NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.”
All the recent successes in space – Philae/Rosetta, New Horizons, the never-ending stream of discoveries from Keppler, like this one – actually make me sad, because it makes me wonder how much more we could’ve achieved and discovered has we not developed this anti-science and pro-war climate we’ve been living in for a while now.
Maybe these new achievements will reignite the hunger for space. We can hope.
Unmanned space science is the optimal route while we work on some form of propulsion better than chemical rockets, so that we have a chance of visiting other stars within a single human lifetime. But sure, keep blaming war for things.
What is the part of the US budget dedicated to military ? What is the part dedicated to space ?
http://news.sciencemag.org/funding/2015/02/money-chase-2016-u-s-bud…
http://www.schuylerjebersolbooks.com/2014/12/20/why-we-must-devote-…
http://moravings.blogspot.fr/2013/10/for-anyone-and-everyone-worrie…
Welcome in a world of peace, ‘Murica. Just wonder why you have to ‘defend’ yourself so much.
Our military isn’t usually used to defend us, it is mostly used to defend others or to act as a deterrent.
After defeating Japan, we defended it and built it into an economic power house and a bastion of freedom instead of oppressing it and robbing it of its wealth.
After defeating NAZI Germany in WW2 we defended it from the Russians, built it into an economic power house, and made it into a bastion of freedom.
We are currently the primary military deterrent or guardian force for a large number of nations around the world. After Iraq invaded Kuwait Saddam did not think the U.S. would actually respond, but we did, with full force. And the world saw, for the first time, some of the results of decades of military investment. We went in, did the job, and got out.
Having that capability is the only thing that keeps potentially Imperial nations from destroying their neighbors. That is, of course, except Russia in the Ukraine, which has its own dynamic at play.
China is preparing to stake its long-invalidated territorial claims to the South China Sea, where the U.S. has numerous allies. I don’t think the Chinese are dumb enough to start a fight, but if they are, you’d best hope that the U.S. military is there to put a stop to them.
And hell no.
He mentioned the first gulf war where they achieved their military and political goals. I suppose your comment would make sense for the 2nd…
It’s very clear that the Iraq invasion is just a continuation of the first Gulf War. And certainly, many war hawks didn’t consider the job finished, which is why they saw Afghanistan as a good excuse to get back into Iraq despite there being no relation between the two.
Desert Storm was about stopping Iraqi aggression against its neighbors, specifically Kuwait, and against the Kurds in the north of Iraq. No more, no less. It did that wonderfully. Whether SOME people thought we should have done more is a moot point, we destroyed one of the strongest militaries in the middle east in mere days and set back their operational capabilities effectively permanently with an enforce no-fly zone and ongoing inspections which were agreed upon in the cease fire agreement as a means to guarantee that Saddam, or his sons, would not cause future problems.
When Saddam kicked out nuclear inspectors, I would have resumed bombing immediately, as that was the only prescribed response per our cease fire agreement. Which is exactly what President Clinton did in 1998. All of this is known as the “Iraq disarmament crisis” and is what ultimately led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The facts are that dozens of countries believed Iraq had active WMD programs and absolutely no evidence contradicted the evidence provided that said it did. That was the reasoning behind removing Saddam and his government from power, not to finish some unfinished war.
You may not like what I say, but you can’t defeat me with evidence, since none contradicts me. You can only move the goalposts, create strawmen, or make unsupported assertions.
Good to know you trust politicians so much.
And I’m not sure where you were at the time, but yeah, the “evidence” for WMDs was doubted from the very beginning. The evidence was weak-to-non-existent. For WMDs, but also for any ties to Al Qaeda, which was the other big reason.
Weak or non-existent evidence does not need counter-evidence to be contradicted. It fails on its own weakness.
Well, provided there is something of “in the US’ interests” to protect, such oil, gas, mineral, fruit, otherwise I see no point at spending so much US dollar into ‘protecting’ the world from itself. Just remember grand pa’ Bush used to deal with Nazi without a problem. If Pearl Harbor haven’t triggered all of this, I don’t think the US would ever have moved. But that’s history now.
