As always Doug, I am in awe of the knowledge and wisdom at your fingertips.
A Positive spin "half empty/half full" always sways me in that direction.
I too see only advancement of our paultry human knowledge as the benifit of
Stardust.
A smidgen of Mercury or Venus to compare our present unclassified "ites"
might just make someone a "billionaire" as a side benefit to just the
satisfaction of "knowing".
It's difficult enough to squeek budgetary commitment for NASA out of a
overtaxed National Budget.
Let's celebrate success without wringing our hands over the world's "always
desparate condition".
Jerry Flaherty
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2006 5:12 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] "Meteorite" for $7.1 billion per gram!
Marcin writes:
Think what could be done in Earth for that
ammount of money (except next War ofcourse).
Thousands of people die becouse have no food. Lets think about this when
next time we look on photo of microscopic grain in a gel :-|
Marcin, a lot of responsibility does come with NASA's territory. Not a
whole lot could be accomplished by spending $200,000,000 on Earth,
though.
People spend this kind of money every day, and the change is
imperceptible in the
large scheme of human events. There is a natural limit to the resources
on
earth, do you think the real solution is to spend money or to think out
of the
box? Is the real solution jamming more and more in the same place as
waste
only accumulates daily and resources are continually dwindled?
Don't forget, in economics "spending money" is very different for the
social
good than for an individual's personal benefit. The money is still in
the
economy and not destroyed, it only changes hands, and thus is still
available
for giving. The grains collected by Stardust were obtained at $0.00 per
gram. The numbers of $ really are irrelevant to your argument. It just
passes
money around from one gear in the society to another - in this case the
receivers are employee scientists so they don't add to the starving ranks
of the
world and be forced to work in a non-unionized sweat shop and then get
their
jobs sent overseas to feed the overseas middle class and perhaps
corruption.
This is a collective benefit giving handouts to the scientists that
preserves
a culture of technological advancement which today has even started to
outsource major portions of the missions to European countries and keep
their
scientists from the breadlines as well.
The end result maintains the earthly culture of keeping a bunch of
employed
scientists and engineering geniuses on call and hard at work, reaching
for
the stars. It bolsters a society benefiting from everything this culture
grabs
from outside of our stagnating terrarium and knowledge base, and keeps
afloat an industrial behemoth which can support novel and cutting edge
advancements for the whole of human societies, tending to advance human
rights and
respect. That same industry would degenerate into a bunch of dejected
scientists
and has-been high-tech companies that would vanish into hungry oblivion
themselves, without this support. Somewhat like Katovice was 30 years
ago.
That sadly won't mean much to someone who keels over in hunger tomorrow.
You can alleviate his problem as Mother Teresa sagely advises "If you
can't
feed 100 people, the just feed one.":
_http://www.thehungersite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CTDSites_
(http://www.thehungersite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CTDSites)
_http://hunger.stanford.edu/help_body.html_
(http://hunger.stanford.edu/help_body.html)
Best wishes, Doug
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