If you wanna go to deep space, as NASA does, you gotta have a lot of plutonium, which NASA dern't

[jerwin]

the Human spaceflight directorate and the Science directorate have been at odds, yes.

[cservant]

That leaves Americium-241 as it’s next best choice according to my quick googles.

[Gorgonaut]

Perhaps they’re trying to protect us from the terrors of the Abyss?

[kupfernigk]

It may be the next best choice but you need 4 times as much of it. So it’s a waste product of the nuclear weapons program, that still doesn’t mean it is nearly as good as Pu-238.

[LDoBe]

Forgive me, but it was a pluto joke. Sorry for flaying it out and leaving it to ooze on the autoclave tray.

[shaddack]

@LDoBe

Forgive me, but it was a pluto joke.

[facepalm]
I knew the whooshing sound it made when it flew over my head meant something!

[Immutable_Mike]

I wanted to award extra points for correct use of “fell swoop” and then discovered Dr Google thinks my pet-hated misunderstanding is passé:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hopkinsii/15929235275/

[gfish]

1. Are you really suggesting no one in Ferguson is interested in the space program?

2. Do other people get to see your official ranked list of priorities for the human race? Do they get to vote on them, or at least provide feedback in some way?

[anon47741163]

Mostly I agree with you, it’s a false dichotomy. Until a space enthusiast starts talking about mining the astroids (to bring the minerals down to earth) or terraform Mars. At which point a willful ignorance of human history does nothing to advance their cause.

When you contrast going to space with going to war, that’s when the comparison starts to make sense to me. If the funds for Iraq and Afghanistan had instead been spent on space efforts, we’d be no less safe than we are now from terrorism, and we’d be closer to the stars.

[GilbertWham]

Psccchhh. Yeah, but then you’d just have space terrorists. Do you want us to all die of space terrorism? Well, do you? Those wars are keeping us safe, you fool!

[shaddack]

Actually, I would suggest spreading a rumour that there are terrorist training camps on Mars.

Then some of the military budget could be milked for interplanetary travel, and after bombing out some rusty sand and giving up there would be a surplus of spaceships, kickstarting the colonization. Kind of like it was after WW2, when the surplus of airplanes helped the air transportation business.