Despite the excitement and sense of accomplishment that this past Sunday brought when humanity landed another robotic device on a distant planet, there seems to be a lingering question of "is it worth it?"
Every thread on every news post about the subject seems split between those who think it is worth it, and those who don't. I've been disappointed that threads have spiraled out of control on the merits of worth rather than what it all means in the grand scheme of things; in the grand scheme of humanity itself. I'd like to know how The Mighty Orange feels. More after the fold...
First, lets get some numbers to put things in perspective. While the costs of Phoenix vary from report to report, it seems to hover around the $420-million mark, give or take. Lets compare that to a few budgets:
- US Federal Budget 2008: 2.90 trillion
- Department of Defense Budget 2008: 481.4 billion
- Health and Human Services Budget 2008: 69.3 billion
- Housing and Urban Development Budget 2007: 35.2 billion
- NASA Total Budget 2008: 17.318 billion
- New York Yankees 2008 Player Salaries: 207.1 million
Now lets calculate the percentage of these budgets that the $420-million Phoenix represents:
- US Federal Budget 2008: 0.014 %
- Department of Defense Budget 2008: 0.087 %
- Health and Human Services Budget 2008: 0.606 %
- Housing and Urban Development Budget 2007: 1.193 %
- NASA Total Budget 2008: 2.425 %
Additionally, consider the fact that the $420-million cost of Phoenix is still less than the estimated $500-million it costs to run the Iraq/Afghanistan wars for ONE SINGLE DAY. (Not to mention that for just 2 seasons of Yankee salaries we could launch another Phoenix).
As you can see, the cost of doing the impossible remains just a tiny fraction of the cost that we spend on any number of other items.
Of course there are a multitude of issues facing our nation and mankind itself, such as hunger, poverty, global warming, war, education, etc... you know the drill. And yes, I can understand the argument that more money needs to be sent towards these things, in fact I agree with this argument. But arguing that money should be taken from NASA to handle these issues misses the point.
Surely there were Spaniards who argued that the money Columbus received to sail off the edge of the Earth in a hopeless, useless suicide voyage could have been spent elsewhere. Perhaps they were right at the time, but who can argue against the fact that that his voyage has payed dividends that we are still reaping to this day.
Bottom line, you have to think bigger when evaluating NASA. You have to think long. The things they are researching and using now are bleeding edge. It will take decades for their technologies and discoveries to trickle down to us all. How long did it take for us to get GPS in our pockets and our cars? NASA has been using it for decades. How about the lasers you use to listen to your CD player or burn your pirated MP3s? Those took decades to trickle down as well. How about the spectrometers that climate change scientists are using to measure changes in our planet? Yep, those too were first developed at NASA to explore other planets. And the MRI's, X-rays, and other medical magic used to cure our ailments? Yah, a lot of those got their start at NASA. Oh, and the tiny little supercomputer on your desk/lap that you are using to read this? Yep, NASA had a hand in that too. How do you think you enjoy watching Chris Matthews spittle all over himself every day? Yep, satellite and broadcast technology, researched and developed by NASA. I could go on and on...
And its not just things that NASA develops. It also fosters hope, inspiration, imagination, solidarity, and direction. These are priceless. How many of today's engineers and engineering students were inspired by the landing of the first man on the moon, or the first pictures of distant galaxies, or the loss of the Challenger and Columbia shuttles? Many people called those a waste of time and money as well. People inspired by both NASA's successes and failures are now building todays communication systems, wind turbines, water purification devices, computers, and X-ray/MRI machines. Perhaps some day they will develop cold fusion, increase efficiency of solar panels, or fine-tune the decomposition of plastics. These people are building our future.
So is Mars, or perhaps NASA itself, worth it?
Here's a great excerpt from Neil deGrase Tyson's wonderful "Death by Black Hole". This book is a great read, especially for space lay-men like myself. It really puts things in perspective:
"Beginning in 1969, space probes were designed and launched that shaped two decades of planetary reconnaissance in our solar system. The celebrated Pioneer, Voyager, and Viking missions were part of this era. So too was the Mars Observer, which was lost on arrival in the Matrian atmosphere in 1993.
Each of these spacecraft took many years to plan and build. Each mission was ambitious in the breadth and depth of its scientific objectives and typically cost taxpayers between $1 and $2 billion. During a 1990s change in administration, NASA introduced a "faster, cheaper, better" paradigm for a new class of spacecraft that cost between $100 and $200 million. Unlike previous spacecraft, these could be planned and designed swiftly, enabling missions with more sharply defined objectives. Of course that meant a mission failure would be less costly and less damaging to the overall program of exploration.
In 1999, however, two of these more economical Mars missions failed, with a total hit to taxpayers of about $250 million. Yet public reaction was just as negative as it had been to the billion-dollar Mars Observer. The new media reported the $250 million as an unthinkably huge waste of money and proclaimed that something was wrong with NASA. The result was an investigation and a congressional hearing.
Not to defend failure, but $250 million is not much more than the cost to produce Kevin Costner's film flop Waterworld. It's also the cost of about two days in orbit for the space shuttle, and it's one-fifth the cost of the previously lost Mars Observer. Without these comparisons, and without the reminder that these failures were consistent with the "faster, cheaper, better" paradigm, in which risks are spread among multiple missions, you would think that the $1 million equals $1 billion equals $1 trillion.
Nobody announced that the $250-million loss amounts to less than $1 per person in the United States. This much money, in the form of pennies, is surely just laying around in our streets, which are filled with people too busy to bend down and pick them up."
No, NASA is not wasting money "taking pictures of rocks in the middle of the desert." It is much bigger than that. For the cost of a "Waterworld" we can shoot a robot to Mars, have it land, survey and study a very distant cousin to our Earth, and perhaps even find signs of life on a planet that is not our own. How can you put a price on that? For the cost of a day in Iraq we can push the limits of human imagination, ingenuity, and knowledge further than anything we as a species have ever done before.
No matter who our next President is, there will be some hard choices. Obviously cuts will be needed across the board to balance our budget, and NASA is likely dead center in the cross-hairs (as it was under Bill Clinton's Presidency, where NASA's budgets were cut some 20%). I can only hope that successes such as Phoenix inspire the next President to look a little harder at NASA.
You want hope? Events such as those provided by NASA this past Sunday give us all tangible, perceivable hope that humanity is in fact pretty damn cool. THINK BIG. THINK LONG