How does space science help?

[Forbin]

!!

 

[Timewalker]

More basic: Without the weather sats looking back down, the death toll from hurricanes and bad weather would be a hundred or thousand times worse than it is now.

Without com sats your internet and long-distance phone calls would be 10-50 times more expensive, if at all possible (go back and watch the really old movies where someone would call an operator to make a call across the country, then hang up and wait for them to call them back with a connection LATER IN THE DAY.)

But see, you say that and they counter: "Well, satellites are okay. But deep space missions are worthless. What did the billion dollar Cassini ever to for me?"

So my question is, aside from spinoffs and "basic research", what has Cassini, or Viking, or Pioneers 0-13 done for the common man?

Basic chemistry. We're going to run out of some basic materials here on Earth sooner or later, the way we keep wasting our resources. There's hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and lots and LOTS of metals in them thar hills of the various moons of Jupiter and Saturn, not to mention the seas of Europa and Titan and the volcanoes of Io. We wouldn't have known a fraction of all this if we hadn't sent the probes out.

Somebody mentioned art. You know what one of the most artistic things I've ever seen is? It's ironic, considering how math-challenged I am: the Drake Equation. Some day I'm going to do that equation in needlepoint and frame it, simply because the entire concept behind it is such a beautiful idea.

This world of ours has gotten way too accustomed to instant-this and instant-that -- we don't know how to wait for anything anymore (an attitude we've developed as a byproduct of the space program, btw). We've lost the ability to be patient and give to our descendants, simply for the good of the human race.

I picked up a button at a science fiction convention about 20 years ago; it says "In 4.2 billion years the Sun will go out. It's never too early to start packing."

Let's start packing. We won't live to see that day, but our descendants will thank us for it.