How many children could have Health Care for the price of those Moon Crashes?

[RagAss]

Where the fuck am I living?

[KamaAina]

1. How many children could have Health Care for the price of those Futile And Stupid Wars?

A lot more, I'd wager. Probably all of 'em. :eyes:

[RagAss]

4. Fully agree....but we can never hope to quench the American thirst for war.

[sudopod]

36. So we should gut science instead...

BRILLIANT!

[anigbrowl]

47. +1

[SidDithers]

50. +1...

you nailed it.

Sid

[MNDemNY]

2. Yea, but that damn moon wont be messin' with us, anymore!

[FiveGoodMen]

3. How many could have it for the cost of one day in Afghanistan?

...where we aren't learning anything!

[RagAss]

7. No argument.

[BlueJazz]

5. Money spent on Science and Science expeditions is returned to the public.....

...in countless ways that are not immediately obvious.

Replace your question with "Money spent on War"

[RagAss]

6. Not immediately obvious....being the key concept.

[RagAss]

21. I sure do....but for what????

[BlooInBloo]

22. Yep. That's always a problem with Americans.

[Posteritatis]

28. And one people need to learn to cope with

The problem with basic scientific research is that you don't get a nice itemized list of immediate, short-term consumer benefits when you start it. Those come later when people figure out things to do with the resulting data. But since Americans generally want that itemized list from day one, they've started taking an increasingly hostile attitude to anything more complex than mere practical engineering.

Mindsets like this are why Bell Labs and similar organizations are dead these days.

[The_Casual_Observer]

16. That may have been the case at one time, but not anymore.

The space exploration business is done by a very small cadre/club of insiders & everything is done as cheaply as possible. Very little if any technology gets transferred form them, it probably more the other way around anymore.

[ddeclue]

8. Not as many as you think,

[Warpy]

9. Oh, please, that's low

The truth is that we could do both and much, much more if we weren't pouring half of what this government spends down that five sided rathole, supporting an Imperial military.

Empire benefits only the rich, and they've decided they shouldn't even have to bear the cost of supporting it.

That, buddy, is why every single person in the US doesn't have health care. It has nothing to do with experiments in pure science.

[RagAss]

10. But we can start with one thing....right?

[tammywammy]

12. So start by cutting back (more) on science??? n/t

[RagAss]

14. Never...just prioritize ! All I'm saying !

[Posteritatis]

27. Prioritize by cutting what's left of science, you mean. (nt)

[tammywammy]

32. So we should start with NASA and science? n/t

[Statistical]

41. The probe (not just the impact but entire mission) cost $78 million.

BTW the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq expend $400 million a day. So this mission (of which we got scientific data) costs less than 4 hours in I & A.

Me thinks your poutrage is misplaced.

[Warren DeMontague]

48. How about prioritizing your outrage when it comes to our fiscal priorities.

I don't know why, but it's always NASA's spending that comes under the magnifying glass. It's weird.

[Warpy]

13. Not that one, sunshine.

Start with the PENTAGON.

I dare you.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

11. How many children could have been given for health care...

with the money we wasted providing a public education for these anti-science buffoons?

[RagAss]

15. I hear you...but let's prioritize....people are dying.

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Posteritatis]

26. Fine, chop it out of the defense budget. *That* is useful prioritizing.

DU sure likes to come out and hate basic science whenever there's even the tiniest price tag involved - and the cost of this mission is peanuts.

[dionysus]

59. how many children could get health care if we got rid of that bloated dept of education?

:crazy:

[dugaresa]

18. At the height of those programs, large US companies employed loads of US workers

who were able to afford a decent middle class status. (including healthcare)

I would prefer that to spending money in Iraq and Afghanistan where money is given to contractors who then ship in folks from poorer countries to take advantage their low wages.

[RagAss]

19. ...and kids without health care ?

[Swede]

20. You realise that the money is spent down here on earth.

http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html

[RagAss]

23. Yes I do

[Spike89]

24. Cut waste in a lot of areas but

you're way off base to think the priority should be to cut back on science first. The NASA budget if you took it all away wouldn't make any significant difference to the healthcare issue. You could easily (and with more logic) call for a slight cutback in the money we spend on the war on drugs. Obviously the pentagon could take an $80 million cut and much more before it truly mattered.

The link between pure science and medicine is real and health care depends on science way more than most people acknowledge. In a $ trillion+ budget, sniping at a modest $80 million project and attempting to blame it for the failure to fund a multi-billion dollar initiative is ridiculous.

Advocating that we should fund childcare by stiffing the barrista at the local coffee stand for a week makes as much sense.

[damntexdem]

25. There's no logical connection.

How many children could have health care for the cost of dog food that Americans purchase? That question makes more sense than the moon one -- though it doesn't make much.

[LostInAnomie]

29. Answer: None

We don't have a national public health care system.

[Fumesucker]

30. We spend a thousand times the cost of that program on the drug war..

Every single fucking year..

Which has led to the USA having the highest incarceration rate on the planet..

But it's far preferable to cut some basic science than scale back on locking people in cages.

Think of the children. :eyes:

[Warren DeMontague]

49. Right, but that's about telling people what to do, which isn't scary.

Learning new things about our Universe, OTOH, is terribly frightening, since any new information could upset several thousand years' worth of Superstitious house-of-cards building.

