In the message threads on your article about Bigelow's space project, I couldn't help noticing one or two posts by folks who think we shouldn't bother going into space or spending money on space until we fix all the problems here. Such people would be equally annoyed by a farmer building a rocket in his barn, I suppose.  There is an answer to their well-intentioned criticism.

I wrote an article a year or two ago for a small newspaper in Northern California (in fact I write an article for them each week) entitled "Wasting Money." What I said about our government's space efforts I think also applies to those of private entrepreneurs like Bigelow--especially when one considers that the amount of money someone like Bigelow is spending is only a tiny fraction of what NASA spends.

According to the United States Federal government, the Gross Domestic Product of the United States for 2005 was a bit over twelve trillion dollars.  The Federal government spent nearly two and a half trillion, or about twenty percent of that.

What did the government spend money on?  Nearly $402 billion was spent on defense, and $28 billion on Homeland Security.  $510 billion went for Social Security, $290 billion to Medicare and $180 billion to Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program.  $57 billion was spent by the Department of Education.  The Department of Health and Human Services spent more than $68 billion.  Almost $30 billion was spent for Veterans Affairs.  The Justice Department spent about $19 billion dollars.

Each year, according to Worldwatch Institute, Americans and Europeans spend about $15 billion a year just on cosmetics.  They also spend nearly $17 billion a year on pet food.  Going to the movies?  Americans drop about $10 billion annually.  
All this may help put something in perspective.  I run across people who believe that the money spent by NASA is a complete waste.  “Why spend billions going to the Moon and Mars when we have poor people that need our help?”  

Do you know how much the U.S. government actually spent on NASA in 2005?  About $16 billion, which is a billion less than what Americans spent just on pet food.  NASA’s piece of the federal pie is actually less than one percent of the Federal budget.   Already, more than thirty percent of the US budget is devoted to caring for the poor and suffering.  

Let’s put all this in a way that might be easier to comprehend.  If your annual income is $36 thousand, then one percent of your annual budget works out to three hundred sixty dollars: about thirty bucks a month.  

What a spendthrift you are if you spend that going out to dinner and a movie each month! Why aren’t you donating that windfall to the poor!  

Incidentally, if we add up the money that the US population spends on just video games and movies combined, it adds up to about what’s being expended by the American space program each year.   The sixteen billion dollars that NASA spent in 2005 works out to about 64 dollars a year for each person in the United States.  Only $5.34 per month.

So ask yourself: do you think that trips to Mars are worth $5.34 a month?   How much do you spend each month for your cable or satellite TV?  How about for cookies?

And remember, it’s thanks to that NASA budget that you have that TV signal beaming into your house while you munch on those cookies.  How about the other stuff that the space program has given you in your daily life that you take for granted, like accurate forecasting of hurricanes, instantaneous communication, and the navigation by the Global Positioning Satellite system that guides planes, ships, and smart bombs?  Then there are the medical advances we could discuss, like MRIs and medical monitoring, all thanks to that $5.34 a month.

But even if there were no practical benfits, I think going to Mars is worth at least $5.34 a month.  

But there is, after all, more to life than just the practical.  It isn’t all just about giving money to the poor.  If we do not leave ourselves room for art, for music, for scholarship, and for all the rest that inspires, then haven’t we become even poorer than the poorest outcast?  Would the critics of the space program suggest no money be devoted to art, to movie making, to music and books, until we take care of all those who are hurting?   Do we cast stones at writers who spend all that time creating novels when they could be devoting their days to volunteering in a homeless shelter?

Those who think the space program is a waste of money haven’t thought things through very well.  This isn’t an either/or situation.  Those who decry money spent on space are spouting clichés that may sound compassionate, but in the final analysis are just silly or worse.  They rob us of our souls.  When the philanthropist Ruth Lilly in 2002 gave approximately $100 million to the Modern Poetry Association, which publishes Poetry Magazine, most people thought it wonderful.  But some critics complained that the money “could have been given to the poor.”  Of course, Judas voiced a similar complaint when a young woman poured expensive perfume over Jesus.

