If Iraq war $$ had gone to space?

If the money spent on Iraq had been used instead on space travel / Nasa
what could those bucks have given us buck rodgers?

moon, mars, interplanetary travel? or rebuild the shuttle for another
20 years?

seriously where could we be today?

Someone here posted its 7 Billion per month, war has lasted over 3
years so round it up to 4 years some 336 billion......

lots of buck rodgers there

In article om,
wrote:
If the money spent on Iraq had been used instead on space travel ...

Uh, it wouldn't have been. It's a pleasant fantasy, unrelated to
reality.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

In article . com,
" wrote:

Someone here posted its 7 Billion per month, war has lasted over 3
years so round it up to 4 years some 336 billion......

That's about right (current cost to date is abet $337.5 billion; see
http://zfacts.com/p/447.html). But it's still true that if it hadn't
gone to the war, it wouldn't have gone to space either. Some if it, we
might hope, would have gone to balancing the national budget again,
which would have had long-term benefits for the economy and most
national programs, hopefully including NASA... but the benefit would be
very indirect.

Best,
- Joe

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article om,
wrote:
If the money spent on Iraq had been used instead on space travel ...

Uh, it wouldn't have been. It's a pleasant fantasy, unrelated to
reality.


But at the end of the Clinton run, we had peace and prosperity.
With budget surpluses that were growing quickly. Some of
that could have gone to Nasa, but only if Nasa had a
compelling reason to ask for more.

Which, of course, wasn't the case then...or now.

Maybe a good reason should be developed....ya think?


s




--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

wrote:
If the money spent on Iraq had been used instead on space travel / Nasa
what could those bucks have given us buck rodgers?

moon, mars, interplanetary travel? or rebuild the shuttle for another
20 years?

seriously where could we be today?

We certainly would have had a Martian soil-sample-return mission and
probably a rover mission on the Moon.

Eric

I like that notion...if reasons for development are compelling enough,
someone will listen. Maybe private estates on the moon or Mars might
get someone's attention

Seriously though, the idea of government vs. private spending--I'd say
a compelling reason would have to fall along the lines of defense or
commercial endeavors, similar to why the shuttle program was put into
production, but safer, which is why it failed after the Challenger
explosion.

On Nov 9, 6:44 am, "jonathan" wrote:
"Henry Spencer" wrote in ...

In article om,
wrote:
If the money spent on Iraq had been used instead on space travel ...

Uh, it wouldn't have been. It's a pleasant fantasy, unrelated to
reality.But at the end of the Clinton run, we had peace and prosperity.
With budget surpluses that were growing quickly. Some of
that could have gone to Nasa, but only if Nasa had a
compelling reason to ask for more.

Which, of course, wasn't the case then...or now.

Maybe a good reason should be developed....ya think?

s

--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead.

On 8 Nov 2006 15:48:17 -0800, " wrote:

If the money spent on Iraq had been used instead on space travel / Nasa
what could those bucks have given us buck rodgers?

moon, mars, interplanetary travel? or rebuild the shuttle for another
20 years?

seriously where could we be today?

Well, let's see. We're talking about on the order of a hundred billion
dollars, the largest denomination of US currency is the $100 bill, which
weighs approximately one gram. So, a thousand tons of cash. That's a
bit much, forty or so full Shuttle payloads, but if we had ramped up
production of Atlas and Delta as well, we could probably have put the
full sum into space by now. The actual rockets would probably only have
cost four or five billion dollars.

So, we'd be watching LockMart and BoeDonnel turn in some extra profits,
and the production surge would have resulted in some excess capacity
such that you could probably get new Atlases and Deltas at somewhat
reduced prices.

A more general effect, that much cash being removed from circulation
would make a non-trivial dent in the world's M1, so there'd be a net
deflationary effect and a relative increase in the strength of the
United States Dollar on world currency markets.


Oh, you were asking about actually *spending* all that money on some sort
of worthwhile space program? Sorry, but that's just as ridiculous as the
bit where all the cash is launched into space on rockets. There is no
process by which money saved from Budget Area X, can be redirected to your
pet Budget Area Y. It gets spread around across the whole budget in the
usual distribution, meaning NASA's share would be about a gigabuck or so.

Wouldn't make the slightest difference.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *

Henry Spencer wrote:

In article om,
wrote:

If the money spent on Iraq had been used instead on space travel ...


Uh, it wouldn't have been. It's a pleasant fantasy, unrelated to
reality.


Very much like the ones that begin; "We should take the money we
spend on space, and..."

It works both ways.

Programs and agencies that disappear, typically mean somewhat
smaller Federal spending, not re-direction to something else.

--

Frank

You know what to remove to reply...

Check out my web page: http://www.geocities.com/stardolphin1/link2.htm

"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the
human spirit."
- Stephen Hawking

although some found it funny my question was serious, ould that much
cash funded moon mars to a landing on both locations?