[ordu]

Science give us knowledge rooted in hard evidence, science give us models that can be reused as is or used to refine other models. The article mentions how hard it is to monitor atmosphere at 60-80km because it is too high for weather balloons and too low for satellites, now they are doing something about it.

Money spent on science is not a waste of money, even if science come with a negative answer. If you want to find ways to slash wasteful spending, I'd urge you to look at wars: these are really eat a lot of money and give nothing back.

[sscaryterry]

Nice strawman. I did not say spending money on science is a waste of money. Spending a bunch of money which is quantifiably not an issue.

It is the same daft shit as trying to colonise Mars. Fuck off. If you cannot tame earth, its deserts, its extremes, why, why?!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem

[ordu]

> I did not say spending money on science is a waste of money.

This research is science, you've said it is waste of money,... well, I see now, that it is not the same as "science is waste of money", you argue that this particular research project is a waste of money?

But my objections still stand: the research allow us to get new data, and it is pretty interesting data. There is a lot of talk of going hypersonic for various reasons, and there are issues that no one knows how exactly things break up when burning at hypersonic speeds. So there is a gap in our knowledge and this "plasma tunnel" can help to fill it. Why do you think it is a waste of money?

> It is the same daft shit as trying to colonise Mars.

I don't see any similarities. To colonize Mars is a practical endeavor, and if we wanted to justify it we would refer to some practical benefits we could reap from colonizing. The research of how things burn in atmosphere is a theoretical research, the goal is to gain new knowledge. To argue that it is a waste of money, we need to show that there is no new knowledge to look for.