h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Seriously. I don't know who started this meme that when there is any discussion of space funding someone has to ask if it would be better to spend the money on the hungry. I never hear this when they raise funding for defense, or transportation or... How about the next time they raise taxes to pay for a stadium for some fat cat team owner so that he won't have to spend his own capital to increase his profits.

Hey, don't get me wrong, I'd love to help the starving. And I know one of the best ways to do it is to not spend less on space but to spend less on farm subsidies!!!

The US taxpayer annually spends roughly $15 billion on NASA yet spends $100's of billions on farm subsidies, the bulk of which go to large agribusiness! The end result of this is that farmers in poor country's cannot compete with American farm businesses that are often paid for what they DON'T grow! Then those poor farmers go out of business, earning no money with which they could have been buying our other exported products or even the food that we overproduce to artificially keep the prices low.

Keep in mind, many of these subsidies go to businesses that have NOTHING to do with farming. Large utility company's have to have large empty land around them so they toss a couple of cows on the empty fields and claim farm subsidies AND tax breaks!

Or how about the money we spend to keep our steel industry out dated and on the dole? And by doing so, p*****g off most of the other steel producing around the world. Couldn't that money be better spent.

No, space exploration does not turn an immediate direct profit. The profits from space are felt in many subtle and varied ways touching the lives of everyone on this planet though. Those poor farmers in third world countries that are struggling along in spite of our farm subsidies may have better yields because meteorlogical satellite data. He may better be able to tend his crops because of education programs satellites bring into his village.

The money spent on space comes back to all of us through the tools and technology around us and through the information we gain about the world around us. It's just not always obvious.

Me, I prefer space and technology. It’s neat and I like it.
But indeed space or starving.
Using the same principal we don't need anything except food, water, shelter and love (or a cuddly puppy, up to you). All of our techno crap, comfy couches, PC's, CD collections, hair gel, and money spent on movies and eating out in fancy restaurants is all rubbish. We could have saved the poor with that money or perhaps the uneaten food from our plates. This debate is endless. We could guilt ourselves into a corner and still be no further to a solution.
Space is good. Starving is bad. We've got that down, but are we really ready to make any more of a distinction than that? Yes you say. I doubt it. There is a belief out there that goes something like this. Feed the hungry, the hungry multiply and create more hungry people. Cut off the food source and you don’t have the population of starving people. Inhuman right? So just how ready are we tackle the real question.

(BTW to the author of the original thread, no bashing intended here, the true question is that of our own personal guilt. Space just equals one side of the scales. We’re not going to find an answer to this debate because we aren’t asking the right question).

I may have gotten a little off track earlier, but I do want to know where this meme got started. It's kinda like whenever anyone mentions the assination of JFK sooner or later someone will make a statement concerning the 'fact' that everyone (in the US and alive at the time of course) remembers exactly where they were when they heard the news. Some people believe that the 'shock' of the moment froze it in everyone's memories. Since then, whenever other shocking moments happen, such as 9/11 or the Shuttle tragedies people bring up the same phenomenon. Now I do believe that for some people this may be true, but for most others I don't think the shock has as much to do with the memory as the constant mention of the phenomena and the question repeated "where were you when..."

I think a similar thing is in action with space v. humanitarion funding. It's been asked so many times before that journalists and media hacks feel it is expected of them to ask. It sounds like a promising debate, but it's not... it is a leading question. It prompts a person to consider it as an "either / or" situation. It almost suggests that if you are 'for' space funding you are against feeding the hungry or housing the homeless. This is fundamentally NOT the case. Space research DOES help the poor and the hungry. It just does so in a roundabout but pervasive way. (NASA needs better press agents)

I do think the question is a pervasive meme. Here's an example I think I know the source of. Before the troops went into Iraq and the UN was trying to temper our hawks and the French voted against the US's unilateral decision to go to war, many people used a very odd phrase to describe the French: "Cheese eating surrender monkeys". Most of the writers and pundits who used this phrase probably didn't realise it but they were quoting Groundskeeper Willie from the Simpsons. (This may have made Willie one of the most quoted Scots since Robbie Burns himself .)

I guess I'm just upset that some journalist or senator or who-knows-who first asked this question, and since then people ask it as a kneejerk reaction whenever space funding is mentioned in public fora. As I asked earlier, why don't they ask the same question when military funding or foreign aid comes up? Either of those budgets dwarf NASA's by orders of magnitude.

We could feed that fat cat team owner to the starving, that might be a good start.
On the darker side, I agree with you, in the most part, poor old space travel cops it because its so conspicuous and it seems utterly gratuitous. As hokey as it sounds though there is something gratifying and wonderful about knowing that we can get off this planet, and go and mess up other planets. I just wish that everytime space travel gets on the telly it wasn't accompanied by George Bush. We could feed him to the starving too as far as I'm concerned.
This argument could well have been titled "Starving and the ", I'm not too conversant with how to fix world hunger, but it will take more than just money I suspect. It's a fundamental issue of attitudes and proximity, and while it's not us starving, it will probably stay that way.

To paraphrase the late, great Bill Hicks...

If every country around the world stopped spending so much on defense then we could feed and clothe the world many times over and have enough left to explore outer space, together.

Is that such a crazy idea?

The idea that this is an either/or situation is like someone spending all their money on shoes then saying that they can now only either afford to feed or educate their children but not both.

of course the fault with the question is that it assumes what is know as a zero sum game.

in a zero sum game, you have to decide how to split a constant set of resources between lots of needs. usually the one that gets the most is classed as the winner. effectively you have a pie, and it gets sliced up as needed, but stays the same size.

however when it comes to long term investment (of any kind), you find that one of the wedges of this pie is long term investment. the more you put into it, the faster (generally) you grow the pie, and thus you face a choice between (slightly more) dry bread today, or bread and jam tomorrow.

those arguing for removing the space budget decide that lack of research costs nothing, which has been shown time and time again to be blatantly false.

The world should come together in support of space exploration for the simple fact that if we don't one day a big rock will fall on the earth and wipe out all life. It has happened before and will happen again maybe even next week. If we don't expand the populatoin off this world one day there will be no one to argue the point.