This is a true story about how the Soviets and NASA both went at space exploration:

When NASA first started sending men to space, they soon realised that ball point pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat this problem, NASA spent over a decade and 12 million dollars to develop a pen that could write upside down, in zero gravity, underwater, on any surface including glass, and temperatures ranging from freezing to 300 degrees.

The Russians just used a pencil....

Sigh.... so true.

What really gets me is the voting systems. All those fucking "hanging chad" and voting card screwups. I saw on the news that they were making a "easy" voting computer that is a flat touchscreen. They have spent many dollars on the development of these voting machines.

Us Canadians use a pencil and a piece of paper with a check box. AND OUR ELECTIONS TAKE ONE DAY!!!

When I was in the Marines, I sat down and figured out how much my tax money bought. Disregard that I was being paid by other's tax money.

When I figured it I was paying something like $110 a month for income tax. That came out to

1 headset for a radio or
3 bolts,3 washers and a nut or
half a sleeping bag or
a 1 foot long 3 strand wire that went to the radio I worked on.

I'm sure that $12 million couldn't have gone to anything more important. I always figure they need to worry about stuff on the planet before they blow money just to go flying around in space.

Do you have a problem with spending money on pushing the scientific envelope. Alot of technology that was developed for the space program spun off into modern life.

Your just mad because the cosmonauts raped NASA then went on and rape you....

You want to know what the REALLY funny thing is? I bought one of those pens for $1.99 at some hobby shop.

So which today is the bigger joke, NASA or the Russian space organization? Didn't they have some serious problems with their space station? My god, they're launching they're rockets with slingshots.

quote:

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Originally posted by Slyck:
Do you have a problem with spending money on pushing the scientific envelope. Alot of technology that was developed for the space program spun off into modern life.

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$12M for a pen? Come on!

[This message has been edited by Vi (edited 09-29-2002).]

The space program has easily spent several hundred billion dollars. That's what I have a problem with. Look at all the problems we have down here on earth that need to be taken care of.

The amount they spend on one little field trip is enough to build a few hundred or maybe thousand houses for poor people. It could provide the complete college education for a thousand or so people. But instead they go up in space and do a bunch of experiments that only benefit NASA. I know they have done research that has benefited me in some way, but the money they've spent could have been put to a much better use.

i think they should cut off the money for launching shit until we have the technology to do something useful in space. with our current technology, and all foreseeable developments, space travel is essentially worthless, with the exception of waste disposal and a place for committers of violent and/or sexual crimes. these two go together.

what i'm saying is that we're never going to terraform mars or find an earth-like planet before we kill ourselves off. it's not gonna take as long as you think to do this. we've surveyed a good bit of the universe, and if we haven't found a planet suitable to sustain life yet, it must be outside our range. even traveling at light speed, it would take longer than the human lifespan.

soon, we're gonna have to face it. we're done. we've done ourselves in, and unless we turn the fuck around real quick, it'll be too late. but that's not your problem, is it?