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. Given that some of the science leaks into medicine

sooner or later.

Now if you were talking about ... I don't know, them stupid wars.

NASA's budget is less than one percent of one percent of the budget...

And WE NEED TO FINANCE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.

There, I feel much better.

[philly_bob]

33. I'll spend the money to see if there's water on the moon...

I'm much less happy spending the money on these Middle Eastern wars.

[hunter]

34. I'm guessing most of the children of people working on that mission got healthcare...

... that they wouldn't have had if their science/engineer/technician parents were unemployed.

The only economics that isn't win/win is economics that destroys the lives of others (war, repression of civil rights...) or destroys the natural environment (fossil fuels, pollution...)

[BeHereNow]

35. Amen, thanks for pointing it out.

You might want to put on your flame suit for doing so though.
The trolls are out in huge numbers around the issue.

BHN

[Bill McBlueState]

38. there's a typo in your post

You typed "trolls" when you meant to type "people who disagree with me."

[BeHereNow]

39. No typo- TROLLS.

I've been a DU member since early 2002.
I know when trolls are hitting DU.
And I am not alone.

BHN

[Warren DeMontague]

42. Bullshit.

Maybe 5% -tops- of DU constitutes the anti-science, "leave the moon alone", NOT ONE DIME for NASA, The Moon Landings Were Faked crowd. The vast majority of people here understand that money for science, exploration, and learning about our Universe is almost always money well spent.

The folks- and I'm not even convinced that there's more than one or maybe two of them, despite all the usernames- (cough) who are up in arms about this have, for the most part, clearly demonstrated a total lack of understanding vis a vis scientific fact as well as the particulars of this mission.

So, to you, DU is being overrun by "trolls", because the arguments of the folks (plural?) who actually agree with you are out there getting walloped. :eyes:

[dionysus]

58. pro-science trolls? now i have heard everything.

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

[Bill McBlueState]

37. My kid's health insurance is paid for with NASA money

The employer contribution to her premiums is paid by my supervisor's grant from NASA, and the employee contribution is deducted from my paycheck, which comes from the same grant.

So some number of children *do* get health care thanks to NASA.

[Warren DeMontague]

40. Let's put it this way. The entire LCROSS mission = 1/3 of the annual "Abstinence Only" budget.

It's about 1/4000th of the money which the GAO says was lost- totally unaccounted for, disappeared- in Iraq.

It's approx. 1/20000th of the amount of money we spend every year fighting pot smoking.

Right, right, I know. Sure, those things are ridiculous, but for some reason it's only when NASA gets 5 cents for science or exploration it's time for a screaming, hysterical fiscal hissy-fit. :eyes:

[Toasterlad]

43. What About All the Moon Children Who Were Killed By Those Missiles?

No one ever talks about them!

[jdp349]

52. The United Lunar Federation

provides universal healthcare to all moon children so they're all covered, that's why its not an issue.

Do a little more research next time :sarcasm:

[EOTE]

44. 17.

Hey, ask a silly question.

[EndersDame]

45. Why not cut funding to the Arts while we at it

we could have lots of money then! Seriously The Arts and Sciences are an integral part of the evolution of Humanity

[Scarsdale Vibe]

46. I assume the OP gives 90% of his earnings to charity and has a subsistence living.

In the time you've spent posting on DU you could have easily volunteered at a local charity. Why are you so evil?

[SidDithers]

51. How many children could have Health Care...

for the budget of the NYC Fire Department.

Or the National Endowment for the Arts.

Or NPR?

You do know that the total cost of the "Moon Crashes", $79 million, is approximately 1/5th what the City of Cincinnati paid toward the construction of Paul Brown Stadium (where the Cincinnati Bengals play)?

So, yes, the spending of public money should always be prioritized. But perhaps you need to examine your priorities too.

Sid

[TheKentuckian]

53. Way to pick on grossly underinvested sciences for the shorties.

The entire NASA budget is less than 1% of the budget but lets scapegoat a mission that could well be the precursory step of the journey to the stars.

This is one of the best and smartest things where the fuck you are living ever does. What kind of logic and sense of priority does it take to go here? Lets say that health care for children was priority #1 and not another cent goes anywhere before you make damn well sure every child is taken care of, are you saying the 1st cut would be science, exploration, and research?

The unrecs are flying today, this one maybe the most richly deserved.

[AngryAmish]

54. brilliant

I could not have done better.

[Zix]

55. You could have saved yourself a lot of bother, here, by googling a bit and looking up the figures.

It was pretty much a given that that's what everybody responding to the thread was going to do.

[dionysus]

56. well, we could cancel science to feed people, i suppose.

[Rude Dog]

57. And this is the newest anti-science meme:

"HURR DURR TEH MUNEEZ IZ WAYSTID"

Ignorance. Unrec'd and ignored.

[ieoeja]

60. 10,000

The LCROSS mission cost $79,000,000 over two years giving us $39,500,000 per year.

If we use $3,950 per year for healthcare costs -- about the middle of the various cost estimates we have seen -- then we have $39,500,000 per year divided by $3,950 per child per year giving us a grand total of 10,000 children

Or 0.025%, that is one quarter of one tenth of one percent, of the 40,000,000 million uninsured in America today.


I think you're onto something. All we have to do to give healthcare to all the uninsured is eliminate 4,000 lunar missions per year!