Frankly, I worry about people who think giving money for poetry a waste, just as I worry about those so earthbound they never bother to look up and wonder about the stars.

Amen, J.P.Nettelhorst, Amen!  My only caveat is that you give those nay-sayers too much credit for saying, "Give it to the poor, instead of wastefully spending it on the moon, Mars, comets, whatever (take your pick).

I always read the letters in several magazines and newspapers, etc., and nowadays I seem to find those same people are really more concerned about the 'government' wasting 'their' money on advancement projects (including those which really do help the poor) thus illustrating their supreme selfishness.

Alan, this letter, from a reporter who knows his beat well, is really from all of us out here who do know how to look up and wonder about the stars...

The space industry is the most important investment in the survival of our species that will ever be made. In fact it is our only hope, and anyone with a child on this planet is responsible for maintaining a clear view of reality in this matter, and insuring the livlihood of his/her descendants. Unless you've been on the moon with your head in a hole, you can't help but acknowledge the space industry's contribution to new technologies that both ease the suffering of individuals and limit the damage of human society on the enviornment. The uneducated assumption that one cent of the spce program's budget would go to poverty or your grandpa's healthcare is totally blind to the mechanics of politics and socio-economic systems - especially in a free market capitalist society. God save us from foolish reasoning and uninformed opinions because the media loves to lend a voice to such noise. In fact we could have healthcare and state-sponsored higher education without reducing NASA's budget, but self-interest and the bottom line have long since won the day. Billionaires and politicians rely on having a huge herd of distracted and product-consuming low-wage workers to thrive off of. Remember there are two types of "the poor" the Charles Dickens version and The F. Scott Fitzgerald version. If I'm honest, the majority of the poor count themselves among the latter. No matter how much money you throw at them they will spend it unwisely on plastic products and beleive whatever the media tells them. Meanwhile beautiful dreams of epic proportion are sacrificed on the alter of mundane banality. Humanity needs big and beautiful dreams to dream to unite us and give us hope for the future. The alternative is endless wars and a ubiquitous feeling of hopelessness as our species festers in ruinous complacency. The space industry is the only pro-active step we can take to evolve and escape extinction. No monetary value can be put to such a thing, no cost too great. If I die on Earth, someone take my bones to rest on Mars! I grow weary of arguing against short-sighted ignorance, and I feel I am alone in this struggle sometimes.

I think there's 6.7 billion people walking around on this planet, and if we don't start aggressively expanding our horizons outward, it's going to get really really crowded and unhappy pretty quick, I don't think there's any good reason for not colonizing the moon except that bureaucrats and politicians are pretty content to keep doing what they've been doing. Typically, pencil-pushers aren't really balls-out 'push the envelope' type people, and it'd be a crying shame to watch our potential to really do something pioneering and innovative drown in a sea of incompetence and bureaucratic inertia.

America was founded by pioneers, people that weren't happy with the company they were keeping, and struck out on their own. There's few places left on the earth that are truly undiscovered, but we can always go up....up, up, and away, as it were, away from all the negative stuff, and on to higher goals and bigger and better things than arguing about this years' grain harvest or NAFTA or you-name-it. Other countries in the world need to pull their socks up and catch up, and we need to get a viable commercial launch concept whereby both people and cargo can be quickly and fairly cheaply delivered into the Great Beyond. The first 3 feet of travel are pretty expensive, but after that, I think space travel gets more economical. The navy's had this one down for years, with their ship-based catapults. Let's have a land-based catapult as a basic concept, and build from there...

Who are the people so interested in Britney and Anna Nicole?

I'm suspecting that these supposedly interested people don't exist as I have yet to meet even one.

However, to attempt to watch cable news or read news websites one would get the idea that these are the most pressing issues in the United States today.

The decline and fall, I'm telling you.  We're living in the time of our nation's decline and fall.

Justin, you are not alone. As the quote goes "The meek shall inherit the Earth. And the rest of us will go to the stars." So continue to "Think Galacticly and act Planetarily". I'll carry your bones to Mars if need be. Any movie that expands the dreams of today's youth to where mine was 1972 is worth its ticket price!

