Thousands of people die of starvation and this looser decides to make a lame music video in space and spend our money that could have been used to spare some people pain and suffering.
We should stop sending people to space.
One of my students mentioned something about space. I said, "hey, speaking of space, check this out." It was toward the end of class, and I was already well ahead of where I had intended to get in the material. It was well received by students who recognized the song.
I'm a huge critic of manned space flight. If you look at the most important research that they're doing (linked to above), one major experiment is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer & the search for figuring out what the heck is dark matter. There's no specific reason for that experiment to be aboard the ISS, except to give them something to do. Except for research on the human body, there's very little, if any, research that requires an ISS to perform. It was mentioned that SpaceX makes it easier to retrieve science experiments. Well then, send an unmanned version of SpaceX up, perform experiments robotically, then bring it back. Again, no need for the middle man. Though, I'll admit that there are some areas of research that might be promising - bone density & possible solutions which might be applicable to persons aging on Earth.
Regardless though - this coming from a critic of manned space flight - your opinion is idiotic. That video was awesome, and if it inspires even one kid to pay more attention in science, it was worth it.
I think that manned space flight is significant if only because it is likely we will need to expand well beyond our planet if we have any intention of long term survival beyond 1000-2000 years.
Agreed on the video being awesome, and it amazes me how many negative comments there are about an astronaut doing this in his spare time. I imagine they really need that time given how hard they work and how secluded they are. Music is a powerful cultural tool and given how positive most of the response has been it seems that he has done well with his cover.
Life of the party right here!
Please go kill yourself
One of the specific reasons AMS was designed to be on-board the ISS was the power requirements. It runs 2-3KW. Add in another KW or two to be a free flyer and you'd need to add something like the billion dollar Juno probe with 10+KW arrays to carry the already over budget AMS-2.
The ISS already had the power, attitude control, and comm systems to support such a payload.
So, all you naysayers and trolls, keep at it. This was brilliant on so many levels that you'll never admit because it's not "cool" to admit something's cool when you're a troll. We get it.