US military spending is about money. It’s a means by which those in power transfer wealth from the population to the elite. Even if the money is borrowed on behalf of future generations, no problem!
The only reason we got in space was because the germans invented the ICBM in WW2. If it wasn’t for war, be it between ourselves or other species, we’d be eating berries in some sort of “Garden of Eden” world with no technology anyway.
There may be a body of water between northern Europe and the UK, but neither the V1 nor V2 were “inter-continental”!
The first ICBMs were ICBM A9/A10, based on the V-2, built in Nazi Germany by a team lead by Werher von Braun as part of Projekt Amerika.
Both Russian and U.S. space and ICBM programs began from the V-2 / A9/A10 designs. The U.S. went so far as to use Wernher von Braun to develop its space program. As such, the venerable Saturn V rocket, and most of the U.S.’s ICBMs, are V-2 descendants.
It’s a bit of a stretch to suggest that the Saturn V is a “V2 descendent”, unless we conclude that any liquid fuelled rocket is a V2 descendent and then the distinction becomes meaningless.
The same inventor created both and they both shared many of the same design characteristics as a result, though I don’t think there would be any hardware compatibility.
The best way to look at it is through the engines. The V-2 used a liquid-fueled cryogenic rocket engine which was modified into the A9/A10 engines, which were redesigned into the RL10 engine which powered the Saturn V.
I never said they used it in warfare…
It’s actually rather sad, but some of the best technologies that help us today have come from wartime inventions. It seems as though the life and death struggle encourages us to innovate fast, then later we turn those inventions to assisting ourselves. I think we’ve got the priorities reversed, but I’m not so naive as to believe that without war we’d have done better nor do I believe we are a peaceful species by nature. We’re not, and without wartime we’d not have space travel, GPS, nor many other innovations we’ve come to accept as part of our daily lives. If not for the department of defense we may have never even had the internet (the networking, not the www). It’s possible that, perhaps, we’d have developed these things without the threat of war, but our past track record seems to say the opposite.
I would look at it differently, how about this definition:
extreme circumstances and willingness to invest lead to a lot of inventions.
Space is an extreme environment as well.
Here are some links:
http://www.design-laorosa.com/2012/11/26-nasa-inventions-that-we-ta…
http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/the-biggest/20-shocking-nasa-in…
http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/inventions/top-5-nasa-i…
Thom
I think you are aware, or at least you should be, that huge progress on technical grounds are a byproduct of war research.
This is true for launchers (rockets), new materials, radar, telemetry, nuclear power and many, many other things.
And take note, I am not talking about the “pure” science aspect of progress as it, more ofter than not, predates the technical advances on modern times.
Also, it is not that we would never build them, most did not even start with war on mind, it is just that the cost associated were so huge at their initial development stage that would be hard to justify them from pure peaceful civil society needs. Military budget allowed the research and development to be done.
So, no matter how painful it is, we need to face reality, many things we have probably only exist right now, and not on our future, because of warmongers minds of the past.
Whether the human cost associated is justifiable or not (it is not!) is irrelevant from a practical perspective.
I do hope we improve our societies, though.
Edited 2015-07-23 23:09 UTC
The entire budget of New Horizons is $700 million over its 15 years. And NASA gets 0.5% of the US budget in total, amounting to $18 billion a year.
The JSF project alone has already wasted hundreds of billions of dollars.
The military no longer really has any role to play in funding scientific progress, let alone actually doing any science.
I never said that military budget is needed to today space exploration activities or that they invented something, just that many things we use today were developed under military programs.
Anyway, seems to me that there is a high probability that we may use technology on our future linked to military research activities, judging from our past, though.
… no.
NASA spinoffs, ever since NASA has existed, has created more of the things we use today than the military.
And where exactly did I say that the military budget gave to us more than NASA did?
Also, you should know that main reason to NASA creation was security concerns and that was also the reason they got awash with money in its first years.