Right on folks! Where are the dreams? The only folks dreaming any more seem to be those who look up in wonder at our heavens and want to know more about the great beyond. We must continue our exploration of space as it is humanity's only saving grace.  The Earth will not support human life forever.

Justin: You are not alone.  Today there exist few deep thinking people in this country and you are right on as far as the great herds of dreamless, aimlessly wandering folks many of whom are technically challenged by anything more complex than their TV.

The argument about caring for the poor and hungry by taking away money from space funding is flawed. It isn't that we aren't helping out enough... the government is just helping ineffectively and inefficiently. Plus, there are always going to be losers and winners due to the mechanics of the human nature and the simple idea that for there to be successes there have to be failures.

I love this film, and I want to see it terribly. I also think that NASA needs to be regulated to R&D of new technologies and gathering data on Earth and its neighbors... we need to have Grand Challenge's directed at the private sector when it comes to space stations, new space vehicles, the moon, Mars, etc.

The notion that a farmer could build and deploy a spacecraft is nothing short of ludicrous. A scrap dealer from Mayberry might well be able to accomplish it, but a farmer? Nonsense.

Where have the dreams gone?  They've been crushed by the bitter cold dose of reality.  We were promised Moon colonies back in the 60's and 70's, where are they?  We were promised orbital hotels and flights affordable to the commonfolk, ie, costing about the same as a discount trip to Europe, where are they?

The same answer always given is, "We need more time and money."  Well, you've had plenty of time and plenty of money and I still don't see a priceline discount price for a trip to the Orbital Six.  What I do see is a house mortgage that will take me 29 years to pay off, a car payment that will take two more years, half of my paycheck going to a social security system that I won't be able to use, and another third going to pay a healthcare company so my family won't get sick.  And everytime I try to get more education to improve my lot in life, it means I get to sacrifice my health by being stressed by work and school without having the necessary recovery time.

If you want to recapture the dreams of us common folk, you need to make space travel cost under $2,000 USD, and able to be done over a long weekend, and you need to accomplish it within the next 5 years, because otherwise, I have more pressing issues like mortgages and insurance payments to take care of.

Does anyone out there remember Robert Heinlein's juvenile boys book, "Rocketship Galileo"?

Sound familiar?

"The U. S. government's "visionary" space exploration policy is totally uninspiring . . .  Using rockets to explore space is like using tin-can telephones for long distance communications, or using steam engines to power aircraft."  (from  http://members.andiamo-tel.com/~bfraser/4v4a/PwrPnt.html  )

Let's spend a mere billion dollars on antigravity development ("propellantless propulsion") and see what we get. Otherwise, other nations might develop this technology before we do, and give us a rude, but deserved awakening. See  "Advanced Stellar Propulsion Systems" at:

http://members.andiamo-tel.com/~bfraser/4v4a/ADVPROP.html .

There is a real person who thought about doing this at RocketGuy.com . Too bad things seem to have stopped but you can read about his attempts on his website.

Yes, and the idea that a couple of bicycle mechanics could build a flying machine is also ludicrous! I mean get real!

We, as a nation have lost many of our dreams to the trivial and unimportant pursuits, and have come out poorer for it.  When there is more attention paid to a pop star and her antics than to what we can accomplish as a people, we lose something that has always driven us to the next level, and that is our dreams and aspirations.  Who cares that the notion of a farmer vs. a scrap dealer could accomplish this...semantics aren't as important as the idea.  How many of us, given the opportunity, would say no to taking the flight into space.  Where the movie (and this discussion) comes into play is that the movie shows a person having the dream and then doing something about it.  Dreams are free and we should all have them.  What separates the average person from the truly great is actually doing something to make the dream come true.  We should strive to keep our space program alive and healthy as well as encourage those who dream of doing more.  We are all better for what has gone into our space program to date, and if we let it die due to other considerations, we may as well give up as a nation.  Without dreams and doing something about them, we are nothing.

