So I see from the Wikipedia site cited above that the (zinc) cent is now 2.5 gm …

Seems to me there was an article or letter in Sky & Telescope magazine back a decade or two about a similar project in a class on astronomy. The motivation was to give the kids some feel for ‘astronomical’ numbers. The teacher arbitrarily (and quite reasonably) defined ‘astronomical’ numbers as beginning at a million. So they collected ONE MILLION PENNIES!! I think in those days most of the pennies were copper, and I seem to recall a figure like 3.11 gm in the pre-clad era, so they had about 3 metric tons of pennies when they were done!!!

I don’t recall what they did with the $10,000. Or whether the experience also taught them something about floor-loading specs.

I’m not sure there’s much wrong astronomy in the novel either – I trust the discussion of orbits pre-Einstein is reasonable – except for Mars’s canals and the theory of planetary formation; the solar system formed by cooling and coalescing outer edge first and inside last, so Mars is older, smarter, and meaner than we are. On the other hand, they also consider it a good idea to travel in what appears to be a huge gun firing inert metal shells. This would leave a thin layer of Martian jam at the rear of the shell at take-off, and then the jam would splat into the nose of the shell when they landed. And the jam would probably be mouldy by then anyway, the time they take… wait, they don’t have – . But this isn’t astronomy and it was good enough for Jules Verne. Of course Wells’s narrator isn’t a scientist, so he may be misinterpreting the evidence. Maybe the shells are plated in Cavorite.

Someone said that if the new movie aliens regularly invade planets, then they should have expected the problems that they face here. Maybe they usually invade planets more developed than ours, that – like their own – have eliminated those problems.

Copper in money… in Britain our pocket change now uses steel coloured brown because I guess copper is too expensive.

Oh, wait. I just read that comment again. It was billions spent on medical research plus healthcare. OK, I get it now. Although I was under the impression that space exploration was extraordinarily expensive and also consumes billions of dollars. I think both are worthwhile, for different reasons.

Wikipedia, folks. Know it. Love it. Use it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velcro

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_%28U.S._coin%29

Whereas, taking a small portion of the budget and spending it on space provides other benefits now, things that are achievable.

If we waited until we solved all the health care problems (for instance) before spending anything on space (or other perceived unnecessary pure science research), we’d never get around to space. We could spend the next 2 centuries and still not get around to space. Oh look at that pretty asteroid *smack*.