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Actual Costs for the Space Station
Cujo writes "This article in space.com discusses what the actual costs of the space station have been since it was first proposed by President Reagan in 1984. Depending on how you account for the cost of shuttle launches, the number is well over $40 billion in the U.S. alone. It begs the question of what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management."
Could have decreased it considerably. Or built a huge shrubbery...Nee.
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
develop new type of nuclear warhead ... ... ...
wage war on iraq
extend your efforts in war on terrorism
etc etc. I'd rather pour money into this *dead end* project then sponsor arms race.
2c
p
But $40 million is nothing. The possibilities of space exploration, research, null gravity mechanics and engineering are limited only by our imaginations.
If someone told you a government project in the works for almost 20 years had cost us $40 million would your initial reaction be that this was a large amount of money or a great deal?
Considering the staggering number of scientific discoveries that await us outside of Earth's atmosphere, you could tell me this was a $40 million a year project and I wouldn't blink.
I think the bulk of the people bitching about this price tag lack vision and spend too much of their lives living today without giving any thought to living tomorrow.
Craenor
sending people to space is cool and all, but why not use the resources to find a cure for cancer or aids or do something for the homeless?
yeah, i know thats not the way government works
cheers
I hope NASA will stop wasting money in earth orbit getting no research done with expensive meatbots. They should save the big bucks and human beings for the real deals, the Moon, Mars and beyond!
NASA claims that the ISS is paving the way for long-term space flight but Mir had already done that. Paying to help the Russians to keep Mir going would have been much cheaper but was not politically acceptable which is a real shame.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
is that the actual amount spent on it or is that including inflation? I am not sure what the rate of inflation has been since 1984 but I am guessing that it would be moderatly higher. Also you have to take into account that the technology back then was far more expensive than it is today so that can also drasticly add to the costs of the project.
"The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -Harlan Ellison
I have mixed emotions about the ISS. On one hand, it is a boondoggle of epic proportions; huge amounts of money shot into space for results that could mostly be obtained from unmanned satellites.
On the other, keeping people in space is important if we want to expand our horizons for manned missions to other planets. And, of course, space travel is neat. Is "neat" worth $40 Billion?
1. Tell Congress to give us the money and stay the fuck away until it's time for us to ask for more money.
2. Put two Soyuz capsules up there so two people can do science while another three do maintenance. A sixth person can be any random rich person paying oodles of cash for the opportunity to scrub toilets IN SPAAAAAAAACE.
3. Let the Russians handle station operations. If that's disagreeable then hire as many Russians away from Russia as needed. They know how to handle space stations, we don't.
[o]_O
organizations that capitalize on the intellectual assets and fervor of their members, rather than throwing money at problems and overengineering them.
If NASA has the attitude that having a space station that was 99% safe, instead of 99.99% safe, and relied on the skill of the residents astronauts to fix any problems, we'd have the dual torus in 2001, instead of a little tin can. Good luck getting that in today's wiffle world.
Any history buff can tell you just how far a few, determined, idealistic men can go in changing history. Someday I may tell you how 13 men took on an Empire, and altared history (for the better), forever, 2000 years ago.
A. Rightmann
Let's face it... The money would have gone to the military. If you are thinking education, poverty, medicare, you are dreaming.
Of course, for this $40B US there was probably some re-investment back into hi-tech, science, research grants, and areospace.
I don't think its been wasted, its just hard to gauge the return on investment.
Tournament Management Online &
Dear Sir,
Could you please express the amount of money in a currency we slashdotters could understand? We prefer either metric assloads or libraries of congress.
Thank you,
slashdot
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
But $40 BILLION, which is the number in question, could have paid for vastly more real science than has ever been done on the ISS.
Cure Cancer Cure AIDS Feed the worlds hungry and with the extra change- Dust off one of those old Saturn V Apollo rockets and go to the moon to see if that stuff is actually up there...
Why dont' people count how many space stations one could build at a cost of, for example, the most recent tax cut ? 10 ? 20 ? .. hell, I'd send back my $300 refund to have a few bigger space stations and an outpost on Mars. Would you ?
Bah. If congress hadn't told them to redesign it twenty times over because they thought the original cost was too high, they could have built a real station that means something for half that. Blame Congress and their stonewalling of the program during the 80's and 90's for the cost overruns, not NASA.
I think the space station is a useless waste of money. But we have probably wasted many times that on weapons systems we don't need, that don't work, and that even the military doesn't want.
Billion so it was more like $2 billion a year. Does that make you blink? Personally, $1 billion a year is enough to make me care about how we're spending it.
Every single scientist I know, hates the ISS. It robs money from much more valuable science.
So why do we have it? Because NASA is very sly about making sure they have contractors in all of the important congressional districts.
As a side note, I would estimate that most scientists and engineers would agree that a much quicker and surer road to the permanent presence of humans in space would be to scrap *all* of NASA's current manned space flight programs and invest that money in research on the next generation launch technologies, instead of throwing it down the toilet with horse and pony shows like the ISS.
donate 37 dollar cents to at every person in the world for 18 years... is that a lot or not? dunno
Is a small price to pay for progress. Besides, most of it was spent right here in the U.S.A.; it's jobs and technology for Americans.
A much better use of money than social programs where countless billions are funneled out of the country, eventually ending up in Colombia or Afghanistan.
They had an astronaut on the morning show I listen to today talking some of the benefits of the Space Station. One was the ability to grow human tissue in 3D - in gravity, the tissue gets flattened when grown in a petri dish - which is helping them in researching tissue-type diseases like cancer (I'm sure this was much simplified for not-quite-awake listeners :) ).
I think that if a cure for cancer comes out of the ISS, then the price was worth it.
On the flip side, we would probably have to start living in outer space due to overcrowding caused by everyone living alot longer. :D
Support bacteria! It's the only culture most people seem to get.
Allthough $40 billion is quit a lot you should consider the project has been of value too.
- Scientist have been able to do research otherwise impossible.
- The program has provided jobs to a lot of people on the floor
It is often forgotten science and research are valuable investments. And also on the bright side. This money isn't spent on warfare, defense etc. At least they tried to spend with good intentions
/(bb|[^b]{2})/
I realize that the space station *could* provide a great resourse for doing scietific experiments for the entire world. But, with the current budget situation and the chances of it being mothballed, I seriously think we could have spent that money in a much better way. I can't imagne that a manned mission to Mars would have cost much more than 40 BILLION, if it would even have been that much. Then at least we would have had something to show for the money. Honestly, I would be better pleased to have seen us allocated a large part of that 40 billion to building some more probes to get information on planets and moons of our solar system. Heck, even exploring the moon more in depth, and looking into lunar mining wouldn't have cost this much. Of course, since we now have George Jr. to contend with we all might as well just continue reading our SciFi books for the next few years.
I dunno, build more bombs? Realistically, that's what would happen. Come on, you know I'm right!
Superior management? HAH! The only reason we can do big projects at all is because we disperse the money as widely as possible so congressman from ____ doesn't call it "mismanagement" and raise all sorts of hell because his state is getting a piece of the pie.
Bored with karma, be a fan/freak
By your logic, we'd determine the one major problem for people/society, and then that would be the sole focus of all of our resources. Most people disagree with that approach, and prefer to spread the funding around to different areas. You never know where the next great discovery may come from.
