re: NASA Says We’ll Find Alien Life Within 30 Years, Implements Plans to Make It Hap

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This is one of the most ignorant, absurd statements I've ever read

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My point was missed because of the "cancer" inclusion. I was trying to say (and undoubtedly rather poorly)that there are hundreds of real world, this planet, human life affecting, issues that need attention now. The time money and intellect that is wasted on NASA searching for a way to stay relevant is troubling.
My apologies for having offended the NASA, astro-physics, we are not alone crew out there. I'm just of the ilk we should take care of our own and our issues before searching for other worlds and life forms.

When I started at NASA, 2002, we were still in the Clinton project called the Earth Science Application. There were 12 national applications that we're going to use existing satellites, and more specialized follow ons, to investigate. Agricultural competitiveness, forrest fire alert, coastal restoration...real deal earth science. These satellites fly by once or twice a day broadcasting this data back, all you have to do is figure out how to ingest and analyze it. Huge amounts of data, and creating tools to utilize it is nontrivial. Perfect use for the Internet as well, have people all over writing to code to eat the elephant one piece at a time.

Then Columbia crashed and Bush ash-canned it to divert all the funds to flying out the shuttle fleet. Our ground-truth sensor team was splintered and I got transferred to Michoud to build external tanks. That sucked. Oh well. Launching rockets to the space station now, or at least trying to. Better, but not anywhere close to when I started. That program was awesome.

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I'm just of the ilk we should take care of our own and our issues before searching for other worlds and life forms.

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You know? You're actually right. That's exactly what Marco Polo, Chris Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Ferdinand Magellan et.al. should have done. They should have stayed home and worked on a cure for syphilis or plague or some other shite instead of discovering the World and places in the World that held plants that held cures for countless diseases....

The longer it takes to find life in the universe the more I am right.

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You know..... World that held plants that held cures for countless diseases....

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No I get the whole future horizons unknown worlds etc. Simply think there are more immediate issues that would benefit from more attention.

However myopic and in your opinion misguided it may be it is simply an opinion shared by one bored guy on a seemingly never ending conference call. My apologies to all the celestial sojourners. I have just never had the extra-planetary wanderlust of some and believe more earth bound pursuits to be more practical.

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My apologies to all the celestial sojourners. I have just never had the extra-planetary wanderlust of some and believe more earth bound pursuits to be more practical.

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Yet by your words you still continue to be an idiot. Do you have any idea how many technologies we have on Earth that exist because of NASA research? NASA's accomplishments have translated into real world practical applications here on Earth countless times.

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Not really though, isn't Elon Musk handling that for ya'll instead?

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SpaceX and Orbital both have contracts to supply the space station. Elon uses NASA developed engines, pintle type used on the Apollo lunar module, while Orbital was using the old Russian space shuttle, yea they built one just like ours, AJ26 engines. Orbital's Antares rocket exploded last October, LINK so they are rebuilding the launch pad at Wallops. They're using different engines for the next launch so there are some changes that go along with the rebuilding.

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Simply think there are more immediate issues that would benefit from more attention.

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You're right. First, we'll find a solution for:

- Disease
- Famine
- War
- Religious persecution
- Sex trafficking
- Mental disorder
- Drug/alcohol addiction
- Destitution
- Totalitarian regimes
- Drug trading
- Natural disaster
- Slavery

THEN we can explore the universe.

Your post gave me cancer

How much money is "wasted" on NASA, vs money "wasted" on Iraq and Corporate bail outs?

NASA at least is responsible for many tech advancements and that trend should continue.