Mr Tumlinson states that Mojave isn't that far from Hollywood.  Well, I beg to differ.

There is no comparing the reality of a guy like Burt Rutan against the fiction of a second-rate story tellers like the propagandists at MiraMax.

One guy gets a few dollars to actually make a real rocket.

The other guy gets millions to act like he knows what a rocket is.

Mojave may be 90 minutes as the car drives from Burbank, but it is light-years away from the oscar-lovers.

Thank God too.

If Hollywood's whack-jobs were making our national priorities, the Lincoln Bedroom would still be for sale to the highest donor.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote this story 60 years ago and revisted the theme repeatedly.  He joined Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Walter Cronkite 38 years ago as commentators on the Moon Landing.

The shrill cries to "stop throwing money into outer space when there are poor on the earth" ignored both engineering realities and Christian theology -- "the poor will always be with us," said Jesus the Nazarene.

Nixon listened and gutted the space program which contributed to trickle-down economic impoverishment through domino unemployment and escalating inflation, as well as incalculable spiritual impoverishment.

If we as humans do not have Grand Dreams, we might as well be dogs, for it is only are dreams which invest us with humanity.

Wow, Alan! You really know how to get folks thinking with the various topics you pick. To see so many positive remarks by ordinary people does my heart good. Don't despair, Justin, we will touch space someday and come home again with something from over that rainbow.

Richard Branson and the space ship one organisation have immortalised themselves in the history books and no doubt will be followed just as the wright brothers were some 100 years ago.

As I watch, year after year, my own country rot from the inside out, our moral authority vanishing like a fart in a whirlwind, our integrity sold to the highest bidders, our streets filled with drunks and drug abusers, and a president and right wing culture hell bent on sending us all to Armageddon, I see only our highest institutions still reaching for the stars. MIT, NASA, and the like, challenging the world to keep looking towards Ursa Major, Andromeda, the moon, or to Titan herself. Our science and space programs are the last remaining vestiges of a dying age of glory....the time left on our clock we will soon be borrowing from China. Onward and upward while we still can, otherwise, it's Vegas, baby!!!

With a 9 trillion dollar national debt, the interest payments on that debt is a significant expense, greater than most government programs. That debt is still growing. It would only take a minor crisis - a small downturn in the economy, a small increase in intrest rates - for those interest payments to threaten vital government operations like defense. When that happens, taxes will go up and all non-essential government operations will be cut out of necessity.

Sorry, but manned space travel is non-essential, especially lunar colonies and mars expeditions. The only question is how soon they will be canceled.

It isn't just a mere $5.34 per month. Your share of the national debt is $30,0000 and growing. Do you have a spare 30 grand?

Support private space efforts with your own money if you must, but don't expect unlimited funds from the government to support your living in space fantasies.

In the long run, if our species is to survive, it is essential... considering that it is entirely possible, with the size of space, that an asteroid could be heading here right now that is big enough to cause the near extinction of our species... we need to spread ourselves out as quick as we can... and monetary incentive Grand Challenges contests are the way to go.

CM, private space efforts ARE going to lead the way, but it is government spending on those private developments, especially in times of war, which lead to quantum leaps in progress.  

The airplane is the perfect example.  The Wright Brothers, Gustav Weisskopf, Curtiss, etc,...private tinkerers striving to get a new idea off the ground, and when one of them succeeds, the government comes along and sticks a machine gun on it and within a decade the government sponsored improvements to the rest of the aeroframe end up in commercial planes.  

War is hell, but the aftereffects get us closer to utopia all the time.  (unless they take a right turn into cyborgian armageddon.)

I really loved the astronaut farmer. Reminded me of the movie I grew up watching. I think it's a classic piece of mvie making just in line with what launching into space is really about: the spirit to get there. It may not hit every techinical hurddle, but that's not the point. If you love space, you'll love this movie too.

As you respond to this article remember all of the benefits that have been spun out of NASA research. Many of the products you use today from the pc to velcro to tang are the results of research by NASA.

