NASA vs Military

Started by winkio, September 30, 2015, 06:34:00 pm

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winkio

Both NASA and the US Military:


  • Are government funded

  • Employ a lot of people, some are even shared (many astronauts came from the air force)

  • Fund and develop a lot of technology that eventually is applied to consumer products

  • Have a primary purpose that only indirectly benefits the average citizen (exploring space, fighting in other countries)



So here is my question: why is the funding argument for NASA so backwards?  Conservatives who support the military should also be supporting NASA for the same reasons.  Liberals should be against funding NASA, instead favoring social welfare, health care, infrastructure, and other programs that have a more direct impact on the population.  I mean, if you had no exposure to current events or the news, then this would be the reasonable conclusion.

In my opinion, it pretty much just comes down to the religious, anti-science influence on the conservative stance.  If true, it raises some interesting questions about how easily you can manipulate support for an institution  purely by aligning it with or against the scientific community.  For example, if scientists start coming out and supporting the military, do we see a reversal of support there as well?  What if the military publicly advocates stem cell research?  What if you have an international set of trade regulations that allows aggressive prosecution against researchers and inventors, do the anti-regulation conservatives support it?

Blizzard

October 01, 2015, 02:17:50 am #1 Last Edit: October 01, 2015, 02:24:38 am by Blizzard
You are missing the key difference. The military is working on "aggressive" technologies on how to kill people better (though this is biased, they do also invent a lot of stuff to save soldiers' lives) while NASA is purely in "peaceful" technologies. This is why. I don't want to fund weapons research, but I do want to fund exploration of space. While they have similarities, that doesn't make them the same. It's like saying that both milk and cheese are the same just because they initially both came from a cow.

All the technologies that do make it into the consumer market are just a fraction of each one's invented stuff.

I don't think the people support or don't support each of these agencies for conservative or liberal reasons. I think it has more to do with "what they are trying to do".
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also when you compare funding levels the tow of them arn't even on the same playing field. you need a hell of a lot more justification to fund the US military compared to NASA which get such an absurdly small portion of the US budget that you could potential say the US isn't funding NASA. It's also something I find of note that a lot of the fringe conservatives in the US (the ones who get on TV and talk) have long been claiming that academia has a liberal bias. The very idea of science and world of academics having a bias is absurd. If you believe something like that then you need to reevaluate all your stances on everything because your ignoring facts on the grounds that their bias. Facts cant be bias by definition.
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