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Election 2016

Bernie Sanders On Space (Unofficially)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 15, 2016
Filed under ,
Bernie Sanders On Space (Unofficially)

Bernie Sanders on Science and technology, Feel The Bern – unofficial Bernie Sanders Fan Site
“Does Bernie support funding for space exploration? Bernie believes space exploration is beneficial and exciting, and is generally supportive of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), but when it comes to a limited federal budget, Bernie’s vote is to take care of the needs of struggling Americans on this planet first.
In a Q&A session on the online forum reddit on May 19, 2015, Bernie wrote: “I am supportive of NASA not only because of the excitement of space exploration, but because of all the additional side benefits we receive from research in that area. Sometimes, and frankly I don’t remember all of those votes, one is put in a position of having to make very very difficult choices about whether you vote to provide food for hungry kids or health care for people who have none and other programs. But, in general, I do support increasing funding for NASA.”

Keith’s note: This is not an official Sanders campaign site, so your mileage may vary when it comes to what Sanders’ official stance is on space. I doubt that there is much, if any difference, however. Of course what these Sanders fans have posted is simply a variation on the classic “why spend money in outer space when it should be spent on Earth” rationale for not supporting NASA. The millions in property damage (something that can disportionately affect “struggling Americans”) that is avoided by better weather forecasting from satellite data seems to be unimportant- as are many well known benefits from space technology. Also, like it or not, 100% of the salaries paid to people by NASA are paid to people living on Earth and all of that money is spent by people on Earth who give that money to other people – on Earth. The color of the money paid to NASA employees or their contractors is precisely the same as is paid to employees (or grantees) of any other government agency or contractor and is of equal value when it comes to buying food or paying rent. Also, its sort of odd that NASA is always singled out as somehow depriving children of food when other government programs vastly greater in size (pick one) are never mentioned. The root of this common mindset is as much NASA’s problem by virtue of it not explaining what it does as it is with ignorant citizenry who never bother to learn what what their government does with their tax dollars.
Reminder to commenters: Stick to the topic of space policy in 2016. If you misbehave in the comments section I will delete your comments. If this turns into an other off-topic partisan food fight I will shut comments off completely. Have a nice day.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

81 responses to “Bernie Sanders On Space (Unofficially)”

  1. Donald Barker says:
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    “…why spend money in outer space when it should be spent on Earth…”
    Humans have been spending all their money and time working on the same social problems on Earth for at least the past 10,000 years or since groups were large enough to develop and pass on the multitude of endearing social issues and problems. The only thing that has changed in all that time is the population of the humans on this planet (infestation?). And the population has only increased, and exponentially so, for roughly the past 150 years (no end in sight). The problem is humans and their modern blind belief that their technology will save them from their own growth rate is false (our physiology and psychology does not keep pace with our technology). So, we just keep having the same problems on an ever increasing scale. One definition of insanity is to do things repeatedly with the same outcome. Just possibly, expanding our role in space (i.e., full blown settlement), rather than the usual warmongering and political egocentrism’s, might actually save us from ourselves.
    And yes, Keith is absolutely correct, the vast majority of money spent in space goes to the livelihoods of the industry workers – here on Earth.

    • duheagle says:
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      And the population has only increased, and exponentially so, for roughly the past 150 years (no end in sight). The problem is humans and their modern blind belief that their technology will save them from their own growth rate is false (our physiology and psychology does not keep pace with our technology).

      Question – why do you say “their” when referring to humans? Are you some other species?

      Oh, and the 60’s called. They want their imminent apocalypse back.

      One more time. The Earth’s human population has never increased exponentially. Even Malthus himself never made that claim. He said the human population would increase geometrically. He was wrong about that too, but at least it’s what he actually said. It’s also what a lot of pop-culture scaremongers said in the 60’s and 70’s. According to Paul Ehrlich, pretty much everybody should be dead of starvation by now. Instead, we have a global epidemic of obesity. Seems that belief in technological salvation didn’t turn out to be so “blind” after all.

      In actual fact, total human population is still increasing only as a sort of demographic inertia like a sounding rocket coasting upward for a time after the engine shuts down. It is predicted to peak at roughly mid-century at somewhere over 9 billion, then start a long decline to some new equilibrium point that may be quite a bit lower than that or even than the current global population. If you think otherwise, you are seriously misinformed. There are plenty of real things to worry about. Looming global overpopulation is not among them.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        It is pretty conclusive that obesity is not a function of caloric intake, but the actual food processing and storage that is designed to induce it. I believe there is more than a few countries that would disagree that food production and starvation combined with population growth is not a problem,

        The planet has a replenishment rate http://www.footprintnetwork

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          “Carrying capacity”, as it is also called, is a fairly simple concept, but I like the idea of “over-shoot”.

          And it’s difficult to measure capacity. Take soil fertility as an instance: when soils are thought of as “medium”, the chemicals withdrawn by plants can be replaced by chemicals from a different source. Something is lost in the transition, yes, but not production, and the thing lost–soil health an a functioning system– isn’t really measured.

