BiscottiGelato

no matter what those technologies too, if no one educates those people who poo on the street, or p ...
mukmuk2 發表於 2010-10-4 09:27

Didn't read through the whole thing. It's crazy long.

If the argument is that, as long as there's needs in addressing the poor and other social services, then 'luxuries' like space exploration should take the back seat... I don't exactly agree.

1. There's no country in the world where there isn't a population that lives below the poverty line. In that sense, then space exploration should cease to be conducted world-wide?
2. As in all explorations, first to discovery usually gives a much bigger say in ownership. Not to mention the ability for a country, in particular the US, to keep secrets from the world. Imagine discovering Gold deposits, Nuclear fuel deposits, Diamond deposits from outer space, etc. The US can easily keep this from the world and benefit on their own. It's in every countries' interest to get their own version of space to keep some check and balance in terms of the 'ownership' of the space and knowledge surrounding it.
3. It might be much too late for countries to catch up in the 'space race' if it one day becomes absolutly necassary to do so (space based weapons arms race, race for space ownership when valuable resource/habitable land, space colonization, global catastrophe requiring escape to space).

So arguing that budget for things like space exploration should be completely cut until social spending is 'adequate' is very poor budgeting when it comes to safe guarding the interests that pertains to a nation. And when are we such socialist? Shouldn't it be policies and capitalistic forces that drives society out of poverty? The Obama brain wash of hand-outs is so in favor these days? Never knew socialism is the new capitalism... Thought we already concluded that socialism, which tries to counter the forces of natural selection, just never works many many years ago...

More-over, I agree with Hawkings that to ensure human survival, we need to be able to live independant of Earth's biosphere sooner rather than later. There is already not enough political will world wide as it is. Further cutting such spendings will only spell doom for the human race. Doom for the human race for more investment into the poor and needy today... I don't know if that's a very good trade.

BiscottiGelato

If you look at the list of countires with the highest qualities of life, the ones that consistently ...
Lik 發表於 2010-10-4 10:06

How much socialism is good? How much is bad? I think whatever cut you make on this is just as bad as mine, and every other clueless individuals here. In this case it's all opinions, every one has one and they all stinks.

On the other hand, How much did China spend on this probe to the moon? How much is budgeted every year to education vs space exploration vs military vs socialist assistance? We simply don't know. Any argument here is mood. Maybe 100B is spent on education every year already, vs .5B every year on space tech, who knows.

All I am saying is, asking China to spend 0 on space and all on education is absurd. There are a lot of reason why even countries that are not among the richest and highest std of living in the world should invest in space.  Std of living is like reaping in rewards now, investing in things like space is investing in the future. Afterall, do you really want the US to claim everything they find in space, whether it be resource or much needed knowledge that can give their faux capitalistic system unchecked dominance in the next frontier?

The real question is how much to spend in space. Is launching a probe to the moon spending too much? Or is it too little given how far behind China is in space tech? Then it all goes back to stinky opinion and ugly politics, which you guys are free to put your worth on. But again, spending 0 is plain ignorance.

BiscottiGelato

今日
美國佬唔花咁多錢嚮太空度
點解？
因為佢知道有啲地方要好多錢
例如 醫療改革 ...
sheep 發表於 2010-10-4 09:55

Cuz they continue to be more and more short sighted. It's hard to say on the long term whether the half thought out medical reform is good investment, or if leaving budget in space is better investment on the long haul. All we know is their motivation: they want to address social concerns because it wins them vote, and that's all it is about.

Heck, in fact the NASA budget is still very up in the air and open for debate in the Congress/Senate, that in the end they might just print more cash to cover it afterall.

BiscottiGelato

Exactly. And China should do the same by not blowing their $$ away in the most expensive aerospace  ...
Lik 發表於 2010-10-4 12:41

So you think China should spend nothing on space until the average quality of life is up to western standards?

BiscottiGelato

My goodness.. can you get more ignorant than this? The healthcare reform overhaul is only a means t ...
Lik 發表於 2010-10-4 12:53

Perhaps i'm not completely correct over the medical reform bill, as I am not 100% intimate with the details of the health reform. However the socialistic policies in general as fronted recently in the US, can you say all of them were for the greater good for the country? I'd willing be the devil's advocate that more of them than otherwise were meant to win votes from the peasants, rather than meant for the greater long term goods of the country. I fail to see that cutting the NASA budget and putting funds into more socialistic programs necassarily pertains to the long term good for the US. The motivation of such budget shift should be questioned.

BiscottiGelato

Not up to western standards, but most certainly something better than what the poor rural people cu ...
Lik 發表於 2010-10-4 15:07

It's a fine line when you want to start spending on things like aerospace vs social services. Your opinion stinks as much as everybody else's. To say China is 'wrong' in this case is merely your opinion. I think many thinks otherwise, and for very good reasons. In my opinion, I don't know if the spending on aerospace as it is currently is appropriate, as I simply don't know the numbers behind the budgeting. I do know that I don't want it to be '0'.

