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burzum's past comments

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  burzumMay. 27, 2008 - 06:20PM JST

  $420 million threw in to the space. Money that they can use to clean the earth pollution. Money that they can use for education. Money that they can use for helping countries that need help.

  Ugg. Comments like these annoy me because they are always used against any type of exploration or basic science. Not all research needs to be analyzed by bean counters to determine if it will have immediate practical benefit.

  This is the type of logic that would have said that Newton was wasting his time and that the voyages of Columbus were too expensive. It is also the type of logic that would have said that sending balloons up to measure the chemical composition of the upper atmosphere (such as the ozone layer) was too expensive.

  Considering that we live in the age of science, you would think that people would have a more open mind. All of our great technologies today are based on research by people who expected no practical benefit from their work, from Galileo to Faraday to J. J. Thomson. They did it purely for curiosity. And there is nothing wrong with that.

  It is a myth that you can know the benefits of a course of research before it is completed. If you already knew the results, why would you need to perform the research?

  Posted in: NASA spacecraft lands on Mars

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