The space shuttle program got some of its parameters dictated by military constraints (unluckily).
ENIAC was primarily build to calculate ballistic artillery tables.
Metallurgy has its roots on better weapons production.
What I said is that on some fields, the violence and paranoia in us drove a faster development, not that it ultimately created something that, otherwise, would never exist.
Just to make it clear, I have no links to military programs, I am pacifist, agnostic and believe that our main asset is life so I have an unfavorable view of military expenses in general and I am profoundly shocked that most of our societies view the huge life cost consequences of military operations as acceptable, in particular.
Edited 2015-07-24 04:47 UTC
acobar,
Well, when you say “faster”, we have to ask relative to what? Relative to having no ambition at all, then yes I’d agree. But who’s to say what our ambitions might have been had war not taken place? In the absence of violence and paranoia, the void might very well have spawned other/different ambitions, which could have driven tech development even faster still. So it should not be taken as a given that military ambition is the fastest driver for technology.
If, instead of war, nations had focused their attention on racing towards technological achievements, it might well have gotten us the same or better technology without war.
Edited 2015-07-24 05:28 UTC
I would love, it would be wonderful, to have such high sane ground to stand on but, unfortunately, it seems to be a very rare event to witness.
I wish I could share your faith on humanity and “pray” to have things intrinsically and profoundly different on future, nonetheless.
Edited 2015-07-24 06:22 UTC
acobar,
You are going deeper than what I expressed. I started writing my thoughts on this but all I came up with was the number 42…
Fair enough. My last post on this thread as I don’t want to increase the entropy for nothing.
Can you name those amazing NASA spinoffs?
Hint: personal computers, teflon, velcro, Tang, barcodes, thermal blankets and space pens were NOT spinoffs of the space programme.
Before being a smartarse, try Googling:
https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2015/index.html
They even publish this for every year.
Hint: NASA is not just a space programme, and a space programme isn’t just about rockets.
NASA has been widely exaggerating their “achievements” since they were founded in 1957. In many cases they took credit for inventions made by others.
Judging form their latest report they are one of the worst tech “investments” imaginable.
https://spinoff.nasa.gov/contributor.html
They have clear rules on what they think constitutes a NASA spinoff, and people/organizations have to apply to be listed. Hardly taking credit when people give it to them.
Sure. That’s why they’ve been able to design, build, test and launch a probe in 4 years, and then when it finally reached Pluto, worked almost without a hitch, all for $700 million dollars.
Yeah, that sure is a bad investment, isn’t it.
Here’s another hint: NASA is a science organization. By definition, science operates on the boundaries of knowledge, where failure must be expected. And for the money it gets, is more successful than most others.
No research organisation in history has achieved so little despite such massive resources (USD18Bn pa). In fact NASA has probably spun of far fewer useful technologies than many mid tier universities. Compared with major research-based corporations such as GE, IBM, 3M or Hitachi NASA’s achievements of the past 40 years are absolutely pathetic.
Which one of them has sent probes into space? It’s easier to achieve things which are easier. You’re not telling anyone anything groundbreaking, and also proving my point.
Furthermore, you seem to discount anything that doesn’t have direct economic benefits that manifest in 5 years. If NASA was profit driven, it probably would achieve more to satisfy you bean counters.
But NASA’s achievements aren’t about pure profit and shouldn’t be judged as such. NASA is about science, and the scientific research it produces are quite valuable to people like me who value knowledge – not shiny consumer products.
You may as well be calling paleontologists failures for not recreating dinosaurs.
———————-
But to satisfy your bean counter leanings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX
Gee, do you think something like SpaceX could exist without the science that NASA produced before it? Do you think SpaceX could exist if it had to have as many “failures” as NASA to learn all that is needed to repeatedly launch into space?
SpaceX is not a direct spinoff, but it depends on NASA’s scientific research, the value of which no quarter-driven bean counter can put a number on.
Edited 2015-07-25 11:37 UTC
You want to back that rather big claim up with some evidence?