Think of how many farscape episodes this could have produced!
For that amount of money, you might be able to get George W. Bush elected president of the United States of America. Haw!
The tone of this article is that the money was spent badly. I have no doubt that it could be managed better, but it's not like the project is a write-off. I'd respond to the "What could you do with $40 billion" except I don't want to take validity away from the ISS.
I feel very strongly that we, as a species, need to have a presence in space. Right now, we are one asteroid impact away from extinction. The ISS is a very important step to ensuring that man-kind can survive a disaster like that. We need to get to Mars. We need to leave the solar system. We need to colonize other planets.
The real question is: Is $40 billion too much to spend to start us down the path of being truely, and I mean truely independent?
If we can afford to give a trillion dollar+ tax cut to the middle to upper class citizens of this country, then we can afford 40 billion spent on the research and science of tomorrow.
40 billion is a lot to me and you, but to the US government, its pocket change.
- Rick
www.bluealien.org
Prophets of the Blue Alien
I sure hope China gets their Taikonauts up in space soon! If they put a space station up and start heading for the Moon, it should light a fire under NASA's @$$.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
I think we should have invested the 40 billion into giving up more of our personal liberties. Nowadays we have abandoned so many, why not dump the rest?
Whatever the cost, they would be building a ship destined to Alpha Centauri. :-)
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Gets you modded up. Okay.
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
- hostile
- takeover
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- microsoft
That'd end a lot of lawsuits, wouldn't it?$8.95/mo web hosting
I like what Rep. Tim Roemer calls the ISS, the "International Sucking Sound".
-?-
Big deal. Things cost money. It's estimated that building new WTC towers will be about $12 billion. And that's on Earth! We are talking about a Space Station ("That's no moon...That's a space station!" ), not some shed out in someone's backyard. It's not like you can just rent a truck from Home Depot to deliver the supplies you need. Not to mention that astronauts have a little bit more training, and are higher paid than carpenters.
But on the other hand, we probably don't have to worry about terrorists flying airplanes into it.
I don't have a sig...Do you??
Well, considering that the US Department of the Treasury's reported that in Fiscal Year of 2002 (ending on September 30 2002) the total receipts was $1,853 billion.
Thats $1,853,000,000,000, so far we've spent $40,000,000,000 on the space station, leaving $1,800,000,000,000 left to give to those with entitlements.
You know, every time I read this argument, I think the same thing:
Why *only* work on the big-name problems? Are we so limited in our abilities that we can only work on one problem at a time? There are tons of people working on a cure for cancer, aids, etc. Do we really need to fling *everyone* at it? (And has no one read "The Mythical Man Month"?)
To answer my own questions: No. We *are* working on the big problems. We are *also* working on the cool stuff. The idea that we should only work on one thing at a time always seems...short-sighted.
The real question that should be asked is 'is the space station justified at all', not merely whether it could be done slightly cheaper. The project would still be overpriced at $5 billion.
Consider that the SSC would have provided far more science for $10 billion. Or for that matter consider how much science we could get by sending up a duplicate of Hubble - many of the parts exist already as test pieces for the orbitting Hubble, the test mirror made by Kodak was actually done right.
Or consider what a boost to the economy we could get by giving the same money to rich corporate campaign contributors. $40 billion is more than the retrospective tax handouts that Bush wanted to give Enron.
Or even (gasp) think what could be done if the same amount had gone into other research areas such as biotech or the Internet. There is a reason the Web was born at CERN, they had the resources to do that type of work.
The economist had a good article recently where they speculat that NASA asked Nixon for funding for a mars mission and got rejected, so they split the mission into three parts, first a reusable space shuttle, then a space station, finally a mars mission.
Since then the obvious conclusion to draw from the success of the unmanned missions is that they are cheaper and result in more science.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
The entire U.S. space program in the 1960's and 1970's cost roughly the same amount of money that U.S. consumers spent on cosmetics in the same period of time. The real cost of the space programs, even counting wasted money (it is still a lot of experimentation) is pretty low, depending on what you compare it to.
And what they're doing, at least to me, is pretty important.
I do reseaech on tissue engineering. There is very little benefit to growing tissues in zero gravity. To keep it from getting flattened out all you need is some sort of 3D matrix for the tissue to grow in.
The astronaut was talking out of his ass.
The cost/benefit ratio for biomedical research in space is horrible. Don't kid yourself.
Whoa.....$40Bil. How about giving 2.5% of that to cure blindness? We could start off with some of the easier forms of blindness like some types of retinitis pigmentosa with gene therapy as has been shown in Briard dogs, move on to diabetic retinopathy, wet and dry macular degeneration, and finally create an artificial retina both bionically and biologically. Perhaps 1 billion over ten years should do it, and think of all the technology that could be generated for NASA, DARPA, etc..etc..etc...
$40 billion..........Damn.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
They could have built a super mega Lego Space elevator. Then Michael might be happy. Naw, he'd probably still find something to bitch about.
Not saying NASA cant cut costs, but they have to /. complaining about NASA's huge budget will be the same people pointing their fingers at NASA the very instant they screw up because they left out a saftey feature to cut costs.
worry about human life here. There is no room for error. The same people on
-Brandon
Quitters never win, Winners never quit, But those who never win and never quit are idiots.
Let's see, put $40B in Slashdot terms... It's enough money that every man, woman, and child in China could watch Lord of the Ring around 4 times!
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
Of course you don't take into account the myriads of scientific and technical discoveries that have come from the space program.
Many of them apply directly to medicine or something for the homeless. We get more out of the space program than nifty pictures of earth from way up high.
Whether we got 40 billion worth is debatable.
--
BTW, you cant write a 40 Billion dollar check to someone and jot down 'for curing AIDS' or 'to end homelessness' in the memo section. It doesnt work like that.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
To "beg the question" means to base your queston on a conclusion that you have already reached (with respect to future or past events). For example, if I ask someone the following question...
"So, do you still beat your wife?"
...I have included in my question the conclusion that the questionee HAS beat his wife in the past. THAT is "begging the question."
What the original poster surely meant was "...this forces me to wonder whether..." or "I am compelled to ask whether..."
Get it? Got it? Good.
...then look at how much is being wasted on the US Defence budget. This sort of money is almost pocket change for the generals up in the Pentagon.
The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
SEE... If only they used win2k.. EVERYBODY knows win2k can save 11-22% of total cost of ownership as compared to (insert your cool technology here)! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING
Why, you ask? Because it costs too much to launch from Earth every time (And a colony WILL require a lot of launches at first). Ideally, what we want is a dry dock in space where we can build any space craft. Simply send materials up and have them built in space. Then launch the completed ship from there.
Furthermore, a orbital habitat would give us a place to become acclimated to the environment of space.
The ultimate plan should be to build a space station, and put people up there in a more permanent manner in order to get some people acclimated. After a simple space station is completed, a dry dock should be built. From that dry dock, a ship should be built. That ship would be sent to the Moon, where a colony and a similar space station/dry dock would be built. Once we have a staging point around the Moon, then we would be able to colonize Mars.
I really don't care about putting people on Mars for a few days and then having them come back. Anything they could do on a two day mission, a probe can probably do the same thing. The only reason I want a person on Mars is to start a colony and a LOT of preparation must be made in order to feasibly do that.