          On the issue of obesity/calories not being a 1:1 relationship: that is a dream made up by fat people. When I count and reduce calories I get smaller. That is defiantly not rocket science. And while it’s true that people are different, some metabolizing certain foods atypically, it is also true that the human body is an energy system with a built-in battery: energy stored in tissues and collectively called “fat”, though the term is misleading.

          • Boardman says:
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            Or take unsustainable ground water depletion as another example. Water will be the new oil/gold before my son is my age.

          • duheagle says:
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            It is, indeed, difficult to measure “capacity” because, as I noted in my reply to Vlad, capacity – no matter how one cares to define it – is not fixed and has been repeatedly expanded by ingenious humans. I see no credible reason to believe this process will not continue.

            On the completely different topic of nutrition, there is no inevitable one-to-one relationship between calorie consumption and body mass. What is important is the nature of the foods consumed, not their calorie counts. In general, carbohydrates metabolize into fat, but fat and protein do not.

            I went on a low-carb diet three years ago and lost 40 pounds in a year despite eating more protein and way more fat than formerly. According to the simple-minded “calories-is-calories” model of nutrition, this should not be possible. As with Climate Change, when the model does not accord with reality, it isn’t reality that needs to budge.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            You had me until the last sentence when I envisioned you shooting yourself in the foot 🙂

          • rktsci says:
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            Current research is pointing to obesity being an actual epidemic, caused by changes in enteric bacteria. The increase in consumption of carbohydrates may have exacerbated it, as well as increased heart disease in the US.

            Experiments with rats have shown that with certain enteric bacteria in the gut causes a decrease in metabolic rate and other endocrine system abnormalities, causing weight gain not seen in control animals.

        • duheagle says:
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          Your linked site is a pretty typical example of long-discredited Paul Ehrlich/Club of Rome/Worldwatch Institute Malthusian nonsense. The Earth does not have some fixed and immovable “carrying capacity.” Resources are not fixed, they are expandable through human ingenuity. Fracked oil and gas are examples of how this works.

          The Luddite socialist “solution” to rising atmospheric CO2 is to collectivize the world and ration everything. The correct solution to rising CO2 is to treat it as free plant food and increase the yield of all those crops that will be needed to feed all those currently poor, but soon to be middle class masses in Asia on the Western-level diets they will be acquiring a taste for.

          Plant growth rates, both natural and agricultural, are already increasing in response to higher atmospheric CO2 levels. There is ample technological room to deliberately, and radically, increase the conversion efficiency of agricultural plants.

        • Arthur Hamilton says:
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          On the subject of obesity…….Some people have a capacity to store more of the energy from food intake as fat. For example if two people are eating an 8 oz steak, then, one’s body may store 20 to 40% of steak as fat. While the other one’s body may only store 5% as fat. But, then, over fueling your body results in more fat storage.

          • duheagle says:
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            If you’re eating an 8 oz. steak, essentially none of it will be stored as fat unless you suffer from an extremely rare metabolic disorder. If you eat a half-pounder burger with fries, on the other hand, the burger patty will contribute nothing to your stored fat, but the bun and the fries will – big time.

          • Yale S says:
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            An 8oz steak is 400 to 600 kilocalories. So if those kilocalories are in excess of what you burn, then it gets stored as fat.

      • Donald Barker says:
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        OK, J-curve (the actual term used by demographic scientists), exponential curve. You can fit the same math expression to both lines without much variation. And the predictions of a peak are just that a prediction. The actual data shows no change. Predictions show three possible curves and the complete range between them. We have already overextended our footprint on this planet, do you want to make it worse by just ideally sitting by and watching what happens? And every “real thing” to worry about is human caused. Nature does not suffer mankind.

        • duheagle says:
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          Fit all the curves you want. The data don’t support the “exponential expansion forever” notion.

          The main reason the total human population rose so swiftly isn’t some intrinsic exponential expansion, it’s because human fertility used to be calibrated to a really appalling level of infant, child and female mortality. Modern sanitation and medical advances, plus the transition from majority agricultural to majority urban-industrial society, cut these way down and human societies took about a century to adjust. Most nations with large populations now have fertility rates half or less what they were a century ago. Many nations, large and small alike, actually have fertility rates well below replacement level now.

          India and China which, between them, account for over 40% of world human population, are rapidly urbanizing and industrializing and their fertility rates have plummeted. Both will likely be at or below replacement rate fertility by mid-century.

          The only real question affecting total human population is how quickly, or even whether, sub-Saharan Africa will follow suit. If Africa remains mired in dysfunction, fertility rates there will remain high for all the immemorial reasons. If not, then Africa’s fertility rates will follow those of other societies that have trod the well-worn path of increased urbanization and industrialization before them.

          • Yale S says:
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            “exponential expansion forever” is a total straw-man argument. Don’t do it.
            You never, ever admit you are wrong.
            You said: “The Earth’s human population has never increased exponentially. “
            You were wrong. Say so.

