[maverick-iceman]

People who mention savings are incorrect. They should talk about reduced loss.

This mission is a total financial loss until proved otherwise.

As of today the only people who managed to make money in space are the brokers and lawyers who negotiated private tourism trips to the ISS in the 90s and again this new wave of space tourism.

There's an irrational exhuberance about space in my opinion

[merpnderp]

Me buying a taco is a 100% loss. Tires for my car? 100% loss. Maybe the toothpaste has residual gains if forgone dentistry expenditures. But my Netflix bill is definitely a 100% loss.

Sending another mission to Jupiter though will likely result in serious returns on investments, even if they are non-obvious at this point.

[tastyfreeze]

Humans are drawn to the unknown. This desire is how we have dominated a planet. Regardless of the risk there will always be someone willing to go for the sole purpose of being first. Embrace the irrational exhuberance. It is how we got to where we are now. It is how we advance into the future. Even if we fail to become a spacefaring species we will learn many new things in the endeavour.

[Denvercoder9]

Not everything in life is nor should be about financial gain.

[crecker]

LMAO. You're using internet technology to post this message and you consider a space mission as "waste". A space mission pones a lot of problems, from communication to logistic management. A few of the problems they had in the past with the first space missions were resolved, and technologies were ported to Earth and everyday life.

[maverick-iceman]

What is there for us on Jupiter? Nothing.

The progress which matters always happens in some guy's brain. Imaginary journeys, not real ones.

Einstein didn't need to travel around massive objects to come up with relativity.

The cost of that theory was basically the rent, food and water for him.

[Rebelgecko]

What do you consider a loss? It's not like they're setting money on fire.

[maverick-iceman]

Usable knowledge to improve quality of life.

And no, hope and hype about Europa being able to sustain life is not quality of life. It's a sugar high you get when you read the news or see the anchor losing it on tv.

[Xplune13]

and why should everything be about quality of life? It is an important point, but not the only one.

Edit: Also, I think the problem is not of we having 'less' quality of life (although it can still be improved), it is more of how can we distribute that better quality of life to everyone.

[maverick-iceman]

> and why should everything be about quality of life? It is an important point, but not the only one.

Because quality of life gets everybody on board. This sort of expeditions are paid for with the money of people who don't agree with the spending.

These people are generally talked some sense into when they disagree with military spending, or infrastructure spending or entitlements spending. The theme is always "even if you don't benefit from it yourself, people around you do and so over time will you!"

A leftist version of trickle down, I call it trickle up or trickle laterally. I can see the point in having a discussion.

The talk doesn't even happen with space, it seems like if you are for containing space spending you hate America or something

[Dylan16807]

We have evidence of scientific and engineering advancements spreading from space programs out to the world. We also have evidence of trickle down economics not working. What more do you want?

(The biggest difference to explain that, I would say, is that a scientific/engineering advancement can deliver value magnitudes greater than development cost, but trickle down at best transfers some of the money. And that's what most of the budget is going into on a project like this, not basic equipment assembly or the proportionally tiny fuel cost.)

[maverick-iceman]

> The biggest difference to explain that, I would say, is that a scientific/engineering advancement can deliver value magnitudes greater than development cost

Nothing fungible will come out of this Jupiter mission and you know it.

If this was education budget or brain research I'd totally be onboard with it.