter incompentence. Google Pork Barrel politics and start from there and work your way down and branch off into any sector one wishes.

Just for the sake of discussion if it takes 1 billion to do something good and we spend 5 billion instead is that not 4 billion in utter waste even if the goal/mission was completed successfully? I'm not sure if that is what the other poster was really pointing at but it is what I'm pointing at. So would that 4 billion not be better spent on other things as opposed to a politicians pocket or someone's "profit" pocket due to fraud?

Right.  As a citizen of Illinois, I can certainly attest to government not always being a more efficient spending path.   

But yeah, it's a good point about government funded research that may not ever have been done in the private sector.

Still, the idea that we should shut down the space program because there are problems with starvation and poverty doesn't sit well with me either.  Science needs to progress and should yield some solutions for dealing with unavoidable problems that we are almost certainly going to face in the future.

[cooder]

Agree completely with the above. But just to counterpoint, government can be and is so many times entirely inefficient on so many levels we all could sit here and just type out program after progam after program of total waste, outright fraud and uttter incompentence. Google Pork Barrel politics and start from there and work your way down and branch off into any sector one wishes.

Just for the sake of discussion if it takes 1 billion to do something good and we spend 5 billion instead is that not 4 billion in utter waste even if the goal/mission was completed successfully? I'm not sure if that is what the other poster was really pointing at but it is what I'm pointing at. So would that 4 billion not be better spent on other things as opposed to a politicians pocket or someone's "profit" pocket due to fraud?

Right.  As a citizen of Illinois, I can certainly attest to government not always being a more efficient spending path.   

But yeah, it's a good point about government funded research that may not ever have been done in the private sector.

Still, the idea that we should shut down the space program because there are problems with starvation and poverty doesn't sit well with me either.  Science needs to progress and should yield some solutions for dealing with unavoidable problems that we are almost certainly going to face in the future.

What I was trying to say and think what we need is a different look at priorities, or better said a change of paradigm.
It is not about the'classic' right or wrong dichotmoy of government or private sector, that has worked so far to get us comfortably (at least in the first world that we are discussing this from...!) in this ...well... situation...
It has brought us to a place where less then 100 people (you could fit those into a double decker bus) own and have access to 50% of wealth on the planet.
Those will be by the way the people who sit in the double decker starship to a 'new' world to save their bums if this place gets really so inhabitable that Mars is a better swap; together with a few select hairdressers and phone sanitizers. Just a quote on 'hitchhickers guide to the galaxy' there for you.
I don't want to be on board of that ship, not that I myself will see that day anyway. My son might do and some other of this species.

I think what juansolo touches on is the story of change in paradigm: we need the Teslas and brilliant people to further their ideas without being stunted by the paradigm of profit only.
We need to have the Fred Hollows of this world and everyone in us look after each other and being able to do so without being stunted by the paradigm of profit only.

And yes, as humankind and technical ability we can do that, now. It may well involve harvesting asteroids and spaceflight.
But it won't happen with asteroids and spaceflights by itself and just believing in the force of the market and then hoping that those new mega rich people will be good to us because money doesn't count then.
That's a bit too much wishful thinking of doing the same old in the face of how much good and bad we can do in magnitude affecting the whole planet, a quality which has changed since the Vikings and Columbus.
Also the state of the planet is agruably more messed up than at that time.

You can find examples in any direction of good and bad that science has brought forward, medicinal lifesavers as well as terribly efficient pesticides used for genocide (Zyklon B, the factory build with close government entanglement right beside Ausschwitz; Agent Orange, made in New Zealand;... take your pick) and if you look at that much if not all has been possible through the current paradigm of profiteering and monetary interests.

If too much money does really make itself superflous then the point of that would be long reached.

Money itself isn't bad or good, it's the meaning and equaling to power that we attached to it that makes it a problem, that it's THE priority, the golden paradigm.

That has to change, otherwise asteroids and other planets will just get the same story re-loaded.

No I don't have brilliant solutions for that myself, otherwise I would try to find an influential adviser position.
I just hope the right Teslas and Hollows will be heard for that though and not stunted by the usual ol' ways.

Just started a book by Naomi Klein 'This changes everything'. Unfortunately the book doesn't change evrything for the better by itself or so, just interesting reading, not that I agree with everything in there.
And I also think we don't need to agree on absolutely everything to come to a more constructive paradigm.

And to juansolos concerns of becoming a hippy:
don't worry, hippies usually don't do pies AND race cars at the same time, maybe one of those but both? No, you're safe...

[pickdropper]

I get you, Cooder.  There are so many interlocking pieces that it's not a simple answer of what is right and what is wrong.

In an overly simplistic and myopic viewpoint, I look at it like a lot of engineering companies.  Engineering companies often keep R&D and Engineering support of manufacturing as two separate entities.  The reason for that is that manufacturing support needs to happen to keep things going now, but R&D is absolutely necessary to keep things going in the future.  Once companies stop innovating, they usually die. 

Of course, that's not quite a direct correlation, but I do think there is some level of comparison.  Not all science is progress, but some of it qualifies and we need to continue to find ways of learning and expanding our knowledge base.  Perhaps a better comparison is the medical industry.  You need people to come up with treatments for existing diseases, but you also need people working on the cures that might prevent the disease from happening in the future.

[Muadzin]

I'm not a big fan of the people are dying here on Earth so lets spend our money here first argument. It is a valid argument, but if progress were to made dependent on solving our social woes first we would never progressed beyond the level of cavemen. Unless we institute world wide rule by AI supplanting human governance there will always be wars. We muck things up. Even democracies do stupid wars, we only have to go back a decade to see just that. There will probably also be poverty, disease and famine, because there are simply way too many of us. And if we were to solve world hunger and disease there would be an awful lot even more of us very quickly.

All the more reason for some of us to get off our asses and come up with a way to get some of us off this planet so we as a species will survive. Because lets face it, we as a species suck at making long term decisions that benefit all of us. Sure, we can blame greedy corporations, sure we can blame inefficient and corrupt governments. But we buy from those corporations, we work at those corporations. They aren't faceless entities, they are conglomerates of people who are answerable to other people (shareholders). And in our democracies our politicians don't grab power outside out of our control. We vote for them. If we keep voting for inefficient politicians who are slaves to big corporations, then we only have ourselves to blame.

I remember a Lewis Black show where he held up a smart phone. He told about all the wondrous things that thing could do. And then he said we could have had clean renewable energy decades ago except we, the people, decided that it was more important that we could call each from anywhere in the world and check our facebook status.

We live in a wonderful age. No longer do we have to start a political and social movement through laborious organization that takes decades to take off the ground to influence power, as the first social democratic movements did. We have the power of social media and technology. Things like the 99% movement and the Arab Spring, and perversely even ISIS, show us that movements can now spring up overnight that will give the Powers That Be frickin' nightmares, or even overthrow the old order. It can be done. If only we stop using that technology to stroke our own egos and for once use it for something good.

[chromesphere]

I've had that discussion with friends on a few occasions, but its usually of the following variety: If you were given the option to be sent into interstellar space (lets say we can go half light speed, relativistic/ time dilation issues be damned-you aren't returning) on a ship with all provisions needed to survive and be occupied (a bench and supplies plz) for the rest of your life, would you? The only caveat; you're alone, and you communication with others will be limited to the first year or two of your travels. I think i'd say yes.

This is essentially a nightmare for me.  Call me ape-like but I can not survive without human contact.  Never seeing your loved ones again.  Alone in a metal can drifting through an empty black void of anything but silence.  It's one step away from death.  Arrgghh!  I need to take some pills...

Starting to feel a little bit like the artist from The Fast Show