      • Yale S says:
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        “According to Paul Ehrlich, pretty much everybody should be dead of starvation by now. Instead, we have a global epidemic of obesity. Seems that belief in technological salvation didn’t turn out to be so “blind” after all”

        What happened was a temporary technical fix that stretched out things by a few decades. The heart of the fix was the conversion of natural gas into ammonia and converting petroleum into pesticide/herbicides and transport fuels. The led to a temporary massive burst of starch production (much to convert to meat) with its massive impact on long-term sustainability of soils, and the environmental effects of the fossil conversion, and the accelerating ineffectiveness of biocides. These agricultural practices are not sustainable and unlikely to support a 25% increase in human population.

        Another factor is the creation of clone plants with ever decreasing genetic diversity in an ever shrinking array of available food types. Look at a corn crop. Every plant is identical, because that are identical twins (clones) and all equally vulnerable.
        Herbicide use in these crops is increasing 25% PER YEAR, and pesticide use, after a fall is now increasing again as weeds and bugs become ever more resistant.
        Top soil is both decaying and eroding away.

        Fishing stocks are in collapse.
        http://overfishing.org/page

        • Burke Burnett says:
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          Well, the Haber-Bosch Process and development of pesticides were extremely critical obviously – but the adoption of those was already widespread in N. America and Europe by the 1950s. For the rest of the world, more important (though linked) was the development and deployment of Green Revolution crops in the 1960s through 1980s. This is what led to Norman Borlaug receiving the Nobel Prize as “the man who saved a billion lives” – though he said that he had only bought humanity a little more time and that we needed to continue to advance agricultural technologies even further. Progress since then has been much slower. But you can thank Borlaug (and many other scientists behind the GR) for making Paul Erlich’s dire predictions not come true.

          • Yale S says:
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            He DELAYED the prediction, not prevented them. Essentially creating a bigger problem later on. He helped prevent the establishment of decentralized, robust, resilient, low-toxicity, resource conserving, equitable, and sustainable production economy.
            “the inevitability of the Green Revolution option was built on neglecting the other avenues for increasing production that is more ecological such as improving mixed cropping systems, improving indigenous seeds and improving the efficiency of use of local resources….
            having destroyed nature’s mechanisms for controlling pests through the destruction of diversity, the miracle seeds’ of the Green Revolution became mechanisms for breeding new pests and creating new diseases”.

            That is why I wrote: “What happened was a temporary technical fix that stretched out things by a few decades.”

          • Burke Burnett says:
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            Well, easy for you to say – it would be harder if you were one of the one billion Asians who had died had not Borlaug et al. done what they did.

            The bottom line is that we are yoked, permanently and irrevocably, to our technologies and to the responsibility to continually improve them when they inevitably bite back. This was the bargain we made in exchange for the benefits that they give us. I don’t suppose you want to volunteer to give up your refrigerator and modern medicines, do you? No? Understandable.

          • Chris Winter says:
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            I have the feeling that it would be not just hard, but impossible, for any of those hypothetical dead Asians to say anything.

            I don’t understand how you arrive at the conclusion that Yale objects to the Green Revolution. I don’t think he does, and neither do I. A temporary reprieve is still a reprieve.

            However, I do object to the argument that, to generalize, anyone pointing out a problem with some technology (e.g. fossil fuels, factory farms) must be wrong unless he expresses a willingness to give up the benefits he obtains from that technology.

          • Burke Burnett says:
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            Fair enough. Perhaps I misunderstood him. But that argument (the Arcadian vision of not needing technology) is out there.

            I’m a greenie myself, and understand the inherent problems of technology biting back. But going back is not only not an option – we’re going to have to find solutions that accommodate the aspirations of an additional 3 or 4 billion people on the planet who all want refrigerators and cars, without destroying the biosphere in the process. That is a tall task indeed.

          • Yale S says:
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            Not needing technology is absolutely NOT what the alternative is. The term is APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY.

          • Yale S says:
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            Chris, I DO object to the Green Revolution. It was never the only way to achieve the goals. It was a temporary fix that produces unsustainable results – like pouring fertilizer in a pond or taking amphetamines.

          • Yale S says:
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            No we are NOT yoked. When you are walking towards a cliff, the only forward step is to turn and head into another direction.
            The Green Revolution WAS NOT the only way forward. There were and are multiple SUSTAINABLE alternatives.

          • Burke Burnett says:
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            We disagree profoundly.

          • Yale S says:
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            That is not a problem. Diversity in reasoned thought and opinion is a good thing. (and makes for an interesting blog!)

        • duheagle says:
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          If the key to “sustainability” of current hi-tech agriculture is natural gas, the fracking boom of recent years doesn’t suggest a crash is coming anytime soon.

          Lack of biodiversity in crop plantings would be a problem if development of improved crop genomes were to stop. Given the advent of genetically engineered crops, it is accelerating instead. Pathogen resistance to biocides is a moving target, to be sure, but so is vulnerability of any given crop to pests, especially since many GMO crops produce their own biocides without any external application. In essence, the engineered evolution of GMO crops is moving faster than the natural evolution of pests. I see nothing at all unsustainable about these trends.

