mxfox408 said:
This is an amazing discovery, so what does this discovery actually mean? Jack shit, because until interstellar space travel is acquired, all these billions of dollars is wasted on just looking out to space. They should invest that money in FTL research or human advancements, so forgive my negativity but I'd rather our tax dollars be put to use more effectively in advancements instead of speculations. We are way to far from this research actually meaning something, let's spend this cash on better space advances in order to get to that point.
See there's two kinds of research, the basic and the applicative research.
Basic research is focused on discovering new things, it incurs a lot of sunk costs and its worth is only evident after a while. Yet without it, we'd still be hitting stones together to produce sparks and arguing about bananas. It's hit and miss, you never know what you'll get, but once you get something, you know you can actually base some concrete advancements on it.
What you want is applicative research, the kind of research that gives results
NOW because of
MY MONEY!!!? but truth is, no applicative research can be done unless science advances the basic research to the point where it can at least comprehend the fundamental components on which to
build the practical applications.
You say you want FTL. You say you want interstellar travel Yet you also say you want scientists to stop wasting
your money? on research that would show us if FTL is even possible in the first place and the research that would let us see how we can even hope to practically embrace interstellar travel.
I'm sorry, but we're not getting a jetpack that won't turn our butt and legs into crunchy crispy cannibal food in our life, nor are we getting a charter to Sirius B. These things take a lot of time, resources and first and foremost, a lot of failure after which science picks itself back up and tries again.