this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Seems like a dumb pr move from them tbh. Everyone is more likely to give them money if everyone thinks that they're studying aliens.
That doesn't mean they should lie and say they are studying aliens, but they should have just let people run away with their imaginations.
They are studying aliens, it's just that when they think they might be looking at aliens it's "organic molecules detected in clouds on Venus" and not "weird thing in the sky one time, iunno".
Strong disagree. NASA is fundamentally a scientific organization, it's absolutely their duty to bring a dose of scientific rationality to conversations about UFOs. And besides, NASA absolutely is studying aliens. They're constantly doing observations of exoplanets for signs of life, as well as all the numerous missions across our solar system looking for non earth based life.
If people for some reason think that using some of the most advanced observation equipment ever developed to look for actual aliens is less exciting then tinfoiling over grainy video footage and talking about little green men, then that's their own problem, not NASA's. And giving into that kind of populism would just lead to public pressure on them to waste time and money chasing down conspiracies instead of doing actual science
Where did I say they should use their equipment for tinfoil stuff? I just said they should shut up and let dumb people give them money
Except those "dumb people" vote, and the people they vote for are the ones that determine which projects get funding and which don't. I'd rather NASA continue to get funding for real science than getting all their funding funneled into investigating "tinfoil stuff". NASA isn't an autonomous organization, they ultimately can only do work on what congress gives them money to do
That's fair. I retract my statement