Why should we fund NASA? (a quick soccer ball rant)

[mdmc]

I am a big fan of the space agency, but I just read this article - http://g.sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-cup/blog/dirty-tackle/post/NASA-piles-on-the-Jabulani-hate?urn=sow,254182
titled NASA piles on the Jabulani hate (a story about a soccer ball)
which had this paragraph =

Now it turns out there is a very real scientific basis for all the moaning. NASA's aerodynamics people at the Ames Investigation Centre managed to get some MLS players to kick a very dusty Jabulani around to what sounds like a soundtrack from a 1970s instructional video. The tests confirm what everyone has been saying: Jabulani's scanty 440-gram weight, coupled with the high-altitude conditions in South Africa, means when at speeds of 44 mph or more the ball becomes susceptible to something called the "knuckle effect." That's aerodynamic shorthand for "it swerves all around like crazy at high speeds because of the air flow on the seams and stuff," which isn't so bad when you get goals like this.

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So while millions of fully insured Americans still lack access to affordable medical treatment, our government is funding a space program that studies the playability of a soccer ball.

[Dank Nugs]

1. This is why.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. - Carl Sagan

[mdmc]

3. yup = I am a big NASA fan

but in a time when millions of fully insured Americans cannot access affordable medical treatment should we really be paying to do tests on a soccer ball?

[Dank Nugs]

9. Should we really be sending the military to murder people in other countries?

There's lots of things that we shouldn't spend money on. Face it. Our leaders don't give a shit about the average person and we're considered expendable.

[sharp_stick]

12. That picture never fails to amaze me

It's kind of like looking out at the stars and realizing just how insignificant we really are.

[Blue_Tires]

2. there have been a lot of ugly corner kicks during the WC

many times the ball floated to almost the other corner...

[mdmc]

5. yes perhaps FIFA or Addidas could fit the bill to study the ball?

NASA should be doing something.. else..

[Zavulon]

4. Right, cut off NASA completely because of this study.

I don't disagree that it's a bullshit study, but there are lots of bullshit studies I'd attack before this one. After that, I'd attack lots of other grants before this one. Our budget is full of them, with every politician trying to grab a piece for the folks back home. I'd bet I could find 100 expenditures far more absurd than this one in the first hour of flipping through the list of things our tax money is pissed away on each year.

The amount of actual good we could do with that money, when I think of where it's going, makes me sick. You're right that the soccer ball study is stupid, but are you seriously suggesting we cut off NASA funding entirely because of it?

[mdmc]

6. no at all - I am a big fan of NASA

I just feel that in a time when so many Americans are hurting, NASA should keep their kick&giggle money wasters out of the spot light.

[Zavulon]

7. No argument there...

...and personally, although I'll probably get flamed for it, I think this NASA outreach to make Muslims feel good about themselves is horseshit, too. When we have less people hurting, as you correctly point out, THAT'S when we can have NASA start worrying about one group's self-esteem.

[Posteritatis]

11. Studies usually have more than one use

It's pretty myopic to think something like this is a just-for-its-own-sake thing that will have no other potential applications.

Surprising as it may be, NASA is pretty interested in aerodynamics in a variety of forms.

[Ian David]

8. Throw away your microcomputer and your GPS system if you don't like space programs.

Why don't you move to Somalia, where they don't HAVE a space program?

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. You know what they did is USE A BALL to study aerodynamics

you think what they learned with that will not be used for oh I don't know SPACE VEHICLES?

By the way, I am betting this was more the ... we are all curious, damned curious.

And what can we LEARN from this Jabulani design? And chiefly HOW CAN THAT BE APPLIED?

That is why they do things like this that may seem stupid to you.

By the way... if we cut NASA completely, it is such a damn drop in the fucking bucket that you will still have that many people who have no insurance.

This is like the people who complaint of our HUGE Foreign Aid responsibilities, which are truly SMALL. As in VERY SMALL.