alt Hacker NewsBecause many small steps are required before every giant leap.
I would like to point out that the current misadventure in the ME has cost at least $38,035,856,006 in 32 days. And that won't receive half of the "this is a waste of money" critiques this mission will. And there are a ton of people who are against that excursion.
Most people who will come across this will react with either extreme negativity or indifference. Very few people will react positively. This thread itself is evidence of that. This is a nerdy community filled with people who are deeply positive about space exploration and excluding my comments, the straw poll was,
~81 positive (48%), ~43 negative (25%), ~45 neutral (27%).
When I see numbers like that ($38 billion) thrown around I always wonder: Where did that money go? In the best case, it stayed in the economy in the form of salaries and such. In the worst case, it goes directly into an offshore pile of mega-wealth where it won't benefit the economy and likely won't even be taxed. Is there any way to determine where on this continuum this program stands? I'm guessing the 1960s space program, while incredibly expensive, was firmly on the "money stays in the economy" side.