“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
It’s been a little over a week since space geeks enjoyed one of the most exciting and promising events since probably the WISE Explorer three years before it…
And it’s taken just as long for naysayers, skeptics, and all around cynical people to ask the proverbial question:
“Why are we paying 2.5 billion dollars for a robotic thing to send us back dirt stuff and take photos of a place that looks like Arizona…”
It’s a fair question, albeit a terribly unoriginal one that lacks creativity and ignores how far we’ve just (literally) expanded the potential of the human race.
- The United States spends $2.5 billion every year on Medicaid…for illegal immigrants. That’s $2.5 billion dollars of tax paying money being spent on people who don’t pay taxes.
- The Federal Government spends $2.41 Billion on Public Housing Capital which “address the needs of affordable rental housing, including modernization capital grants, administrative receiverships.”
- The FBI Counter-Terrorism Unit has an annual budget of $2.7 billion (as part of their 8 billion dollar overall budget).
- The Bureau of Indian Affairs costs U.S. taxpayers $2.6 billion which “includes funding for the federal governments contractual obligations to tribes in line with the recent US Supreme Court ruling on Salazar v. Ramah Navajo Chapter.
$3.1 Billion for Foreign Aid to Israel (2010), a country not nearly as faraway as Mars but as far as we know has considerably more going on. That included $15 million for “Refugee Resettlement” which may or may not be similar to the Mars curiosity “kicking dirt.”…Egypt gets $1.5 billion in aid.
- The Bell Boeing V22 Osprey Project has an annual cost of $3 billion ($35 billion project over next 10 years), which is even more expensive when you consider the project has had controversial whispers of editing its maintenance records to make the project looks less like a failure.
- On a lesser note, The Department of Agriculture has spent $2.7 billion on crop insurance subsidies in Nebraska for the past 15 years to protect farmers against losses that occur during the farming year.
- While only half the cost of the rover, at $1.25 billion Dallas Cowboys stadium doesn’t cost as much as Curiosity but did move a lot of dirt and removed roughy $300 million from taxpayers pockets to do so.
The point isn’t to measure two objects worth and feel forced to choose one, it’s just for whatever reason our culture still holds the space program to a different level of accountability when it comes to being transparent with its spending, which would seemingly indicate we view many of the expenditures, including Curiosity, as somewhat worthless.
It’s understandable that a mission, which by it’s very definition is not guaranteeing any results and is merely “curious”,should be scrutinized — but it should only be grounded in our desire to keep bureaucracies honest and not a lack of desire in exploring new civilizations that our ancestors five, fifty, or five hundred years from now will recognize us for.
You’ve seen some of the numbers — I for one think it’s time to keep everyone honest, not just the space program.
Paul Nyhart – who has written 891 posts on The Jace Hall Show.
Paul Nyhart is the Head Editor and Writer of JaceHallShow.com covering everything from game reviews and previews to the cultural impact of video games.

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