/sci/ - Science & Math

>>9433768
desu I hate Krauss for his opinions on manned space travel.
I get that he thinks going to space should be about nothing more than gathering scientific data, but realistically we only study things to gain an understanding so that we can make use of whatever we're studying. Yeah yeah, the guy in the lab does it because he wants to 'further the knowledge of mankind', but the lab is being funded because the guys with money want a leg up on the competition when it comes to making products that are better than anyone else's.
Chemistry was funded because Kangs wanted gold and everyone thought alchemy was possible.
Physics was funded because governments wanted to exploit both the energy potential and the weapons potential of unstable atoms.
Rockets were developed as a means of delivering nuclear warheads tens of thousands of kilometers away, and the manned space race occurred as essentially a technological dick waving contest showcasing how reliable and accurate our missile guidance technology was. Etc.

Space exploration for scientific gain has been putting along using probes, but it's easy to think someone could come along and pull the plug simply because it doesn't really matter if we use gravometric data to study the interior of Europa or not. The biggest benefit of the space science missions to any administration right now is the administration's ability to say 'we discovered this this and this during our term'.

If Krauss wants to see real scientific data from Mars, he should be advocating that we set up a colony that likes to build everything out of steel, which has mining equipment and furnaces of their own, and send as many people as we can, because the amount of geologic surveying they'd do in a day simply looking for good sources of iron ore would reduce all rover science done to date to a blip. Same goes for every other object in the solar system.