Human beings are not able to manage big projects. (This is true everwhere, in every country, both in private and public sectors, etc...).
So the initial hypothesis ("if better managed") is simply false.
Do we hate NASA today or love them? Or hate NASA and love space? Or hate space and love other things to spend money on? My 2 cents is that money spent on space is always recouped by space-related technologies making their way into everyday use.
$45 per U Colocation Special
A billion here, a billion there...
It soon starts to add up to real money!
--T
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
No. It's a common error. It should be "raises the question".
Here's a decent explanation or just do a Google search and you'll come up with a bunch of sites.
There is already more money spent on the things you mention...throwing more money at them will not result in sudden solutions to the problems.
"sending people to space is cool and all, but why not use the resources to find a cure for cancer or aids or do something for the homeless?"
Because an aerospace degree doesn't automatically make you eligible to cure cancer?
1) Low-cost housing for low-wage Americans to eleviate the national homelessness problem.
2) Government training programs and day-care centers to get people off of welfare and out working.
3) Funding of federal free lunch programs and food stamp supplements to insure that no American child goes to bed hungry.
Scientific endeavor is noble and inspiring. But let's fix the problems here on Earth first.
Let's face it--in an organization so badly mismanaged as NASA, almost any money spent is money down a rathole. After working two years with the NASA HQ global change group (the Earth Observing System, at the time, the 2d biggest office), I concluded that while DoD wastes more money, they cannot waste as great a percentage of their budget as NASA does. Those PhDs spend their days shoveling out money to their good buddies at various universities and NASA centers, barely looking at what comes back. Ergo my subject line: NASA is simply welfare for scientists.
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
HAH HAHAHAHA hahaha heeheh LOL ROTFLMFOA *snort* jeezUS pissmypants lol HAH hehe ahahrhrahr har heh whoo-yeah stop it you're killing me! hahah AHHA hahah AHHA metric assloads! oh man lol milk out my nose haha HAHA hehe arharharaharharha ahahah *chortle* fuck that's funny HAHAH hahaha HAHAHA HA hah dee har har my sides hurt yee-haaa LOL i mean out LOUD coffee on my screen HAHAHA ahhh haha hahheha hehera hee hahah i get it slashdot geeks HAHAH ahahah HAHHA oh man sheesh *sniff* haha hahah hah aw fuck.
The Bush tax cut will cut the U.S. Treasury's revenue this year by about $15 billion, just for the top 1% of the U.S. population. Next year, those same 1% will take home an extra $26 billion (and it keeps going up: the cut is back-loaded from 2001-2010. By 2010 it's worth $121 billion per year to the top 1%.).
:)
So if the richest people in the U.S. hadn't had their taxes cut for 2002 and 2003, we could build another space station.
The ISS crowds out other, much better science, both in space and on the ground. That was my point.
sulli
RTFJ.
...if we force the trend-setters to stop wearing makeup, so "fashionable" people stop buying it, we could afford a second space station.
:-)
Looks like the old Geek vs. Jock perceptual rifts in high school values...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Let's face it. Doing anything in zero-g is very problematic and very expensive. Rather, efforts should be spent on establishing a moon base for research on propulsion systems that you cannot develop on earth (e.g. project orion, etc.). If you are on the moon, at least you don't have to worry about keeping your ship in orbit. You have more room to create hydroponic areas for recycling of oxygen and generation of foodstuffs, or other things you need.
Goddamnit people, can't anyone use the phrase "begging the question" correctly anymore?
Educate yourself regarding idioms.
$40 billion is a lot for one person, chump change for a nation.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
No, it does NOT "beg the question". It may "raise the question", but "begging the question" is something completely different.
e g1.htm)
Begging the question is "a logical fallacy, of taking for granted or assuming the thing that you are setting out to prove. To take an example, you might say that lying is wrong because we ought always to tell the truth. That's a circular argument and makes no sense. Another instance is to argue that democracy must be the best form of government because the majority is always right. The fallacy was described by Aristotle in his book on logic in about 350BC. His Greek name for it was turned into Latin as petitio principii and then into English in 1581 as beg the question."
(http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-b
If you're going to use phrases, at least make sure you're using them correctly.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Nearly three full holes the size of the Big Dig could have had this money dumped into them. Government is not efficient. If it were, it would be doing things that someone else could be making a profit at. Any time it does that and someone tries to compete, it makes competition with the government illegal.
How much of this budget is for our favorite boy-band star?
Let's hope O'Keefe can put in reliable accounting. Fudged numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. If we can get good accounting data, we can see just what is working and not working in all of NASA's endeavors. Solid accounting might also promote honesty in the field. One frequent complaint about NASA made by former workers is the amount of lies they were told. Add to that abuse and exploitation and you have the formula for driving people from the field.
We've seen too much throwing good money after bad. It's not only wrong to waste the taxpayers' money, it also diverts people from projects that might work. Too many failures also cause people who might enter space work to choose different careers -- ones where they might actually accomplish something. I mentioned to one friend that young people aren't going into aerospace any more. She commented that's because many people -- especially the technically oriented -- view aerospace as a dead end.
In retrospect, it would have been wiser to spend the money on work to lower the cost of getting things into orbit. The United States could have funded multiple, diverse research projects rather than this centralized, mismanaged failure. Lower cost to orbit would have paid off across the board -- for satellites, probes to distant planets, human work in space and much more.
Instead we got a project that put three people into a station that requires at least 2.5 people to just maintain it. And which might be mothballed any day because of problems with Russian participation.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
When something or someone "begs a question," it means they are AVOIDING the question. It does not mean that they are inviting the question. Get off the video games and READ, people.
but why not use the resources to find a cure for cancer or aids or do something for the homeless?
1) We already spend an enormous amount of money on cancer. More money does not necessarily mean a faster solution.
2) The homeless are homeless because they choose to be homeless. You can't make people stop spending their welfare checks on drugs and alcohol. The only way to cure homelessness is to forcibly lock them in mental institutions. Which we actually used to do, until the oh-so-compassionate ACLU made the government throw the mentally ill out on the street in the name of "freedom".
Maybe it's just me, but I'd find it incredibly ironic if with another 40 billion in funding we'd be able to cure Alzheimers....
Take that, Reagan!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Would you rather cure aids, or cure aids in space ?
yeah, that's what I thought...
If you stacked all that money up, your pile would only be about half as big as Bill Gates'.
bore the world with 400 waterworld movie remakes
I know a lot (most) have heard this but it brings back the saying "Faster, Better, Cheaper, chose two." Back to mind...
Where do you think that $40 billion went? Did it just disappear? Nope. It went back into our economy. It's just $40 billion we spent on ourselves. Granted, I'd rather have a tax break and spend it myself, but it's not like we destroyed $40 billion.
But for a forum where people discuss the development of sweeping new technologies and hail the coming of the next techno miracles...there sure are a lot of technophobes on this forum.
What are you people so afraid of? Why are you so negative on new technology and exploration? Is it earth shattering now? No...but it could be.
No, that would be probably $1B since it's on VCD for very cheap (illegal of course). Another way to think of it: $40B is an iPod for each US household.
sulli
RTFJ.