I find your comments mostly very thoughtful, but on this occasion I have to strongly disagree. The technology involved with the thrust control, the development needed for the newest infrared red image detection capabilities, the ever better radar technology, especially if we look at ground scanning, improved SVOTL capabalities. Then there is the very cool unmanned technology of the armies, lot’s of interesting stuff being developed there. New armor types, the rail gun projects, modern military IT is amazing, infantry integration has a lot of cool possibilities. These are all things which will have feedback to civilian use. And hack, they created the Osprey a few years ago, which ,in my humble opinion, is still almost like science fiction.
Sure, warmongering got us a lot of the technology we use now. Look past that for a minute.
a) It doesn’t follow that more war will get us better technology; as opposed to, say, leading to our extinction. Assuming such is a fallacious generalization.
b) It doesn’t follow that war is the only way to develop so-and-so technology. This is more theoretical, but (to paraphrase a famous warmonger) alternative paths of tech development are a known unknown.
c) Given that war has gotten us so-and-so tech developments, it doesn’t follow that war will *always* get us such developments. This is more subtle, but it should be obvious: in WWII the Allies were fighting a technologically equal threat – in some ways even a technologically superior threat – that would have destroyed them utterly given the chance. The wars we’re fighting now in the Middle East are a wholly different situation, where we have technological superiority.
Thom’s statement about anti-science/pro-war attitude isn’t dismissing the effect of war on the sciences. And I don’t think the mention of war is misplaced, either. The attitude he’s describing is basically that of an empire resting on its laurels.
Saying that spending money on ware technology is the only way to get the technology to get from A to B.
It clearly logical wrong.
Thanks Gullible, for some basic logic.
lachlan,
I agree. New civilian tech can sometimes be a byproduct of war, but it’s likely there are much more efficient ways to get it. If we could assume that all of the money and effort going into war could go instead into research & technology directly, we’d undoubtedly get even better technology.
The big question however is whether this assumption would be politically feasible. NASA has lots of political opposition (http://www.space.com/22023-nasa-authorization-bill-debate.html). While politicians constantly spout the importance of fiscal responsibility, when it comes to war, they know it’s like catnip for people. We can’t provide comprehensive public healthcare, we can deprive public schools of much needed funding, but kicking ass around the world gets a blank check.
The US is very much concerned about budget in recent years, they cut the budget on military several times in recent years, so did with NASA, for the same reason that we do not have cold war anymore, and historically they spent more than in recent times. However for the US, military is needed to chase their diplomatic goals, which in turn generates economic values. I bet that every political decision maker would spend even less on military if they could, but there is a reasonable amount what a country needs to spend on military.
teamstar,
I don’t think it’s that black and white. For example, some say that the Bushes conspired war for personal & political gain.
You do realize that the U.S. outspends most other developed countries when it comes to the military, right?
I see you’ve been drinking the koolaid… Just for kicks, look up where the money actually goes. Another fun exercise is to try counting the number of politicians who benefit or profit from military spending. I should warn you, doing either of those things will make you sick to your stomach.
It was not the most fortunate way of sayings. I am not saying that there is not corruption around military founding there is, however US spending on military is disproportional to other countries and that is not because their is higher corruption there than in other countries, but because of their unique geopolitical strategies.
teamatar,
Maybe, but as in all great military empires, endlessly continuing military conquests incurs great opportunity costs and dilutes our power. We’re not using our resources to foster economic growth, education, social health, physical or digital infrastructure, etc. The vast majority of our taxes go to the military. And it shows, we have the strongest military and yet we lag behind in many other respects. Our economy is falling on the world stage, if politicians are unwilling or unable to curtail the expenditures towards military strategies, it will be our undoing – it’s just a matter of time. The reasons they had for funding the military so heavily will be irreverent.