          Chemical biocide use is not increasing at all, let alone at a 25% annual rate. This EPA report has numbers. I particularly recommend you peruse pages 17 and 27. The graph on page 17 shows a huge decrease in pesticide usage during the 80’s and a stable or slightly falling usage since. Given the self-production of biocides by many GMO crops, this is what one would expect to see as they entered, then dominated, the market.

          The condition of topsoil is a legitimate concern, but it’s hardly obvious things are getting worse. Yields continue to rise for essentially all crops. U.S. topsoil seems, in general, to be capable of supporting this trend. If it wasn’t, we’d see lower yields, not higher ones.

          Fisheries, with the notable exception of fish farms, are indeed in trouble nearly everywhere. The problem is that open water fisheries are a “commons” in the economic sense and where one finds unowned commons, one generally finds tragedy. The only thing that will save pelagic fisheries is the development of a stable system of property rights for them.

          • Yale S says:
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            You are incorrect on a number of points.
            1) First, massive increases in fossil hydrocarbon use is a bad thing, (I know you are a climate DENIER, not a skeptic – I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but no more.)
            However, fracking is a zero answer. Proven global reserves of shale gas will be gone possibly in my lifetime. “Unproved technically recoverable resources” (not reserves) shale gas will be gone in the lifetime of someone born now. And that is a CURRENT usage. if growth in consumption increases at the 2.4% historic rate, then exhaustion will occur MUCH faster. At China’s rate of 8% plus, it will be quick.
            Also, frack peak will occur sometime in that period and then all hell breaks loose.
            Frontier technologies (like methane hydrates) are unproven, vastly expensive, environmentally hazardous, and also impact climate.
            Of course, even doubling a resource has trivial value in extending availability in a compounding situation (basic math).

            2) GMO modification DO NOT, and HAVE NOT kept pace with attack and CANNOT keep up with adaptation. BIOLOGY 101

            3) Your pesticide report is ANCIENT HISTORY. It was when BT producing corn was rolled out. Exactly as scientists predicted, it failed. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out just a few years later:
            Syngenta, one of the world’s largest pesticide makers, reported that sales of its major soil insecticide for corn, which is applied at planting time, more than doubled in 2012. Chief Financial Officer John Ramsay attributed the growth to “increased grower awareness” of rootworm resistance in the U.S. Insecticide sales in the first quarter climbed 5% to $480 million.

            3) You don’t understand soil biology. The yield per acre is FOSSIL FUEL conversion with associated water mining. The soil itself is decaying with decreased capability to sustain natural growth. (Soil is not hydroponic plastic crumbles. It is an ecosystem) Even then, yield in non-stressed soils (not irrigated) has plateaued. Irrigated soils under water-stress still is increasing by depleting non-replaceable aquifers.

            4) The problem with fisheries is OVERFISHING and POLLUTION.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Just one small correction– corn plants aren’t clones. They grow from seeds. You want clones you need either tissue culture or vegetative reproduction. There’s some confusion over seeds produced through selective breeding or through some sort of GMO process and actual clones.

          Like, for instance, dates- the popular dates like Medjool or Deglet Noor are actually the precisely same plant grown in the years thousands BCE; the date palm puts out basal shoots, which are then cultivated. Has always been so. The plant produces viable seeds, but the trees from seeds have different characteristics. Mangoes are also clones. Supermarket Orchids. Also bananas (although the banana we love is likely to disappear in the next few years for several reasons including the fact that it never produces seeds). And others. If you live in the tropics, the wonderful Hong Kong Orchid tree that flowers all winter is also a clone.

          And that’s your bit of plant trivia for today.

          You’re welcome.

          • Yale S says:
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            Yes, I was speaking sloppy. I used “clone” loosely in the sense of the identical genetic payload (why I also used the term “identical twins”) “Clones are organisms that are exact genetic copies.”

            That being said, there appears to be some successful work in developing actual apomictic corn plants – essentially cloned plants from seed.

            http://www.google.com/paten

            https://www.sciencedaily.co

            But in this case, I see this as yet another example of our “know-how exceeding our Know Why”.

        • Michael Reynolds says:
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          Something most people also forget to mention in the debate over population growth and agriculture is the role phosphate minerals play. Little do people realize that ~80% of the phosphate applied to the soil we grow our crops in(needed to sustain the high yields) comes from phosphate bearing rocks. Just like fossil fuels these are non-renewable resources that are projected to run out within the next 100 years. Unlike fossil fuels where we can replace our energy sources with the sun, and any number of other sustainable resources, this one we cannot. Manure can only account for a small percentage of this shortfall, even with 100% efficiency in collecting it.
          At some point in time in the next 100 years phosphate shortages may very well will be the limiting factor on population size due to unsustainable agricultural practices.