For those too young to remember- after the
Vietnam war ended, everyone thought that ALL
those billions spent on the war effort would
now be funneled into curing the ills on the
world. Everyone thought we would attack poverty,
disease, crime, etc. The money saved from ending
the war went into other port barrel projects.
I dont think this country flourished financially
at wars end.
For $40,000,000,000 we could have built a B Arc and got rid of the useless third of our population.
In spite of all the talk about how hard using GnnuPG is, I have always managed to train our customers in 30 minutes to 2hrs time to use it for basic encryption/decryption/signing of information. The installation was the most difficult part and thanks to people like Gustavo Valconcelos, it's getting easier by the day
Now, I DID buy PGP 7.1.1 at promo price. I had a support issue last monday and I've been waiting since then.
Meanwhile, everyone can download and freely use both commercially and personally WinPT+GnuPG from several mirrors, of which I offered my personal space, here.
It'll be interesting to see how this develops, particularly in the other languages, of which GnuPG + WinPT already support many.
Cheers,
F.
Notepad specialist & FAT administrator, group training available
$40 is nothing. My phone bill is that high.
Unless you stacked it in Sacajawea Dollars.
Just one flaw in the argument "spend money on fixing problems down here rather than getting into space": sooner or later, probably sooner rather than later, something is going to slam into this pile of wet rock we call Earth. Or it'll let go with one of its periods of massive vulcanism. Or the ice age we are overdue for will hit us.
It's all very well trying to cure cancer, tread aids or help the homeless, but it's all worthless if life as we know it is blasted, boiled, frozen or whatevered out of existence. I'd rather spend money trying to get off this perishing rock..
Note to people still using the English Standard system:
It takes 2.71 Standard assloads to make a metric assload. (those English are tightasses)
You are misusing the term "begging the question". It means to use circular reasoning. You mean, "raises the question".
There are no trolls. There are no trees out here.
Or WorldCom, Tyco etc etc etc
What can be done with $40bn by a large US Corporation.... well pretty impressive fraud by all accounts.
This is not to say that NASA should not be more effective or efficient it is to say that the "free market" is not always the best way to deliver power to homes, so it won't be certain to be the best to deliver a space station.
Private companies run railways in the UK, the goverment do it in France. I'd much prefer the French Goverment running the UK system than the companies currently doing it.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I've been wondering. Mir was build without space shuttles and Russian space shuttle project 'Buran' was cancelled because of lack of funds.
When maintaining an space station most of flights consists of transporting some supplies and one or two crew members. Do we really need a HUGE space shuttle for this? Even thought that shuttle can be used many times, it still needs big dispensable rockets to take off.
Hmm, recent observations:
Education: Finish REBUILDING playgrounds with FOAM this time, instead of woodchips. Apparently wood chips just aren't soft enough. Next year, rebuild with Charmin.
Poverty: Yeah, right. Like the bum down the road needs another 40, and we should pay for housing for families with up to 12 kids.
Medicare: Here's a potential good. But how about using government money for public medical research and licensing the results to companies for production, instead of just paying for the result of the research those companies are doing? ROI. Live it. Learn it. Love it.
Just my .02.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
It begs the question of what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management."
Well, with a corrupt investment manager from MSDW, Charles Schwab or Fidelity Investments, and considering the present state of the economy, I'd estimate that the $40 billion investment today would be worth, uh, about $3.50 (pronounced tree-fiddy). Maybe the space station was the best investment. At least we have the option to turn it into the solar system's most expensive Mariott and make some of that money back.
three words:
deep sea exploration.
If the issue is that NASA generates billions of dollars towards research into novel technologies, and supporting scientists, just about any sort of field will do: the study of breakfast cereal, exploration of the insides of trees, dirt moving, anal spelunking.
After years of NASA launching various types of protoplasm into high orbit, I think that the benefits of the practice are yet to be seen. If anything, humans, and other sorts of animals, being shot into space has been proven to be a monumental waste of time, money, and imagination.
Why not focus on sending people to the bottom of the ocean? If anything, this sort of pointless exploration might actually yield some sort of useful benefits to humans traveling in the sea - an act which takes place millions of times daily. Plus, and I think this is the most fundamental reason that sea exploration is better than space exploration:
deep sea pr0n
Will Taco Bell have their big banner out in the ocean, and will they actually give everyone in the US a free taco if parts of the ISS hit it? :P
:D
A more likely situation was the 02 World Series - they had that banner out in SF Bay. Free tacos for all if anybody hit a homer over the wall and hit it!
Hmm. On that note, I'd like to see $40 billion worth of tacos.
$40B. That is about $130 per person alive in the US today. Over twenty years, that's roughly $6.00 a year per person. Now it sounds like nothing. It's all relative anyway.
What could we do with $6.00 individually? It depends who you are, and what you need. BUT...
Now think about Bush's "Tax Check Gala" last year. I know this only applies to tax payers, but most people I know got a hefty $300-$600 check. I don't know anyone that is any better for it.
My point (though this is mostly babbling) is that chances are, something better could potentially been done with the Space Station funding. If that something took priority over the space station, fine. But, aren't there many costly things with lesser priority? It seems to me like someone worked out these figures, and then wanted to cry "scandal". That's statistics for ya. Like that $6.00 a year mumbo-jumbo I spouted out at the beginning of this post. But, in any case, mentioning it does bring into light discussions such as these, which can be of merit on their own.
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/begs.html I'm _that_ type of ass.
And if Microsoft had provided the software for spacestation TCO would have been much smaller.
We could have built a ballistic missle defense system to stop the missles that everyone and their brother would have because of all the unemployed former Soviet rocket scientists who exported their knowledge all around the world since there was no ISS make work program to keep them employed.
... this post started out being sarcastic, but now that I think about it the BMD option would have had plenty of side benifits to it. Especially if the final architecture of it could deflect near Earth asteroids.
Hmmm... Now that I think about it, we could have employed the former Soviet rocket scientists building the BMD system. Ironically building the BMD system that way would reduce the missle threat even if we just threw the hardware away. Of course the need to put thousands and thousands of small interceptors into space would have required better nanosat technology and a different style of launch system for getting lots of small sats up very cheaply... maybe an SSTO. And the Phase 2 BMD Lasers would be very handy for beamed propulsion systems.
But with the Space Station make work program, you learn how to build big structures in space, that will come in handy if we ever make Solar Power Sats...
It begs the question of what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management.
I'd like to know where this source of "far superior management" is, and how I can get some. Hindsight is 20/20; it isn't fair to assume that all the correct management decisions could have been made. Unless dice and darts were involved, I'm sure people thought they were making good decisions at the time.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Which raises an interesting question: What's the least dense coin on earth ("density" being used loosely to mean "monetary value per unit of thickness")? Anyone? Bueller?
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
It begs the question of what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management.
Just a moment. Your statemnet implies that bad managment has resulted in a bad cost vs gain scenario.
I want to stop you right there, because I do not see why it would be assumed that bad MANAGMENT of the money (obviously by NASA) is to blame here. Maybe the cost vs gain inequality here had to do with a bad set of OBJECTIVES? or maybe, the problem had to do with an EXTERNAL situation?