Edited 2015-07-27 15:21 UTC
Actually most empires persists through time, if they are built on a solid cultural foundation. Look at the other empires that we have nowadays: India and China have thousands of years of histories. Pakistan and Persia(Iran) also has a long history. In my eyes the US has all the same properties as these countries with their long history, it is just that we lived through the power vacuum that happened after the fall of the CCCP, just before the new rise of the old Asian empires. I think we tend to forget that it is not normal to 1 empire dominate the whole world, which happened 2 times since the 19th century.
Regarding US military spending: according to SIPRI it is just 3% of the GDP. That is not much. Yes, it is big part of the federal budget. But US budget is federal and state budget together. Therefore it is difficult to compare it to other countries budget. Of course military budget looks big, when you do not spend much on social security. Just wait a few years till Medicare explodes…
feamatar,
This results in fairly regular bridge collapses.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/bridge-collapse-skagit-river-washington-se…
This is but one of many issues that are happening due to irresponsible military spending, unfortunately.
Politicians discovered the folly of scrimping on military expenditure in the late 1930s. WW2 cost around 50 million lives and $20 trillion (2015 dollars).
Life and death focuses researchers minds like nothing else. The P-51 Mustang fighter took a mere 102 days to develop. How many years and how many billions did it take to develop the iWatch?
And what military disaster were Germany and Britain trying to avoid before WWI when they both kept accelerating the arms race? The Boer War?
Maybe, just maybe, if they both didn’t try to rely on military might, we could have avoided both world wars (and the rise of communism) in the first place?
maaaaybe..
but history says otherwise – we’re a belligerent race like or not (not but little we can do).
I’m pacifist and anti-proliferation (in theory at least).
But – while I’m pretty FOR the “Iran + 6 world powers” Nuclear processing slowdown/Santions lifting treaty – imagine IF Iran had had nuclear warhead capability + ballistic delivery range –> one can have a thought experiment at least that Iran and Israel MIGHT have had no choice but to look at each other squarely in the eye for once and deal with all the underlying realities, injustices on all sides etc, that now they can just bury their heads in sand about for a bit longer.
Might even eventually through long term and complicated networks of pressure eventually lead to both quicker Palestinian statehood and real increased pressure internationally for so-long-overdue Islamic (cultural, not religious) reform in Wahhabist Saudi Arabia.
Without the metaphorical gun to head – i think it will be longer and bloodier.
It’s a strange dichotomy though that Nation-destroying nuclear capability may inhibit Nuclear Power neighbours from mutual annihilation but on a flipside, despotic regimes with powerful conventional militaries will still engage in awful suppressive activities, regional/internal conflicts.
Allah, we’re bad people! let’s just get drunk and whore about… (/sarcasm)
I think people often overestimate the role of military in science. Most of the tech was developing without military involvement, out of necessity. However a knight’s armour will always be shinier then a spinning Jenny.
Thom’s attitude on the topic is equally wrong in 4 way:, most space research was military driven in the beginning and I am afraid that without it, we would be way backward in this area. The second is that spending infinite amount of money on a topic would not get us necessarily closer to new achievements. Third, if we would not need military, why would you take away that money from the people for space research? Isn’t it more logical to spend it on welfare programs, or just to leave it with the people? And the 4th is that military is very much pro-science. There is a lot of very cool military tech produced all over the world recently. Look at the rail gun project, thrust vectoring, super cruising abilities, unmanned fighting vehicles and so on.
One of the great things about using the transit method to find planets (Which is what Kepler uses) is that for the planets that are found, there are a number of characteristics that can be found with later study.
The transit method itself provides a diameter.
We can also measure Doppler measurements to determine the mass of the planet.
We can measure changes in the star’s spectrum as the planet transits to learn about the atmosphere – the size of the atmosphere, composition, and even density.
Currently this last part is difficult, but it can be done with today’s gear, and we have the tech to make spectrographs that are sensitive enough.
Kepler data is also good for amateur astronomy. These kind of measurements (the basic transits, I mean) aren’t out of reach of amateurs, and a number of planet candidates have already been independently confirmed by amateurs using gear that can be bought off the Internet.
Edited 2015-07-24 00:36 UTC
inb4 China and Russia start claiming the land as their own.