          • Yale S says:
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            Whether there actually is a shortage of phosphate rock or not, its mining and processing has an unfortunate by-product, uranium,
            This may have been the source for Syria’s atomic bomb project which Israel obliterated.

            http://www.nti.org/faciliti

            http://www.world-nuclear.or

          • duheagle says:
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            The source of the uranium the Syrians suddenly acquired was truck convoys from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the six weeks prior to the launch of Gulf War 2 in 2003. They wasted no time pulling in the Norks to direct the atom bomb project enabled by their sudden windfall. The Israelis, quite reasonably, viewed nuclear weapons in Syrian hands as a near-term existential threat and razed the freshly-built facility to the ground in 2007. Not long after that, the Syrian government got increasingly distracted by its own existential crisis and has had to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

      • Yale S says:
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        The Earth’s human population has never increased exponentially. Even Malthus himself never made that claim. He said the human population would increase geometrically.

        Exponential growth is how human populations are described, because we give birth at all times. Geometric growth refers to reproduction that occurs in timed pulses, like getting a raise every year. Both curves are identical when viewed at a distance. Its a difference that makes no difference.
        And, human population growth is most certainly exponential

        http://faculty.uca.edu/john

      • Yale S says:
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        Worth considering.. Americans use ~35% of the world’s resources with 6% of the population. The Chinese have 4 times our population but 1/8th the GDP per person. What happens as they strive for our economic level – or THIRTY-TWO TIMES the level of economic activity?
        The Indians would increase their growth by 100 times its current impact (and currently 1/2 of all Indian children are malnourished).
        Just to bring the average Indian to the average daily calorie intake of an American requires the increase food production equal to the intake of the whole United States.
        Women have finally been able to begin managing their fertility in many areas, but the “overshoot” as you call it, is to numbers with impacts beyond anything the Earth has known.

        • duheagle says:
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          First, let’s straighten out your numbers. According to the IMF China has a bit over 4 times the U.S. population, but their GDP per capita is actually 1/7 of ours so they only need to multiply their economy 28 times to equal ours. You’re at least in the ballpark on that stuff.

          Where you swerve seriously into the weeds is that “35% of the world’s resources with 6% of the population” thing. U.S. population is 4.5% of the world’s. I’m not sure what your assumed definition of World’s resources is, but I would say a nation’s GDP represents a pretty good summation of its total use of “resources,” be those natural, financial or other. The U.S. accounts for only 16% of global GDP these days; that’s less than 1/6, not over 1/3. The GDP of the entire G7 doesn’t even come to 35% of the world total (it’s about 31%).

          Bye the bye, India, having only 3% of U.S. GDP per capita and not quite 4 times our population will actually have to multiply itself by a factor of 130+, not 100, to catch us.

          What will a world with both India and China enjoying American-style prosperity look like? Don’t know, but I’m unlikely to be around to do any looking by the time this occurs. Even at 10% GDP growth, compounded – which neither country has been close to achieving lately – that parity point is, at best, probably out in the 23rd century somewhere. Global GDP per capita increased by roughly 33 times between 1800 and 2000. So China might catch the U.S. before the year 2200, but India may still be playing catch-up football by then.

          Of course, by that time, Earth’s entire GDP might be only a modest fraction of Solar System GDP. I’d like to think so; it’s the romantic in me.

          If both India’s and China’s fertility rates do indeed fall below replacement levels a few more decades out, as is probably more likely than not, then they may catch up to us faster by reducing the denominator as well as increasing the numerator on that GDP per capita calculation.

          Whether quickly or slowly, though, both China and India can be rationally expected to exert themselves in a vigorous stern chase of our American standard of living. The citizens of neither country are likely to prove amenable to the thesis that they should stay perpetually poverty-stricken because to do otherwise would exceed some mythical “carrying capacity” thingy invented by the same class of brilliant minds that previously handed them decades of living standard wheel-spinning by convincing their mostly now-dead elites that socialism was a good idea.

          I don’t often dispute the wisdom of the late, great Bob Heinlein, but I don’t think he was right that “I could sell dead cats to the Board of Health with a suitable budget and a free hand.” You are, of course, perfectly free to try selling the Indians and Chinese your particular Malthusian “dead cat,” but don’t be too surprised if you get roughly handled in the process.

      • Yale S says:
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        Water Scarcity:

        “Global water shortages are far worse than previously thought, with at least two-thirds of the world’s population — four billion people — living with severe water scarcity for at least one month every year, according to new research published in the journal Science Advances. “If you look at environmental problems, [water scarcity] is certainly the top problem,” said Prof Arjen Hoekstra of the University of Twente in the Netherlands, who led the study. The new research also revealed that 500 million people live in places where water consumption was twice the amount replenished by rain. Hoekstra said that many areas are living on borrowed time, such as Yemen, Pakistan, Iran, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia. Other areas of particular concern include large swaths of Australia and the American Great Plains, which are dependent on the diminishing Ogallala aquifer. These water problems are exacerbated by population growth and raising meat for consumption, which is highly water-intensive, according to the study.”