Return on aerospace R&D is not immediate. Once you know for sure what the return will be it will be way too late ot invest in it. There's at least a 20 years gap between US vs China in aerospace. To actually out wrestle US for any real claim for space resource, rights or technology it will be even longer than that. We cannot to afford to start only if we can quantify the return. Rest assure tho that the return will be enormous when the time comes.

BiscottiGelato

We don’t have to talk about 1000 years into the future. We just talk about NOW!

Didn’t you say  ...
rockypath 發表於 2010-10-5 09:04

Very good point. If China and India actually have it's population rise to the quality of living that western society has, the burden on the Earth's finite resource will be astronomical. We should expand our capacity through technological advancement before expanding our consumption.

There will always be inadequacy on this planet. Using this as an excuse to delay space exploration further is short-sighted, and will just mean that we will never be able to populate beyond this finite planet. It's kind of like buying insurance, the probability that you'll stop dead tomorrow is very low, but it only need to happen once and the consequences are disastorous. Same thing for the Earth and human species. We have been long overdued of an ELE (Extinction Level Event), which have been plenty numerous throughout the history of Earth. All it takes is once to put the human civilization, if not human species all together, into jeoporady. Repeating what Hawking have said, human need to escape the earth's gravity and be able to live in a seperate biosphere sooner rather than later. You never know when it's going to happen. Given the consequences, is it really justifyable to not put ANY resource at all in addressing this risk? It's only prudent policy that we invest appropriately into this risk, and it is every countries' interest to take part in it.

Aside from misconceptions put up by your favorite Hollywood movie, the worst part about space is, you can't wait until it is actually urgent before action is taken. Even if we continue to put in what we are putting in today towards this effort, I would think it will take at least 200 years or more before we can actually put up any sort of semi-permanent, self sustainable biosphere into space. Keep in mind that we have been living in the most prosperous 50 years of human history ever. All it takes is WWIII to take us all the way backwards. We should put even more resource into this direction when we can afford to and before it's too late.

BiscottiGelato

風馬牛不相及？你係唔係連咁簡單嘅比喻都唔識呀？知唔知咩叫做未學行先學走呀，死蠢？

中國大西北、山區 ...
Lik 發表於 2010-10-5 09:01

I think you need to step back and look at things objectively. If 民生大過天, then don't even talk about aerospace spending. Defense spending should go out the window too then? Again, aerospace spending is not meant to benefit the average joe, not immediately anyways. 見到楊利偉話自我感覺良好 will not be a benefit  to the 鄉民, and it's not meant to benefit the 鄉民. The knowledge and experiences gained in such missions will contribute to the country, and humanity's future. Whether it be in disaster prevention, recovery or future space resource exavation or immigration. If we don't take any small steps now, these big things down the road will never happen, or it will be too late for China as it gets monopolized by other countries.

You extreme socialist viewpoint is well observed on this forum, along with serious attitude problems involving personal attacks and offsensive remarks. Your poor temperment, and heavy (anti-Chinese gov't) bias only makes rational discussion difficult and almost pointless. With your track record of bashing almost anything and everything done by the Chinese gov't, it just makes one thinks that you can no longer assess individual issues objectively on a case by case basis.

BiscottiGelato

點解你真係愚蠢到咁
而家消耗咁多能源
唔係改善僅中國人嘅生活
係做僅世界工廠
亦都係響度消耗僅自己中國 ...
sheep 發表於 2010-10-5 09:27

So you think they should let the RMB rise, raise workers' pay, and drive out foreign investments, all for the good of China and it's people?

Yet you fail to see that China and it's people, even on average, have some of the most rapid rise in quality of living in the past 30 years, all due to the economic reforms kick started by Deng, who once said back then the reform was to allow 'some of the people to get rich first, to bring up the rest of the country later'. The rise in China's HDI in the past 30 years is some of the steepest, especially an astounding feat given the massive population and economy that China have.
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_CHN.html

Some will criticize that the HDI is skewed as there is massive rich-poor disparity, which I agree. But this is in a way by designed, as the capitalistic approach always creates rich-poor disparity. As long as both the rich and the poor gets richer, then it is on the right track. Don't miss out on this quote from the above, "HDI scores in all regions have increased progressively over the years (Figure 1) although all have experienced periods of slower growth or even reversals." HPI (Human Poverty Index) is also far from the worst (rank 37th out of 135 for China).

Obviously there is still a lot of flaws with the Chinese government, which Lik can recite all day here, which I also agree with many of them (but not a lot of the extermely biased unfounded ones, like launching this tiny probe to the moon). Neglecting to recognize that China have been roughly on the right direction in terms of many of it's economic policies (including keeping wage low, RMB low to lure in foreign investments, etc) is plain bias and ignorance.

BiscottiGelato

They should not invest too much in the fxxking space
spend more $$ on improving people's lives, e ...
chunsh 發表於 2010-10-5 10:18

How much is too much? We don't even know how much they spent to launch this probe, it might be just 1M RMB. Maybe they have spent 100 Billion every years into social services for non-coastal cities, and only a budget of 100M a year (given how cheap it is to manufacture, and how cheap labor/scientists might be) for aerospace in total? Who knows? Is that still too much? Why are you saying it's too much when you don't even know how much they have spent on this? Does anybody care if you think it's too much or not?