@WillPayton said:
@minigunman123 said:
@WillPayton said:
@minigunman123 said:
@Owie said:
A very excellent response, and I actually only want to reply about the investment thing some more. What have we really gotten out of space flight in terms of scientific or commercial achievement?
Actually, quite a lot, especially if you look at both the manned and unmanned space programs.
Government funding for pure research, universities, and other R&D is largely responsible for much of the progress and technical proficiency we enjoy today in this country.
What did landing on the moon accomplish?
Landing on the Moon is only a part of the space program. The benefits of the space program since it started are really incalculable at this point, from communications satellites, GPS satellites, materials discoveries, and practical inventions. Perhaps the biggest benefit has been the enthusiasm the space program created for science and engineering in the US. Many, many people were motivated to study math, science, and engineering because of the space program, and those are the same people that went on to invent the internet, cell phones, and many other things that you enjoy today. I guarantee you if we'd never had the space program in the US, the entire world would be very different now.
It's also important to understand that as part of going to space, NASA has to invent and discover stuff on a daily basis. There's way too much tech that was invented by NASA to list, and all of it becomes assets for the US government and public institutions to use as basis for new discoveries. Also a lot of it is used as basis for people to start new tech companies.
Other stuff we owe to the space program:
http://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/benefits.html
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/ten-nasa-inventions.htm
Exactly. Even if you just focus in on satellites, there's a huge influence on the world today, from basic lifestyles to business. GPS, weather, spying, the list goes on forever.
@cameron83 said:
@Owie: can I ask you a question....But what does creationist mean?
I'm not familiar with that word....and evangelical
You can check WillPayton's response about this on the last page, but basically Creationists think the world was immediately created by god without the intervention of science--no Big Bang, etc. They also don't believe in evolution, because they think all life was created at once. They take all of the events in the the Bible literally. Here's an in-depth definition. Creationists in the US are determined to get rid of teaching evolution (and the Big Bang) in the schools, and have it be replaced by Creationist theories in the schools instead.
Evangelicals are a little different. Many Evangelicals are Creationists, but not all. Evangelicals are a brand of Protestant Christians who fervently believe that they must evangelize about Christ to others and convert them to Christianity. They often believe the Rapture is near--the Rapture is the moment when Christ returns to Earth and brings the true Christians to heaven. They are often reborn Christians--people who converted later in life. Like Creationists, they tend to read the Bible literally. They tend to be very purist about Christianity and take strong measures to make their branch of Christianity the law of the land. They have been very influential in making Evangelical values into law, even when those values are not shared by people outside of their faith. They have a number of colleges that teach Evangelical values and try to de-emphasize many aspects of science and history. They are very influential on social issues like abortion, obscenity, pornography, prayer in schools, etc.
@soduh2 said:
You have a lot of "pro-science" people (evolution, stem cell research etc.) working at starbucks or McDonalds, the problem isn't the right wing or religion obstructing innovation. It's the education system that needs to be improved before public policy or ideology.
I agree that improving the education system is one of the main things that needs to be improved. But a lot of the problems that people run into when trying to improve the education system have to do with religious and political obstructionism to science and history. Take the Texas school book situation for example. For complicated reasons, Texas basically gets to decide what textbooks a lot of students across the US read in school. And the people who make these decisions in Texas are infamous for making those decisions for political and religious reasons. Here are two articles that go into it in greater depth: TimesNPR
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