        Try figuring out the costs (and incredible environment impacts) of trying to desalinize out of this problem (and then add 3 to 5 BILLION more people, and then recalculate having all of them using US levels of consumption,)

        • duheagle says:
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          Water shortage is highly correlated with food shortage and other societal ills that all have as root causes, the general wretchedness of governance in many parts of the world.

          In the developed world, water shortages and diminished aquifers are also generally a consequence of poor governance. As environmental activists have gotten into positions of regulatory authority, large water projects have become an endangered species. The Romans understood that water was essential to agriculture and often needed to be transported long distances by large civil engineering works to insure reliable year-round supply. This is anathema to today’s environmental commissariat. Farmers respond to curtailed deliveries of water from distant sources by drilling ever deeper wells and depleting aquifers. The decimation of the Central Valley of California is Exhibit A of this idiocy on steroids.

          • Yale S says:
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            There are no large scale water projects being blocked by your usual suspects (’60s pinkos and looters) that can support any of the world’s breadbaskets (particularly without generating other catastrophes). Water mining is the only source for inland high intensity fertilizer farming.

  2. Ambious says:
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    Also – the biggest things to come out of space exploration and science are usually in hindsight – we got lazik eye surgery, phone cameras, and countless other day-to-day technologies that improve the lives of people all around the planet – all from the space program! We never know WHAT the different space and astronomy programs are going to produce, but when they do it – it’s usually world changing.
    Various studies have shown that in the long run – every dollar put into the Apollo program was reintroduced into the economy three-folds. An investment in space exploration is an investment in better future technologies that will serve everyone down here on earth.

    • chuckc192000 says:
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      Using spinoffs to justify spending on NASA is not valid. It would be MUCH cheaper to spend the money directly on the various research areas (and by the way, LASIK eye surgery was not a NASA invention).

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Well, yea, if you knew ahead of time what would come out of the ned of a laborious research process.

        Which we don’t.

        So, we research space-y stuff and be surprised when the trinkets fall out. Meanwhile, we have the direct research products.

  3. Bob Mahoney says:
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    I think the reason NASA gets singled out as as the ‘either/or’ government agency that must be sacrificed so as to support (insert desired societal victim that can only be helped by government spending) is because it is the most public entity supported solely by discretionary spending. Most of the other big spenders in our govt are in the column of committed/obligatory funding: DOD, Health & Human Services, etc, and the discretionary ones that actually compete ‘directly’ for NASA’s funds just aren’t as easy a target to tout. Can it get any easier than claiming that money spent ‘in space’ on ‘unnecessary’ pursuits is up for grabs?

    • TheBrett says:
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      It’s one of the benefits and curses of space research. It’s both expensive and very high-profile.

  4. John C Mankins says:
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    Keith, Readers of NW…

    A question was raised in this article that I would like to touch upon.

    In particular, the topic was: why is NASA called out in discussing various budget priorities “e.g., feeding the poor versus space science”? One reason, among others: as I recall, up until the first years of this century, NASA was “bundled” into the same National budget category as “Housing and Urban Development” (HUD) and the “Veteran’s Administration” (VA). So, for decades the budget struggle inside the Washington Beltway always placed NASA in opposition to housing for the poor, health care for veterans, etc.

    If my recollection is correct, that is likely one major reason why space science and exploration seem to always be at the forefront in this annual debate. Even though NASA is no longer in the same budget bundle in fact, all of the more experienced legislators and commentators think of it that way…

    Just my suggestion.

    Best regards,

    – John

    • kcowing says:
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      You are quite correct which is why you’d often hear that Congress had to chose “between NASA and false teeth for veterans.”

    • TheBrett says:
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      I think it’s singled out simply because the benefits aren’t as directly obvious most of the time. Funding for medical research, that’s pretty straightforward in purpose and support – you spend more because you want to make more medical discoveries and find cures for diseases.

      But when it comes to justifying something like Curiosity, for example, you’re talking about the jobs at NASA, spin-offs from technology and scientific research*, promotion of scientific curiosity and cultural enrichment, and so forth. As long as the costs aren’t too high (or the scientific benefits are huge, or both), then it’s usually okay. I didn’t see a lot of complaints about funding Curiosity.

      * Which are extremely real, don’t get me wrong. I’d support it just for the scientific research and cultural enrichment alone, but the spin-offs are good as well.

    • muomega0 says:
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      While no system is perfect, how the USG spends its cash has impacts on Americans.

      “NASA owes it to the citizens whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources.” Roger’s Commission.

      Since we are harming the environment and have an obesity problem, why is the USG subsidizing corn rather than other vegetables? Renewable energy rather than oil? A LV that has enormous costs and has no ability to meet the number one space Grand Challenge: economic access?

      There are direct and indirect ways of taking care of the needs of Americans. The direct ways are obvious (collect taxes to maintain infrastructure, unemployment, social security, food stamps, …). Cutting taxes does not reduce spending, BTW.

      The indirect way is that the USG has programs that continually present challenges to the engineering/scientific community, and in their solution, a new technology or market develops. If not, at least it asks for a steady demand of this expertise or a service (which could be direct), {many others}, or to the extreme, the non-productive have a job who spend all the salary back into the economy. The goal is to always push the later to the former.