Had the goal "build a spacestation REALLY cheap" been the goal, things might have been different... but "REALLY cheap" sometimes ends up requiring some other things, like exposure to additional risk (like.. people going boom in the shuttle launch kinda risk). Now, Im not saying "all risk is bad" (in fact, i would argue that MORE physical risk is acceptable in ventures like these (exploration is a human nature)). FURTHER, maybe Plutocratic PORK BARRALING has built in some costs here - like requiring NASA spread its $ joy round many states unnecessarily. Instead of being forced to only use US suppliers (in some cases (for fantasy 'security risk' scenarios). US suppliers wouldnt have been used had COST-ONLY methodology been used... isnt this free market wonderfull? Free when you can internalize gain (kickbacks as 'campaign contributions), not so Free-A-Market when you can make costs public..(big fat NASA budgets)
What im gettin at is this -- ALL major endevours have an element of mismanagment, ALL major endevours are handled by large organizations.. in this case NASA.
This poster has revealed a true misconception (bigotry/paranoia) that is VERY distinctly American: That the GUMMINT is inefficient and wastefull. This is NOT TRUE. The Government (NASA), like any other LARGE body is a very difficult thing to organize -- and keep efficient (hence the cost vs. gain 'problem' mentioned above). Anyone who works in a large-ish organization can attest to absurd waste and absolute chaos*... THOSE NATURAL elements of organizations bread inefficiency either in the Government or Private worlds.
FUTHER, this post reveals the author's ignorance, it replaces a false meme and is flatly misleading. Being based on false assumptions, it is too biased a basis for a valid discussion.
So, on this topic, I would say that 40Billion was well spent, and the ISS cost exactly that - as it should have... now, if you want to say, should we have build an ISS, that I believe, is the real question... not this venting of Anti-Gummint McCarthy-ispired idiocy. This is really an example of a Plutocratic and corrupt government using NASA as a slush-organization to reap some personal rewards...
*I work at a "Fortune 5" (not 500, but 5) companie... and I see tens of thousands literally flushed daily.. so dont try and tell me about private enterprise being inherently efficient.... its utter bollocks.
Anyone remember the superconducting supercollider? It was partially built near Waxahachie, Texas before being abandoned by the government when opponents successfully labeled it as a too-expensive pork barrel project. Never mind that billions had already been spent on it, or that the money "saved" by not completing it amounts to peanuts now.
Who knows what scientific frontiers could have been crossed by now had the project been completed? The point here is that pioneering research is incredibly expensive, but the money isn't going into a black hole - real innovations comes from cutting edge research, and real economic benefit. Remember, that $40 billion space station isn't all in orbit around the earth, much of it is in the worker's and engineer's pockets who built and support it. thing.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
NASA could have invested in flooz.com, pets.com, or just taken $40 billion in $1 bills, shovelled them into an incinerator, and used the heat thrown off by the withering of the bills in the flames to power a small generating station.
Any of which would have provided a better science return than the ISS ever will.
As I've said before, the best thing NASA could do for the long-term future space exploration would be to deorbit the ISS, and preferably into the Shuttle fleet while it's standing on the ground. (Maybe Taco Bell can paint a big logo on the side of the Shuttle assembly building... :)
The destruction of the two most expensive white elephants in human history would force NASA's hand - they'd have to fire the dead wood, allowing the remaining engineers to build a cheap heavy-lift vehicles while developing next-generation propulsion systems (e.g. nuclear rockets and ion engines for deep space probes.)
(Hmm, anyone know the energy content of a dollar bill? Maybe the dollar-bill-fired power station would have been enough to keep a team of 50-100 engineers comfortable for a year or two while working on said next-generation launch systems :-)
I got modded down for saying this last time (and linking to Libertarian "propaganda"), but why does everyone continue to belive that the government can do a better job at space exploration than the private sector? What the hell, I've got karma to burn, so I'll rant.
$40 billion. The space station isn't even done. Humans haven't left Earth's orbit since the '70's. $40 billion. It sickens me.
I suppose the argument goes something like, "Private companies won't fund altruistic space flight, so the gov't has to foot the bill." "Companies are too nearsighted; they wouldn't appreciate the impact of expensive space based R&D."
Well, I could care less about argument #1. If you want a "feel good" space mission, fund it with Space Tourism. I think Lance Bass has some seed money for ya.
As far as agument #2 goes: I read an interesting proposal by Harry Browne (LP candidate for U.S. President in '00): Instead of direcly funding a space agency, the government could hold a "competition". Set aside $X billion, and offer it as a "reward" for the company or companies that meet the stated goal. Hell, this concept should be considered for lots of "expensive" R&D things: Offer a few billion to the first auto company to break our dependancy on oil, for example.
I truly belive that if 50% of that government spending had been set aside as an incentive for the private sector to go to space, we would have seen an appreciable return by now. There has to be people that would love to figure how how to mine asteroids, efficently harness energy from the sun, etc. Instead we can't even launch a Backdoor Boy into space. I mean, aside from the occasional tourist, has there been any appreciable return from that $40 billion yet? Not that I'm, aware of.
So, I'll say it again, and I'll link to it again, and you'll mod me down again: Privatize NASA.
Also to be truthful, I prefer seeing them without cosmetics. Cosmetics get in the way... of the truth.
Besides, forget a second space station, I'd just like to see a hab and a rescue vehicle so we could put more than a sub-minimum crew up there. The space station has been politically engineered into a no-win configuration.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The War on Terror.
The War on Drugs.
Corporate Welfare.
Ashcroft's War on the American People.
$25 billion for the Space Station is chump change compared to the above fiascos.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
Religious freek alert, the partent contains a highly subjective religious comment (go bin-laden).
Please watch bill hicks to un-wash you brain.
First off, it BEGS the question. Secondly, I beg you to shut the fuck up because that is the stupid thing I've ever seen on slashdot, and fuck knows we've seen some stupid shit around here. It is interesting to exactly one person - you. And it isn't really intersting to you, you just want to seem like an 'out of the box' kinda thinker with a different perspective. Really, you seem like a loser.
With that much money, I could buy most of Microsoft's Rights to the Windows source, and GPL it so that the OSS developers would descend on it like a pack of wild wolves..
Either that, or I can buy my my own Bill.
Long, but a lot of info:
http://history.nasa.gov/youngrep.pdf
According to this the US spent almost $300B on defense in just 2001. So, if you're spending $40B from 1984 to 2002, that's nothing. Would you rather be killing people, or exploring space?
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
I'm not trolling here, I'm just offering up somethings that most people take for granted from the space program.
$40 billion dollars is a lot of money, true, but it's not just to send a few guys on a joy ride.
Because of the space program, we have:
Filtration systems that have a better than 90% efficiency,
Better sunglasses have,
Better water purification processes,
Better solar energy technology,
Better stronger alloys and plastics
even a little more of an idea on how to make food taste better.
I think in the long run, the investment more than pays for itself through biproducts.
He's played too much simcity.
If there were more people like him, we wouldn't have moon cities and the solar power satellites that beam the cheap, clean power to Earth, thus freeing us from dependance on those kill-crazy Arabs!
Build a network of tunnels under Boston.
wage war on iraq ...
Not for $40 billion: best guesses by the administration put the tab around 200 billion - and do you think the administration is going to over-estimate the cost?
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Cost accounting is one of the most misused tools...
40 billion over 19 years is something like two billion a year. Chicken feed.
The management at NASA is one of the finest and most frugal in the world. They have performed freaking miracles on a shoestring budget.