Additionally, when you talk of taking the space research money and giving it to the poor, let me ask how many people have earned a paycheck because of that space research. That give the money to the poor argument always drives me nuts.  

I haven't seen the movie, and so don't know how this was addressed, but I do have one concern about "do-it-yourself" manned rocketry: flight safety.

Now I think folks are entitled to risk their own lives pursuing their dreams if they wish... but risking the lives of bystanders is another matter.  Using the old Mercury program as a template, we're talking roughly 100 tons of fuel and oxidiser to push about 20 tons of vehicle (capsule and launch vehicle) up to orbital speed.  There's a pretty fair risk involved; if this thing goes up on the pad it's a pretty big "boom".  (KSC was built out on an uninhabited cape surrounded by ocean and swamp for a reason.)  Even if it does work as designed, I'd like reasonable assurances that staging won't drop rocket components into inhabited areas.  I doubt a do-it-yourselfer would be able to boost to altitudes that would endanger existing satellites, but there is an issue with space debris possibly interfering with launch and entry windows too.

Folks can bellyache all they want about stifling the entrepenurial spirit, but there *is* a need for FAA-style restrictions because when you're dealing with manned rocketry you're risking a lot more than your own neck.  Casting the FAA as the villains of the piece does them (and us bystanders!) a disservice.

As far as expense goes; as mentioned above, people already spend a lot more money a lot more friviously.  Perhaps if NHL and NBA franchises start donating their procedes to charity I'll sympathise with the "spend it on Earth" crowd... but probably not.

It is my humble technical opinion that gamma-ray flux levels make deep-space human exploration all but impossible. But should we continue to explore, observe, probe and even build in space?

I've heard many the wag self-assuredly tell me we should not "waste money in space". The fact is, there is nowhere in space to spend one red cent. Every dollar is invested right here on Earth, into a technical community  which is not directly involved in warfare.

I suppose we could put all those techies on unemployment, but really, for 17cents a day I think it's a rare and effective work project.

Just as government should subsidize ballet, documentary film, mathematics and public parks -- all "nonessential" -- so should government subsidize space exploration, astronomy, and physics. It's great adventure, inspiring true globalism, and humanises us all.

I'd go in a heart beat, gamma radiation notwithstanding. So would you.

Space travel. There is something about this subject that makes people lose their rational everyday thought processes.

If I have said this once I must say a thousand or more times, until it becomes clear. Nobody is going to the Moon, Mars, or anywhere else, anytime soon.

Manned spaceflight is too expensive, returns too little for the money spent. It is also extremely dangerous. Remember a space shuttle named Columbia?

Yes we need a space program. No, we no longer need astronauts.

Nobody doubts that spending on research leads to great benefits for all mankind. This includes are space program. Weather satellites, communications satellites, GPS, and so on. However the space program I think most of the posters in here have in mind, is very obsolete. It belongs back in the days of the cold-war. Today with the advances in computer and robotic technology, the is simply no need to send (at great expense and risk) human beings. Unmanned spacecraft can do anything we need to do in space from now on, for one tenth the price.

As for you Space Cadet's, who dream of travel to other worlds. Like they say in New Jersey, forget about it. It ain't gonna happen in your lifetime. As for Branson, Bigelow, Rutan, these men are very wealthy hobbyist, nothing more. I,am getting tired of these people being held up as heroes of free-enterprise. Once the money drys-up Fun Ship Two, will vanish. And yes, without massive government funding none of these schemes stand a chance. Today it cost somewhere around    fifteen-thousand to twenty-thousand u.s. Dollars per pound, to send anything into low earth orbit. This is due to the physics involved. It is not a matter of free-market economics.

So your dreams of space flight will remain just that, a dream.

Because we are animal, we have no choice.  Because we are also human, we do indeed have a choice.  We are made of flesh and blood, bone and sinew, and perforce must take 'Earth' with us wherever we go, wrapping ourselves in spacesuits, and carrying oxygen to breathe and water to drink.  But the choice is ours because of our human consciousness which makes us 'little less than the angels' and allows us to make the decision to reach for the stars.  Or you can sit at home and bitch about the 'waste' of money while you strew your empty beer bottles and half-eaten bags of tostitos about your easy chair.  