      Back to reality. Change campaign finance and gerrymandered districts–you may be surprised how many good ideas from all will be adopted, not the ones you were told to believe.

    • Donald Barker says:
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      Everyone is in competition with everyone. And forethought is never required or appreciated.

      An interesting 2015 web site:
      https://www.nationalpriorit

      • JJMach says:
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        The image Donald Barker posted might lead some to think that Social Security and Medicare are only 9% of the budget vs. 3% for Science and 54% Military. These Social Security and Medicare numbers are for the ADMINISTRATION of those sectors (i.e., bureaucrat salaries and overhead). To see the real picture you need to think in terms of the whole $3.8B budget, which includes Discretionary (29% – divided up into the pie posted above), Interest on debt (6% – and growing…), and Mandatory Spending (65% [$2.45T!!!] – which includes the actual Social Security and Medicare payments, SNAP, etc.). These Mandatory payments to alleviate poverty and hunger make NASA’s budget look like a minor rounding error.

        https://media.nationalprior

        To me, that’s the worst part of the “we must choose between rockets and starving children” argument. The government already spends Orders of Magnitude greater sums of money to address poverty and hunger than NASA’s paltry sum. (P.S. No State has its own space program–launch facility tax breaks not withstanding–as opposed to the myriad of additional poverty and hunger programs run by each of the 50 States.)

        We can see the War on Poverty is doing such a magnificently efficient job of it, that the government must exponentially demand more money to wage it. Therefore, let’s take money from the government’s tiniest agencies and give it to its biggest spenders. Does that make any sense?

        In comparison, while it is far from perfect, it continues to amaze me how much NASA does accomplish with what little they get (0.475% of the budget). It is even more impressive if you factor in the difficulty of asking a bunch of scientists and engineers to work with a manager (President) and financiers (Congress) who may or may not be at loggerheads and from whom come demands for progress on multi-decade projects when their goals may (or may not) be changed every other year (or sooner) as political whims care to wander.

        (Dare anyone imagine what would happen with the IRS or HUD if their major goals and projects were to change as fluidly as NASA’s?)

  5. Frank Coffin says:
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    Well said Keith.

  6. John_K_Strickland says:
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    The other obvious problem is the massive public misperception that NASA uses about 10 times as much Federal funds as it actually gets. This is partly due to the physical size and impressiveness of rockets and NASA installations. For insiders, the issue is more about HOW the money is actually spent than exactly how much they get. Obviously, a flat budget for decades will erode down to almost nothing, but a lot of the human program funding is being catastrophically mis-spent. The public usually will hear nothing of these issues.

    I agree that It is a very good idea to browse through the web sites of all the candidates to find out any scrap of information or position they might have taken, or previous Senate votes in some cases. The parties do look at NASA from very different perspectives.

  7. Daniel Woodard says:
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    This is only the most recent iteration in a very long debate. Unfortunately to many of us forget why we went to the moon. It was a master stroke in its time, but times have changed. In my view that NASA and all federal R&D agencies would do well to focus on providing practical benefits for America, not as an unintended byproduct, but as a primary goal.

  8. TheBrett says:
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    My guess is that he’d be like Obama. Space exploration isn’t something he really cares about in terms of doing things, so he’d give it to a caretaker Administrator whose primary job would be to make sure that the existing programs run smoothly and NASA stays in budget/doesn’t become a source of scandals. Hillary would likely be the same – space exploration just isn’t a high priority for most national-level Democratic politicians, nor most Republicans.

    There are worse things, I suppose. As long as we get programs running smoothly and on-time, and new missions to replace the old ones while avoiding major budget cuts, we’ll be golden.

    • Panice says:
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      A caretaker Administrator wasn’t Obama’s first choice. Bolden was more of a Senate choice. Obama also wanted more industrialization and technology development, but again was blocked by Congress. He didn’t fight Congress over it because the Iraq war, preventing another Great Depression, and a few other pressing matters had priority.

      Some might be surprised by his responses here: http://www.popsci.com/featu

  9. Arthur Hamilton says:
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    If Sanders really cares about the needs of struggling Americans, what better way than tasking NASA with creating new uses for American industry, through it’s manned and robotic exploration programs.

  10. Michael Spencer says:
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    NASA is singled out because our “leaders” cannot see passed their noses. Witness the state of transportation in this country; any student of history will point to transportation services offered by government as a significant driver of economic activity (Erie Canal, St. Lawrence Seaway, Interstate Highways, coal canals in England, etc.).

    It’s called investment in the future. And it does not pay dividends that the congress critters can use to brag back home.

  11. Heriberto Saldívar says:
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    Hello!
    I think that the biggest issue is that the people doesn’t really understand the advantages that space exploration brings to their daily live. I wrote a post about it and I think that to solve this problem, we must show them how much their lives have improved thanks to the exploration of space. If they realise its, then they will support it and they will push their representatives to support NASA, ESA or any space agency.
    If you want to read my post, here is the link.
    https://www.linkedin.com/pu
    Feel free to leave comments!!
    Cheers!!!

