The current funding of 7.81b euros is 35% that of NASA’s.

  • philpo@feddit.org
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    5 days ago

    No.

    Just as the famed US DoD budget contains enormous amounts of social welfare (Veteran healthcare, GI bill, dependant care,etc.) that is covered in EU nations by the standard social welfare systems the NASA budget is extremly focused on hidden economical subsidies,especially for some obscure senators. This is already a major ESA problem and just as defence spending shouldn’t be increased just for the sake of it to reach a quota it is even less worth doing so in terms of space egos. We need to reducue this kind of behaviour massively all over EU spending.

    Do we need to put someone on the moon just for the sake of it?Hell no. Should we do so when we have a good reason for it? Yeah. Absolutely.

    So basically should we invest in reaching feature parity? Yeah. But not for the sake of spending.

    • timestatic@feddit.org
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      4 days ago

      Isn’t further technical advancement and human civilization making itself on the way to become spacefaring a good enough reason?

      • philpo@feddit.org
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        4 days ago

        Absolutely. That’s why I said: If we have a scientific reason for it? Go for it.

        But not just for the sake of it.

        • timestatic@feddit.org
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          4 days ago

          I mean it’d be sad/annoying if we did the same thing like in the Apollo missions but I think an expanded scope makes sense. Even if it might look like it to outsiders I think for nearly none of these scientific mission like ever is the purpose the act of executing the mission itself. In most cases its what we learn and build from it to advance technology. I would say Artemis in that regard probably qualifies

          • philpo@feddit.org
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            4 days ago

            The thing is: For the same money that has been spent on putting a crewed mission around the moon we could easily have done multiple non-crewed missions to/around it OR done multiple missions that focus on long distance crewed missions.

            We will see. Atm everyone I know who is remotely knowledgable in that field has a somewhat stern opinion on the mission.

            • timestatic@feddit.org
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              3 days ago

              Just think about it like this. This isn’t money taken away from actual science. Its just that this administration values prestige projects more than proper science. I believe looking at other budgets that there would be enough money to satisfy a lot more fields. The return in human missions isn’t as immediate or apparent but I think there is still benefit behind it.