Re: Watery solar system
" Find something to help solve our problems on earth.. like food distribution!!"
Food distribution is technologically and logistically solved. It is inexpensive to ship millions of tons of staples around the world, or deliver fresh fish affordably to the interior of continents. There's nothing for NASA and astronomers to contribute to food distribution, not even their research budgets.
The problems with food distribution waiting to be solved include, but are not limited to, the following non-technological issues:
1) Hungry nations refusing food aid (typically for inane reasons)
2) Rich nations refusing to provide direct food aid under the belief (right or wrong) that it will turn hungry nations into dependents
3) Hungry nations continuing to use low-productivity farming techniques because they can't afford mechanized farming, or can't support mechanized farming
4) Rich nations trying to avoid destroying local agricultural industry, the way the US destroyed Afghanistan's wheat farms with cheap food aid and drove the farmers to opium.
And so on.
Taking money from a scientist studying Ganymede to research a solved technological problem is a wasteful reinvention of the wheel, especially when the remaining issues are not technological.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
