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Are we really headed for a collision with Andromeda? — 2 Comments

  1. YOU ARE ENTITLED TO HAVE EARNED THE NAME, “BIG BULL SHITERS” IN THE SKY. AS FAR AS I AM CONCERNED, YOU PEOPLE THAT WANT TO EXPLORE DEEP SPACE AT THIS PARTICULAR TIME, DO NOT HAVE ANY COMMON KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT IS GOING ON HERE ON EARTH. WE NEED ALMOST NINE-TENSE OF YOUR DEDICATED BUDGET TO BE SPENT HERE ON EARTH. YOUR KEEPING SATELLITES ORBITING AROUND EARTH IS FINE, THEY ARE PROBABLY ESSENTIAL. THE USA IS 19,500,000,000,000 DOLLARS IN DEBT. WHAT IS SO IMPORTANT IN EXPLORING DEEP SPACE???

    • A lot of people feel this way. I wonder how many of them know that in 2011, the US military spent more on tent air-conditioning in Afghanistan ($20 billion) than the entire budget for NASA ($18.4 Billion). The USA spent a grand total of 1.5% of its 2011 budget on basic research (with just over a third of that going to NASA). This number gets smaller every year. Meanwhile, a full 20% was spent on what is so euphemistically called “Defense” (only social security, medicaid, and related things got more).
      If you want to find money to spend on important things, you can do better than raiding the research budget. That’s just pinching pennies, and ignoring the dollars.

      (Reference, if you’d like to look up the figures for other years: http://federal-budget.insidegov.com )

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