>
>> >>> >>>> >>>>>formatting link>>>>>
>>>>> This makes no sense to me. Who cares if China or India waste a
>>>>> trillion dollars "establishing norms" on the moon? How many kids are
>>>>> going hungry to bring back more boring moon dirt?
>>>>>
>>>>> And "space" is pretty big. Nobody is going to dominate space. >>>>
>>>> It's 21st century circus for the fools...both of those places are in dire need of freeing up the geniuses distracted by that waste to work on more pressing down to Earth problems, like feeding themselves.
>>> One argument is that spending resources on NASA equivalents bootstraps
>>> technology in a poor country. I think they have that backwards. >>
>> They're missing the historical context of the western model which is industrial sector expertise bootstraps the big scientific programs, not the other way around.
Not true. Science discovers things and industry eventually exploits them. It is sometimes the case that to solve a scientific problem new kit is developed by manufacturers but most of the time academic researchers budgets are so low that they make do with what they can get cheaply plus a lot of time and graduate students working for peanuts.
> Yes, science usually follows invention.
Nonsense. Science invents and discovers new things that have no apparent usefulness at the time of their discovery. It is usually a few decades before industry even gets remotely interested in such breakthroughs.
Concrete example Rutherford worked on radioactivity because he was advised by his supervisor that there was no real future in Hertzian waves as they would never amount to anything very much. In both instances it was about 4 decades before they really took off big time. He is much less well known for his work on radio waves.
Same with the invention of the laser which initially required an insane configuration of very expensive perfect ruby crystal with a custom made flash gun wrapped around it. What earthly use would that ever be? Now we are surrounded by kit that relies on laser light to function.