The Importance of Funding for Basic Science

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In your book, you talked about how funding for particle physics has declined in favor of what you called quantum information. How should we think about the importance of funding for basic science, and what guides the decisions over how it gets ted? I don't know if i have an answer, but i want to think about, what are the ethical guide lines that we should measure against when we say, is this a good idea? Is to ask the question of, what motivates us?

Paris Marx is joined by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein to discuss the science behind the new space telescope, the problems with the billionaire space race, and why we need to challenge the capitalist and colonial forces driving the the effort to commercialize space.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is the author of The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred. She’s also an assistant professor of Physics and core faculty member in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of New Hampshire, and a columnist at New Scientist and Physics World. Follow Chanda on Twitter at @IBJIYONGI.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Chanda wrote “Becoming Martian” for the Baffler earlier this year, and called last year for the James Webb Space Telescope to be renamed.
Paris wrote about the billionaire space race for Tribune Magazine.
Of the five initial images released from the JW Space Telescope, Chanda described the First Deep Field and noted the accessibility of its alt-text on Twitter.
As part of Joe Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia in July 2022, the country signed onto the Artemis Accords. The Accords have faced criticism as a US-centric and commercial set of bilateral agreements that seek to set new norms beyond international law.
Saturday Night Live made fun of the billionaire space race.
In July, the head of Roscosmos indicated it planned to pull out of the International Space Station, though an official notice has not been made. The segment Paris mentioned on AlJazeera can be found here.
Starlink is undemocratically altering how we see the night sky, which some Indigenous groups are calling “astro-colonialism.”
Gil Scott-Heron released “Whitey on the Moon” in 1970.
Chanda called attention to the Just Space Alliance.