As for me and my house, we'll go!!!  

From my humble opinion All I have to say is this.To anybody that thinks we can do all we need to do in space with robots, the same can be said about earth. From computers to robotic arms. But where is the sense of pride, civility and humanity in that? I ask what if the wright brothers thought it made more sense to build an airplane just for it to fly, cause heck even i can do that. just fold a piece of paper and throw it. but they didnt and can you guess why because they wanted to fly. not watch someone or something else do it. I mean really would you go to disney world just to watch the rides run on there own. Instead of riding them? I mean come on now why would we even have a space program if it werent to go where no man has gone before and broaden our horizons. Or are you just honkydory sittin on your butt and watching satalite tv, talking on your satalite phone, looking at satalite pictures and reading about satalite weapons.If that is the case where exactly is your sense of accomplishment huh where is it?
WELL THAT WAS FUN BUT IM DONE NOW I HOPE NOBODY TOOK OFFENSE TO MY OPINION WELL NOT REALLY BUT HEY IM ONLY HUMAN :)

. about self-made spacecrafts... to-day, build a rocket is very complex and costly, but... just wait... someday, the full plan to build a low cost spaceship and go to Mars will be available for free on internet... :) .

The same cannot be said about the earth, John. Do I detect a little pride? A little human ego here.

I wonder, do the people who resent AI, computers robots etc. really know what it is they oppose?

For example, would anyone resent the AI in a heart pacemaker? Or how about a robot used by police and the military to disarm bombs? You see, I feel progress is measured by how much we replace humans in tedious and dangerous jobs. Space travel is both tedious and highly dangerous. We are well pass the time when we need to send humans into space. Robots don't get tired or lonely or depressed. They don't have mental breakdowns. And they can gather the data we are after for a fraction of the price a human mission would cost. Also if they are lost there are no griveing loved ones left behind.

And I wish the man in space fans would please stop talking about the Wright brothers, Columbus, Lewis and Clarke, and so on. These comparisons come from the nineteenth and early twentieth ceturies. They are not valid in the 21st century. In fact they are just strange.

Where is it the man in space fans think they can go?

Low earth orbit? Boring. The Moon? Been there done that. Mars? With are current level of tecnology it is not all that clear it could be done. The cost would be astronomical. (pun intended) The stars? Science fiction fantasy.

The point is, yes I might have dreams and desires to travel to far away exotic locations too. However I do not feel I have the right to impose my desires on the taxpayer. Something to think about.

Dreaming of space travel has been a favorite pastime of mine ever since people like Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, Herbert, etc. took me there so many years ago. There's no harm in dreaming. However, my dreams never use current technology to get me there. The early Sci-Fi space writers were visionaries, who in many instances, were encouraging the scientific community to think outside the box they continually created around themselves, and still do. Space travel will only happen when we develop the futuristic hardware and software that will make it safe and quick. I've flown in a fighter jet. I know what it feels like to pull +4 Gs and then go mometarily weightless when you hit negative Gs in a roll-over. If afforded the chance to go into space today, I'd go, even knowing the risks. I'd go, because I'm a dreamer. For a dreamer, even a chance to live just a little portion of the dream is better than nothing at all.

The split, as usual, is apparent -- some want to go for the trip, some for the destination, and some want to stay home. I just remind those stay-at-homes that a diamond is only a piece of carbon. I know I'll never go to space, never touch the Martian sands, never see the stars, like dust, above me, under me, around me. But I can dream, can't I? And someday, someone will open the door and let my memory ride his shoulders into that future and show me what now I can only imagine.

Such a waste of money. Theres nothing up there that can help save the human race. Lets stop this crap and put the money back here on earth where we can help our own people live a productive life, where everyone can have health insurance, and a roof over there heads. For all you dreamers out there thats all you are doing, just dreaming.Iv seen babies starve, but we can spend any amount on space, and this just makes me sick. Remember you will be judged someday for your actions.

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