Jess👾17h ago

I know the discourse about the rest of the context around NASA and the Artemis program - people will trot out the classic old "we should spend the money on the poor" or "we should just send robots" or "it's USA propaganda".

Fact is, crewed space flight is just Cool. I've heard more about Artemis than I have any specific space related thing since some of the first Mars rovers. And I think it's worth doing things like sending humans to space, or remote parts of the Earth, or the ocean, or whatever, even IF a drone could do it. Because humans like seeing humans doing things and being able to sit there and think "I/someone I love could be there doing that thing".

Show threadPassenger16h ago

@JessTheUnstill

It's also not that expensive in government terms. Like, $4bn is a lot more money than I will ever have, but let's put it in perspective.

The first week of Trump's attack on Iran cost the American government six times that. The high-speed rail connection between San Francisco and Los Angeles costs that much on average for every 23km of track. The UK government, a state with considerably less population and money, threw away seven times that much on a covid track and trace system that didn't work.

If the US government doesn't have $4bn to spend on poverty or other good causes, it isn't because they spent it all on rockets, it's because they didn't think poverty was worth spending on.

Show threadJess👾
@passenger Yeah that's the other part of it. There was never an either/or discussion being had. This isn't a family budget when we're down to our last $1000, "do we go on vacation or do we make sure our kid has lunch money?".
9:43pmWeb
Show threadbaconandcoconut15h ago
@JessTheUnstill @passenger I wish we did more to teach how different government budgets are when compared to personal budgets or business budgets. You'd stop seeing so much discourse around ROI or people thinking that because their household doesn't use some service, amenity or accommodation that it's a "waste."