Space Exploration Costs the Same as Exploring the World

The Solar System is much vaster than the Earth, but the speeds of our spacecraft are, of course, much greater than the speeds of the sailing ships of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The spacecraft trip from the Earth to the Moon is faster than was the galleon trip from Spain to the Canary Islands. The voyage from Earth to Mars will take as long as did the sailing time from England to North America; the journey from Earth to the moons of Jupiter will require about the same time as did the voyage from France to Siam in the eighteenth century. Moreover, the fraction of the gross national product of the United States or the Soviet Union that is being expended even in the more costly manned space programs is just comparable to the fraction of the gross national product spent by England and France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on their exploratory ventures by sailing ships. In economic terms and in human terms, we have performed such voyages before!

Notes:

Europe spent as much money proportionally to discover America as it would cost us to venture to Mars.

Folksonomies: economics space exploration

Taxonomies:
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/business and industrial/aerospace and defense/space technology (0.429308)
/sports/sailing (0.401405)

Keywords:
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Entities:
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Carl Sagan's cosmic connection

Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Sagan , Carl (2000-10-23), Carl Sagan's cosmic connection, Cambridge Univ Pr, Retrieved on 2012-01-01

Source Material [books.google.com]

Folksonomies: science

Triples

01 JAN 2012

The Government Can Send Us to Mars

Space Exploration Costs the Same as Exploring the World > Additional Support/Evidence > Government Maps the Terrain for Private Enterprise
The Federal Government does the exploration, maps out the territory as it always has, and the cost would be proportionally the same as what it cost Europe to explore the New World.

Folksonomies: socialism space exploration exploration colonization