  12. SpaceMunkie says:
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    NASA is always singled out for this because most of the public are uneducated morons easily swayed by religious zealots showing couple pictures of starving kids and the inability of the NASA PR office to convey what exactly NASA does and how it benefits the public.
    Although Bernie has some good ideas, this is not one of them, social programs should exists to help people that need it, not for lazy bums that want it to avoid working.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Tough to tell the difference between those two groups, as you define them, the second being largely a figment of imagination actualized by Mr. Romney when voicing a certain meanness shared fearfully widely in this great country.

  13. mfwright says:
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    My initial advice for presidential candidates about mentioning the space program: Don’t. It seems every president or candidate that has talked about NASA or the space program has caused a lot of sour grapes. i.e. Obama, “been there, done that.” and Gingrich, “we will have a lunar colony at the end of my second term.” And of course the old blame game, “think of the starving children.” If they gotta talk about space program, push NASA as a technology research and development agency (though that’s what we all argue about on forums which general public will get thoroughly confused).

  14. Bill Housley says:
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    “…difficult choices about whether you vote to provide food for hungry kids or health care for people who have none and other programs.” –Saunders

    :…100% of the salaries paid to people by NASA are paid to people living on Earth and all of that money is spent by people on Earth who give that money to other people – on Earth.”
    –Cowing

    This issue annoys me to no end. The example that Keith gave about Weather satellites is only the tip of this iceburg (but I think that NOAA should do Earth climate science, not NASA). Truth is, most of what NASA does, that doesn’t have a visual-spectrum picture attached, is far too science geeky for most folks to even fathom. That is not NASA’s fault, but they could do a better job of highlighting the benefits of the science, even if the science itself is too complicated for the masses. I’m not just harping about spinoffs (this time) either.

    To play devil’s advocate however, if someone were to build a clear and reliable method for identifying pork, then there really are some things that NASA does that would ring the bell. Those things should be looked more closely and then maybe NASA could shed a little of this undeserved blame for starving children.
    For example, I don’t see SLS surviving long under a Saunders presidency, but he might kill JWST also which would be a disaster.

    • montagna_lunga says:
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      To “kill JWST would be a disaster” is histrionic, don’tcha think? I do agree though that those who have benefitted from that 800-million “cap” program’s 11x cost growth for twice as long as projected may think it disasterous. Remember the federal government spends more annually on the payroll of property administrators than it does on the entire NASA budget. Sometimes context is anything but “simple.”

      • Bill Housley says:
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        I have no personal benefit from it. I was referring to the science and the percent complete of that admittedly highly over-budget project. It’d be a shame to go so far and then not follow through to the benefits part.

        • JJMach says:
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          I would be the first to caution people about the sunk cost fallacy (in short: don’t throw good money after bad), but when you are assessing that, you need to compare costs vs. benefits.

          That’s where NASA and other BIG SCIENCE projects run into trouble. Much of the time you really don’t know the benefits until you go and look.

          It took decades and $620M for the idea of a laser interferometer to evolve into LIGO, but when it was built, the scientists involved could not be sure that they would even be able to detect gravity waves (or if they existed at all!). At this point, the researchers are saying they are at the equivalent point of Galileo looking through his telescope at Saturn for the first time; they have no idea what this new way of looking at the universe might reveal.

          Then there is the incalculable benefit of inspiration. How many students have looked at the images from Hubble and decided to pursue STEM careers and what “value” will they bring in the future?

          While I have had a front row seat at mis-management, I think a lot of NASA’s budgetary problems have more to do with their budgetary process and less to do with the science and engineering on which the budget is spent.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            “Much of the time you really don’t know the benefits until you go and look.”
            Or look back.
            Good that you mentioned Hubble in the context of this little JWST sub discussion. 😉

  15. Gene DiGennaro says:
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    So Sanders is back to the Mondale/Proxmire/Abernathy days of discovering rodent life in New York co-ops. That was 50 freaking years ago. Since 1965, we’ve had an ever diminishing space budget in proportion to the national budget. One would think that after 50 years of discretionary spending applied to domestic issues in lieu of space spending, one would see some progress on that front.
    Where is the progress? Alas the answer is always that we need more domestic spending. It never occurs to the Sanders/Mondale/Proxmire/Abernathy crowd that perhaps we’re spending domestic funds in the wrong way.

    To keep this post space related, I guess my point is that NASA could be zeroed out and made to go away and yet the problems of poverty, drug addiction, crime and hunger will still be a problem.

    I might add that prior to the Apollo effort, the Deep South was mired in poverty. To some degree it still is, but look at the economic, cultural, and educational effect that NASA centers located in the South has had on their surrounding communities.What would those areas be like today had not NASA placed centers there?

  16. Gene DiGennaro says:
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    Know where your favorite candidate stands:
    http://www.planetary.org/ge