Also, prioritize development of technologies that private firms can then pick up -- the NACA model.

This is still how the aeronautics portion of NASA operates. Though since it is the direct successor to NACA, I think its unsurprising.

I mean, to some extent, the non-aeronatics part also has some of this. SpaceX picked up propulsive landing and friction stir welding expertise from NASA, to name just two things. (This is not to imply there is anything underhanded about this.)

I think the way to make this work would be to ease transition of technical experts to/from private industry, carrying the know how in their heads.

Many Americans think cloud storage involves actual clouds.

The prevailing view in the 60's among the public was that moon landings were a waste of money.

These decisions should be taken by scientists and experts.

I think it's important to have these advancements. Not to mention, asteroid hunting will be a lot more effective from the moon anyway, since it has high visibility due to a lack of atmosphere and a low gravity which makes escaping the orbit a lot easier.

> These decisions should be taken by scientists and experts.

Who decides which expert to listen to? Because we have experts on both sides of this issue.

> Not to mention, asteroid hunting will be a lot more effective from the moon anyway, since it has high visibility due to a lack of atmosphere and a low gravity which makes escaping the orbit a lot easier.

This is just futurism-level techno babble used to justify imposing YOUR desires onto the population by making your goal a mandatory step before we get to do what the majority of the population actually wants. The reality is that building anti-asteroid orbital defence is cheaper, faster, more versatile, and plain easier than building a base on the moon.

> This is just futurism-level techno babble

Is it? It seems pretty understandable to me. No atmosphere means easier to spot rocks

Less gravity means easier to launch rock deflection mission with more mass.

> Who decides which expert to listen to

Right now? Our democratically elected officials do, by way of appointing a head of NASA, and also each time NASA wants to approve budget items

> Who decides which expert to listen to? Because we have experts on both sides of this issue.

The representatives you elect. If you're not happy, you can try to hold them accountable or elect someone else. I acknowledge this isn't perfect, but it's what the system is right now.

> The reality is that building anti-asteroid orbital defence is cheaper, faster, more versatile, and plain easier than building a base on the moon.

Since I provided reasoning for my opinion, would you care to do these same, as opposed to stating it as fact?

* * *

> These decisions should be taken by scientists and experts.

How about letting the people who pay for it decide?

We live in representative democracies, not direct democracies. Those representatives, in turn, hire experts and scientists.

My entire point is most people know nothing about science, why should they be making these decisions? Many people believe Covid-19 is a hoax and that the earth is flat and that vaccines cause autism, should we really be taking their opinions on matters they don't know about seriously?

we live in representative democracies, supposedly because it is(was?) unfeasable to have everyone vote on every little thing. The idea then is, that people elect those who have the policies THEY want, as a whole. This is what representative democracy is sold as, but in reality its about who can promise most braindead shit, cherrypick the exact experts that can be paid to agree with them, and then probably do something different than what they got elected on.

Representative democracy where it actually did as promised, would be that the elected people would do what the ones who elected them wants.

>My entire point is most people know nothing about science, why should they be making these decisions? Many people believe Covid-19 is a hoax and that the earth is flat and that vaccines cause autism, should we really be taking their opinions on matters they don't know about seriously?

So... should we let them vote? and also, I dont give anything for this argument. The so called experts lie and get shit wrong all the time aswell.. How about when the experts and talking heads said "sars-cov2 is only gonna be a thing in places without healthcare, its scaremongering to say anything else, you have more to worry about from the common cold!!!". or "masks dont work!!". Or along the same topic, 100 years ago in new zealand during an outbreak, the so called experts decided that everyone should open their mouths and inhale some zinc sulfate as it was believed by the experts to stop virusses. Whoops!

Oh, and lest we forget, it was the leading experts at the time that believed the earth was flat, and would enforce it on the populace with an iron fist. Lets think, what has recently been enforced on people with an iron fist by experts?

I'm not saying experts are perfect. I'm not saying they don't get stuff wrong. It's simply that someone educated in a matter is less likely to be wrong in their area of expertise than a random person off the street who knows nothing about that field.

> Representative democracy where it actually did as promised, would be that the elected people would do what the ones who elected them wants.

Different people want different things. Some people want to go to the moon. Some people don't. Who should get their way? Surely that decision should be made by someone who knows that they're talking about as opposed to randoms like us?

Please also address this from my previous comment:

> My entire point is most people know nothing about science, why should they be making these decisions? Many people believe Covid-19 is a hoax and that the earth is flat and that vaccines cause autism, should we really be taking their opinions on matters they don't know about seriously?

> Different people want different things. Some people want to go to the moon. Some people don't. Who should get their way? Surely that decision should be made by someone who knows that they're talking about as opposed to randoms like us?

Why is one right and another wrong? this smells to me a bit like elitism. Are things only valid if they further some science goal? If the overwhelming majority of the population(example) thinks mining an asteroid should be done rather than going to the moon, or study some kind of gas cloud, or take pictures of some object, why is that wrong? even if what the "experts" say would lead to generating more invention/understanding of the universe?

> Please also address this from my previous comment:

When people were told the earth is flat, they knew NOTHING about it, it was the leading experts at the time. Why shouldnt they be making the DECISIONS? the scientists can tell the people what they want to do, and why, and what they expect it will give back as a result, and then the PEOPLE, the ones who actually pay the bills and fund the adventures of these academics, can get to decide what to do?

And to be sure, I fully support that any scientist goes and does pretty much whatever he/she wants, with their own money or whomever they can get to fund it, but dont they care to claim to have some divine right to DECIDE what public money MUST be spent on

And most people think the asteroid belt looks like Star Wars instead of 4 big rocks and a bunch of dust with a whole lot of nothing in between.

> Not to mention, asteroid hunting will be a lot more effective from the moon anyway

But, why? There are science reasons to study them, but not much more. We're not short of any of the compounds they contain. Mining them would take enormous amounts of energy and time because they are way the hell out there. They're too small to provide stability for a manufacturing base.

We need to inhabit the Moon and Mars long before we inhabit the asteroid belt.

Many Americans are unqualified to have an educated opinion.

Indeed, most Americans believe an invisible sky daddy impregnated a woman with a god. I shudder to think what "science" most Americans would vote for.

Religious flamewar is not allowed on HN, so please don't post like this. We're trying for something different here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

NASA relies entirely on public funding. What the public wants for space (if anything) is a reasonable question to consider.

Why? People don't know what they want. If they know, they don't know why. Almost never.

Of course people don't know what they want, but saying people don't know enough is irrelevant. What is relevant is the capacity you may have at convincing them they should follow your lead. That's it.

Consider..the dismiss.

Please don't do this here.

NASA should spend more time developing warp drive. That's a technology that will actually revolutionize humanity.

There's no leads to follow that could reasonably get us there. What's the point spending time on it?

NASA does engineering, not scifi.

I'm doing a little trolling :)

The logical continuation of Apollo would've been to build a base near the lunar south pole (what Artemis is trying to do now). The presence of water and other resources there makes it a good staging ground for future deep space missions, including asteroid mining. Not to mention there are now political/strategic factors such as China's recent accomplishments in lunar exploration reinvigorating the 'need' for us to get back there.

Maybe many Americans should have influence over the roadmap of a space agency?

We should establish a base on 16 Psyche before we do anything else. This resource alone could propel us into the future as a species like no other project..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche

Imagine if we move China's production capabilities to 16 Psyche .. we'd all be getting our iPhones and Tesla's from the sky!