Excuse the double post but,
What's a useful benefit of the space station, the Hubble telescope, the mars digger.
Interestingly enough, I read somewhere the average American spends more on cable television than they do on funding science, What's the useful benefit of that? Anyway, your statement should be fun to look into a bit.
Space Station
"The National Institute of Health has said that protein crystal growth is the number one research tool that we'll be using in the next century..." In a normal gravity environment, protein crystals grow imperfections and impurities, though aboard the orbiting laboratories of the International Space Station protein crystals can be grown to almost perfection. This will allow the development of more pure pharmaceutical drugs, foods and an assortment of other crystalline-based products including insulin for diabetes patients." hmm sounds good, what else?
"Aboard the International Space Station the field of fundamental physics has a grand opportunity. Not only will the laws of quantum theory as they pertain to mapping of the relic of quantum gravity --gravitational waves generated from the Big Bang -- be tested. But the areas of high powered physics will be able to develop new, more precise atomic clocks with the combination of a new laser cooling technology and microgravity" Sweet
Many of the new engineering technologies being developed on the International Space Station will lead to improved commercial space communication systems for personal phone, computer and video use." Great, more media for fat children
Hubble
Over 4,000 papers based on Hubble data have been published in peer-reviewed journals (wikipedeia quote) lets just assume at least one or two of those was important
"One of the many spinoffs from the Hubble telescope is the use of its Charge Coupled Device (CCD) chips for digital imaging breast biopsies. The resulting device images breast tissue more clearly and efficiently than other existing technologies. The CCD chips are so advanced that they can detect the minute differences between a malignant or benign tumour without the need for a surgical biopsy. This saves the patient weeks of recovery time and the cost for this procedure is hundreds of dollars vs. thousands for a surgical biopsy. With over 500,000 women needing biopsies a year the economic benefit, per year, is tremendous and it greatly reduces the pain, scarring, radiation exposure, time, and money associated with surgical biopsies"
Everybody loves boobies right?
lets say this treatment is 100 now, and was 1000. ( I dont know the exact amounts so this is just a guess based on the previous quote).
$900 (the saving made by using hubbles CCD chips) x 500000 = $450000000 Thats a pretty big saving, and thats only one year, lets multiply that saving by the lifespan of the hubble
$450000000 x 17 years = $7.65 billion .... Hmmm Hubble's not looking so expensive now is it?
How much did hubble cost to date? only 3 billion.
So, by tit savings alone, the hubble has not only paid for itself, but is 4.6 billion in the black.
The Martian landers.
They found water. do you need another reason? Our great great great grandchildren might need it to water their lawns.
Now the American space research budget is tiny. something like .06% of the total which is about 3 trillion a year.
Ask yourself, what did you get back out of the 700 billion spent on knives guns and bombs last year? Dead children, heart ache, and expensive petrol? Compare it with what the world gets from the tiny 25 billion spent on science. Imagine what could happen of those budgets were swapped around, for only one year?