We spend hundreds of billions a year on armed forces with no real enemy in sight. The "war on terror" is a police action, requiring police resources. Any misuse of it, such as conquering oil fields, has nothing to do with defense.
How much have we spent on our military in the last 19 years? Trillions. That's thousands of billions.
How much have we spent financing the debt we ran up proving supply side economics works (for wealthy people)? We spend 17 percent of every federal tax dollar we pay, each year, to finance that debt. That's HUNDREDS of billions of dollars a YEAR paid to the holders of our debt.
How much have we spent in 19 years to finance the supply side miracle? Let's assume 200 billion a year.
200,000,000,000 x 19 = 3,800,000,000,000. Three trillion, eight hundred billion freaking dollars over nineteen years, to the biggest money redistribution government program in history. Where the hell is all this mew wealth coming from? 3.8 trillion in reinvested wealth in the hands of millions of rich people.
And now, since it's "war" time, we are back to deficit spending, raising the debt limit to 6.5 trillion to finance tax cuts for the same wealthy people getting the debt welfare from the previous accumulated debt.
THAT is where we are bleeding to dead. We are paying enormous treasure out to the wealthy to finance tax cuts for the same wealthy.
And two billion a year is a problem? JEEEZUS.
The space station, like everything else in the space program, was starved to death not only on yearly funding, but on the funding of something to actually DO with the damned thing. You can't get anything done with a damned basically military-run tin can complex that isn't part of a greater purpose. It's doomed. Mars? Forget it, no money, we're spending it on debt financing and military conquest of oil fields.
In my opinion as the oldest and most avid space nut I know, the space station was a waste of time, along with the superspaceplane. A transport vehicle to a station which does nothing, except keep Lockheed Martin in contracts.
Mars would have been even worse. It's the Apollo syndrome all over again: exploration for "science" alone is worthless. You have to send people, civilians and private contrators, up on cheap reusable vehicles to do real things.
Like what? Setting up the who Gerry O'Neill/Princeton space industrialization project, to enable USE of it all. Metals, powersats, colonies, all self-supporting after a long time of expensive investment. It would give us a huge frontier with no moral qualms about killing people already living there, and ultimately enable powersats that would save our collective asses in the century to come.
But we have no collective imagination to do such things. It's too outre. So NASA limps along with one leg and '70's castoff furniture in rusting buildings to save money while we borrow money for other things, like tax cuts for rich people and the future pacification of the world in our interests by military and other means.
Ad astra, someday. not today.
The defense budget for next year is slated to be $343.2 billion. That's for 1 year. As is quoted so often, that is way more than the total spent by the next 10 or more highest spending countries COMBINED.
I wonder what we could do with half of that money, and far superior management?
Oh...that's right...we could build 3 or 4 more space stations...next year...
About tree-fiddy.
You got tree-fiddy?
A very large portion of this expense was caused by congress dithering over the budget, and NASA doing a very poor job of handling congress.
When the project started, EVERY year, congress would budget it out and say "you get X small amount this year, you will get Y larger amount next year and following years". Then next year they would revise the Y amount down, and direct NASA to redesign so as to reduce the over all cost.
NASA spent BILLIONS on redesigns, and wasted BILLIONS because Y budget wasn't there to take advantage (or even maintain) things they built and/or started using the X budget.
Congress created a plan, then revised it every year through the entire project. NASA believed everything congress told them, and planned on congress sticking to it's promisses.
This did not work out well.
plus-good, double-plus-good
They should have paid the Russians to send 20 civilians to the ISS, that would have made more sense!
Products where exchanged for that cash. What usefull things have come out of the ISS program?
No-one likes a smart ass running the world. oh and there easier to train than hampsters
It begs the question of what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management."
.
A moon sized space station capabable of destroying rebel bases.
Assuming, of course, there isn't some OSHA regulation against telepathically strangling incompetant middle-level management
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
You mom's cunt is like open space, and she has aids too. I try to "cure" her with a load of penis pudding to her face, so far it isn't working.
Reality check... yes, 40 billion is a huge amount, but it's being spent on something CONSTRUCTIVE. How 'bout we shave 40B off our military budget and reinvest it in the space program? Then we WILL have our dual-torus artificial gravity stepping-stone-to-the-stars hotel in space in no time.
I'm in no way anti-military, but there's a reason the budget category is called "defense" and inventing hugely expensive toys to lob at people not in our political favor (who should be just left to rot in their own little happy medieval society for all I care... and strangely, it's because we won't do just that that they claim to attack us... but I digress) just doesn't seem very defensive to me at this time.
But back to the topic... mmmm... space stations...
Create the world's biggest joint
Besides, the money is going to a good place. I'd rather see my tax dollars go to science and engineering regardless of the outcome. It's not like $40B has been launched into space, never to return. It went back into the economy where it belongs.
My biggest fear is that, someday, some group of nuts will succeed in getting a manned mission to Mars... and the manned space programs will die because there are no dreams left but their Mars mission was symbolic, not the capping demonstration of some important new technology.
Before we start thinking about Mars, we need to get trips to LEO about as difficult as a long flight on earth. No months of training, no exhaustive tests, just pay your fare (within an order of magnitude of first-class fare between London and Sydney, say), pass your CIH questions and board a regularly scheduled flight. (Another way of looking at it - a honeymoon in orbit should provoke some jealosy, but not shock.) Getting to one of the lunar bases should be about as difficult as getting to the South Pole station today.
Then we can talk about manned missions to Mars. It will still be difficult, but most of the technology will be mature and it can be reused to support mining expeditions to the asteroid belt. Within a generation there should be manned stations in the asteroid belt and/or near Mars.
In contrast, we're barely able to operate a single space station today, and there's no realistic expectation of an operational lunar base for a generation.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I believe the Washington National Cathedral in Washington DC cost less than 2 billion dollars and took 88 years to complete. I think this project has had more meaning to more people than the ISS has generated so far. The cathedral and the peace and insight derived from it will not be obsolete in 100 years. FYI Im not religious at all but I do think that inspirational projects are money well spent. The ISS is somewhat inspirational but Im still more amazed by Man on the Moon even 30+ years later.
h ington+Natio nal+Cathedral&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en
For additional perspective, the Smithsonian Institution is privately funded on less than a quarter billion dollars a year. That institution generates a huge amount of scientific knowlegde each year.
Harvard University's endowment is about one billion dollars a year (the most of any school in the world). What if ISS money had been spent to build a top notch university? Any student will acknowledge that there is demand for world class schools as they vie for a spot in one.
How much would it cost to build a superconducting power grid to wean our society off of oil and power electric vehicles? Less than the ISS? Less than the gulf war? Less than the next gulf war? Less than all three combined?
Google Image Search for the cathedral:
http://images.google.com/images?q=Was
I don't care about International Space Stations... I just want more monkeys. Or maybe midget astronauts, oooh... how 'bout midgets, monkeys, and tricycles!
www.GamezCore.com For Hardcore PS2 Gamerz : By Hardcore PS2 Gamerz
US could declare "War on Boredom". Just imagine, having Air Force F-16s flying RIGHT INTO YOUR HOMETOWN and BLOWING UP A YUGO WITH BIG-ASS ROCKETS! WOO HOO. This would totally remove the need for US to say anybody is an "Axis of Evil" or an "Evil Empire" just to get military funding. Yes! Now let's get an Air Cavalry division to make an all-out assault on a Hello Kitty sticker book!
