Dark Matter - Is it worth it?

[Cath]

I also like Burt Rutan's point of view "I have a hunch the most important reason we’re going to space is not known now."

That's my kind of thinking .. I would agree 100% with that.

[JB80]

Funding for the sciences and special projects like these while the numbers may have a lot of zeros on the end and seem like a lot of money in the real world of government funding it's just a pittance.

Whatever the project I say throw more money at it, double it, quadruple it and it will still be a tiny fraction of the budget.

We need to invest more in science and education and not just a little bit but a lot.

I have no doubt that the world would be a better place for it.

The Dark Matter issue here is really interesting though, thanks for giving me some reading.

[Treeden]

They might yet be rare. The Soviet motivation to help could well have been less noble. The strong possibility of a global publicity coup and a very good look at state of the art US hardware might have rendered the Soviets 'helpful'.

Very true, and I'm sure that would have applied equally to the Americans had the situation been reversed.  However, they must be given credit for stopping all radio transmissions in the frequency bands used by the Apollo Project in order to avoid any possible interference.  That (if true) is certainly worthy of praise.

[Zakalwe]

They might yet be rare. The Soviet motivation to help could well have been less noble. The strong possibility of a global publicity coup and a very good look at state of the art US hardware might have rendered the Soviets 'helpful'.

Yes, it's possible. But its also supposition, unless there is evidence to back it up.

[Svenito]

I just found this video  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8ZOgKIsqEA which gives a brief overview of why people believe it to exist.

The rest of the videos are very interesting too, both the astronomy and thought experiments... worth trawling through