I was watching the NASA channel last night and I can tell you that the space station is an awesome sight to see. Also remember space provides an interesting lab enviroment with awesome possibilites, cure for cancer, HIV/AIDS?
Why does a project with huge cost overruns and questionable scientific merit (ISS) get funding while another project with demonstrable research value (SSC) get cut - mid stride?
Simple. ISS contract largesse is spread over all 50 states; something like the Superconducting SuperCollider has to be built in one place - and the pols don't care about the science, they care about the largesse.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Mars.
The Russians aren't as risk adverse as NASA. (Hell, they're less risk adverse than I am!)
..." is to split your man rated (99.99% reliable) boosters from your cargo haulers (99% (95%?) reliable). Exactly NOT what NASA did when they designed the space camel, err... shuttle.
As described in LEO on the Cheap, the Russians do have a more realistic and economical approach to spaceflight. That is, they build their rockets with shipyard-level technology, not ballistic missile-level technology. Big, heavy, tough and dumb vs light, high-performance and expensive.
On point made in "LEO
And for God's sake, have a plan with a definate goal, not "lets get everybody together and put on a show"!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
In the early 90s, the government chose to fund the space station over the SSC (the SuperConducting SuperCollider). It's sad when one realizes how rare it was for one single project to have attracted top researchers from all over the world and then gets killed due to funding. I wonder if a project of such scale will ever be attempted again.
Right now, it's more like "Maybe we should um, do something else in space, maybe." Imagine you're working on a project at work that has lost all upper management support, it wouldn't go anywhere. Until "management" gets behind it again, NASA can't be as great as it was in the 60's and 70's.
"Many of them apply directly to medicine or something for the homeless..."
Exactly! Just imagine where we'll be able to send the homeless once we invent an FTL drive!
You could have about 10 robot planetary probes
plus
A superhugemegatokamak
plus
A superhugemegasuperteeduperdoo supercolider
plus
A big honking telescope
plus
Gazillions of smaller science studies whose value would be orders of magnitude more than any of the above super cash $ucking wastes of money
Remember: If you are spending billions of dollars you're doing it wrong.
Eat at Joe's.
Why, I believe at the current exchange rate you could've bought a few 3G UMTS licences in UK or Germany! And fat lot of good that's doing to the corps who got suckered. And everyone in tech industry.
We could have funded all four X-33 proposals (and had enough cash left over to develop any designs that worked into new launch vehicles), so that when Lockheed-Martin screwed up theirs and asked for more money we might have had some alternative to turn to.
Of course, two of those four companies have since been swallowed by the other two, so this is no longer the most viable option... but wouldn't it have been nice, to have aerospace companies competing against each other to produce working results instead of competing against each other to snag NASA's contract for the next One True Space Shuttle?
what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management
Aaaah. the fabled efficiency of management.
Navigating the future is about as easy as trying to make a paper-hat cross the atlantic by mounting a sail and have a ten-man "blowing-crew" standing on the coast of France.
SLOGEN [ http://ungdomshus.nu : Sebastian cover music]
Tax cuts don't cost. The goverment taking less of your money is not a cost. It is not the goverments money.
Cure Cancer? Not for the likes of you!
Cure AIDS? We created AIDs for a reason. You don't think the underclass was just going to go away on its own, do you?
Feed the hungry? Are you NOT paying attention, son? Those people are starving because we want their type to starve, not due to lack of food!
End poverty? (See comment above about AIDs)
The world will be a lot more orderly once we've cleared out the hoi-poloi and we don't have to listen to their incessant whining about their rights.
You know, the costs wouldn't have kept creeping up time and time again if it wasn't for Congress constantly requesting a re-design, a re-assessment, change of budgetary funding, etc. How anything ever gets built when it's done by public opinion is beyond me.
Look at the original conceptual designs for Space Station Freedom proposed back during the Reagan Administration... MUCH MUCH smaller design, simpler, only had to support US. Congress balked at the (IIRC $15) price tag of building it ourselves. They insisted we partner with Russia, Japan and the ESA.
The current design is HUGE, relies upon Russia for lifeboat and cargo supply, causes us to spend more time and money doing cross language training, we have to fly people all over the globe for meetings, etc.
Sure, they're sharing the costs and the risks.... RIGHT... How much of the crew's time keeps getting spent fixing equipment that keeps breaking down in the Russian segments? Last I checked, half of the research modules are being supplied by our partners and the most important ones (Kibo and the Centerfuge modules) are both WAY WAY WAY behind schedule and over budget.
I think the space station is a WONDERFUL concept, and I'd rather give my tax money for them to do that than piss it down the hole on some crack-head who doesn't want to quit and is wasting resources... Whatever you do though, don't blame NASA for Congress' F-up! If we had gone it alone back when Freedom was first proposed, we would have had a fully functioning US station 5 years ago for 1/3 the cost...
Well, almost. I think that once Boston is finally finish EVERYONE will want their own federally funded underground freeway. Remember, for one a bit more than half the cost of a space station, you too can have one!
Lasers Controlled Games!
mmm-MMM, this astronaut ice cream is delicious!!!
The word from the NASA engineers was this: in order to save the space station from getting axed by Congress, work was spread across many NASA sites nationwide. Why? reps wouldn't likely cut a program that provided jobs in their own backyard. Unfortunately, this created a management nightmare that naturally led to cost overruns.
Sure, the project could have been centralized more and run more efficiently... but then funding whould have likely been cut.
Doncha just love this country?!
Moe: Say, Barn, uh, remember when I said I'd have to send away to
NASA to calculate your bar tab?
Barney: Oh ho, oh yeah, you had a good laugh, Moe.
Moe: The results came back today.
Moe: [reading a printout] You owe me seventy billion dollars.
Barney: Huh?
Moe: No, wait, wait, wait, that's for the Voyager spacecraft.
That's the point of a tax cut - the spending of more of your money is your choice. Donate it to NASA, invest in a promising aerospace company, hide it under the mattress, buy some beer - up to you. Money doesn't have to be taken with the IRS looming over you to benefit programs you approve of.
Gee. not too many articles today. Gotta do something or we'll begin to look like Macslash.
I know..., let's do a totally worthless "What if" troll.
If horses were horses, we'd be up to our necks in horseshi....oh wait.
Nevermind.
The article implied that the space station project is ill-managed because it spent so much money that the total cost remains elusive. Spending billions of dollars is expensive. Therefore it is ill-managed. The article should not be granted the assumption that spending billions of dollars is expensive, but to provide support for that claim. That is what else we may do with 40Billion. What returns we may get from the space station that would somehow justify the cost.
$40 Billion isn't much when you compare it to millitary spending.
There was an article (maybe an editorial) on space.com that gave a reasonable explanation for the current state of NASA.
Back in the 1970's, at the end of the Apollo program, NASA was looking at what the next mission would. They thought it was a trip to Mars. In order to make that happen they needed a space station. This would allow the construction of the vehicle needed to get to Mars. This is because once you are out the gravity well of Earth getting to other places is much easier.
In order to build the station it made sense to create a reusable vehicle to ferry people and material to build the station on the Mars vehicle.
Now, back in the 1970's when Apollo was winding down NASA's budget only allowed them to do only of these things at a time and it had to be justified on its own merits and not in the context of getting to Mars. So the hidden agenda was really to get to Mars even though they asked for a space shuttle and a space station separately.
Consequently, each was designed, planned, and built for missions it really shouldn't have been. The shuttle could have been made to be more efficient, ie. don't need to be able to house a bunch of astronauts for 14 days instead of just getting them and their payload into orbit.
Of course, all of the re-designs, delays, and shuffling that happened in the 1980's didn't help either. Heck, with a fraction of the Star Wars/SDI/BMDO money they could have had the station up and running in the 1990's.
When accidents happen in space, the result are horribleever hear about the accident where pure oxygen ignited and burned several astronauts-in-training? Or Challenger? Even a 1% chance of $40 billion destroyed in a puff of flame, taking a dozen astronauts with it, because NASA didn't "over-engineer" the ISS.
besides, the odds are that it would only burst into flame just after the Backstreet Boy left.
The Roman Empire never ended.
Yet, while these brainwashed subjects continue to hallucinate Richard Nixon and the CIA and moon-rockets and Bubble Gum Rock and so forth, Fat alone sees what is really happening: the Roman Empire survives, and slavery and madness and sadism survive as they always have. We are governed by Caligula and his kith and kin; the people of gnosis (the awakened) are being thrown to the lions every day. We do not see the mass murder going on, but retain dream-distorted images of part of the genocide: the assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon...
Somehow I think all Phil's theorizing about extraterrestrials and parallel universes were attempts to put into words the same urgent insight that Horselover Fat conveys by insisting, over and over, "The Empire never ended."
Similarly, in Radio Free Albemuth the United States appears to have been taken over by an anti-Communist dictatorship, and all sorts of Communists or alleged Communists are being locked up in concentration camps. This sounds like a ghastly parody of the Joe McCarthy era, but then comes the typical Phil Dick switch. The dictatorship is actually run by the Communists and the persons exterminated are not Communists after all but Christians. Grok? The Empire never ended.
If I may offer my own exegesis: Phil's visions are telling us that people who claim to be Christians (and especially the ones who claim to be anti-Communist) are not true Christians at all; the true Christians, or gnostics, have been driven underground and hide below the surface of our civilization, which is a Black Iron Prison to those who have awakened enough to see a bit of what is really going on. The last 2000 years have been a nightmare, and in a sense never happened. The Redeemer is alive, either in Sri Lanka, or in the whole ecosphere (Phil gave both versions in the same letter). This summary contains the parts of Phil Dick's revelation that seemed most important to him. I think Phil's vision is most important to all of us, whether we accept it literally or interpret it as an allegory.
An orginization that has a yearly budget of 14,400,000,000 USD is not a "shoestring budget"
Lets see 160 Dollars per man/woman/child in america (Aprox pop of U.S.A. is 1/4 billion) over 18 years is under 10 dollars a person. I'd rather see this than farm subsidies, paying for enforcing a bizintine tax structure (IRS), or any of about 10,000 random pieces of pork spent by congress over the last 18 years
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
"defense" is wasted $.
Since our defense increasingly depends on satellites, which can be pretty easily disposed of by a nation with a presence in space.
Not to mention that large rocks dropped from space have the power of expensive ICBMs without the fallout or the ability of "brilliant pebbles" or airborne lasers to do much about them.
The converse is that the nation that controls space won't really need much of an earth based military to defend itself from military action (though it will need one if it wants to "defend" itself by invading someone else).
Which is maybe why traditionaly military institutions & thinkers tend to view spending money on space exploration and development with some derision...
There is a lot of redundancy going on. For instance:
If you are working on a problem there is a meeting to discuss working on the problem. Then there is a meeting to discuss how to work on the problem. Then there is work on the problem. Then there is a review of the work performed. Then there are corrections to the work performed. Then the final meeting. Then the paperwork to say the repairs are complete is done.
It was tightly controlled before the space shuttle accident - it is more so now. All of these checks and balances cost time and money.
If this were a business you would probably have a lot less overhead but you also might have quite a few more problems with the companies trying to CYA everything. If you don't believe that - just look around at what is happening today and yesterday. WorldCom, Qwest, Merril Lynch, Microsoft, etc....
The IRS requires companies to make profits or else they are not considered a company. Thus, companies do whatever it takes to make money so they can be profitable. As they say - Anything goes in business...so long as it makes money.
Which makes me wonder whatever happened to morales. But then, can you be ethical and still make money? Since you have to take money from others or convince them to give it to you in return for something they perceive as being needed in order for them to live. So can ethics and making money co-habitate together? They used to but most of those companies are now out of business or on the defensive because of lawsuits.
So yeah, companies might be able to do a better job - but when you die because of some company cutting corners they'll just make a deal with your survivors and announce that this doesn't mean there has been any wrong doings on their part. It is just business after all.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
--Now, that's not to say that there isn't a possibility that there is a more constructive way for the government to spend its tax revenue, but it's not like the money vanishes
So, you're saying that if government were to spend half the GDP paying people to dig holes in the ground and fill them back up again, it's not a waste of resources?
On the contrary - unless you can point to specific benefits of this spending it is like the money vanishes. The cost of paying those employees isn't their salaries, it's that they didn't do anything else productive with their time because they were too busy digging holes (or firing things into space). All those man-years of labor are something you can only use once, and we wasted it. The cost of government is what it spends, not what it takes from us in taxes - and spending money without any offsetting benefit is always a bad thing.
I play Nerd-Folk!
One thing to keep in mind, anytime you read about mass amounts of money being spent on, for instance, the space program, is that only the rocket parts etc. end up in space. All of the money that was spent went to the companies that built the components and the people who worked on the project. So although I am sure that good managment could have made it go a lot farther, the money was spent right here in the aerospace and technology fields, for the most part.
281 million.
I hate to split hairs, but it is a significant difference.
We're talking about 23 years of expenditures. The first station design by Reagan was in '84, the 6.6 billion budget addition from GW Bush is slated to go until 2007. Even if the totals run closer to the highly overestimated answer of 100 Billion (by the GAO), that's still only about 4 billion per year for a technological marvel that was supposed to be supported by 3/4 of the world's space programs but is ultimately built primarily by the US.
The Russians have been useless in getting any part of it done, so in order to maintain our own timetable and keep expenditures reasonable, we've had to either help them or replace their efforts, so that cadres of NASA employees weren't being bankrolled to sit on their hands waiting for the Russians.
If the ISS weren't so stifled by a lack of support from countries who previously voiced their desire to be involved, then it'd not only have cost us less but have been bigger and more capable of sustaining a maintenance crew AND a scientific staff. Instead, they're limited to a maintenance crew who dabble in science, so the returns have been limited.
Given that we spent almost 1 billion to blow up the dirt in Afghanistan for a month, I think 4 billion a year in space development is only fair.
The only question that remains is could the 4 billion (or for that matter, the 1 billion from the DoD as well) be spent on more important domestic issues, like the economy, healthcare, education, and building Krispy Kreme's in Boston, Mass...
The answer is of course, a resounding yes. I'm sure every teacher in America would like a 100% pay increase. Our kids would be the smartest around and in 15 years, they'd come up with fiscal savings plans to outdo even the tightest of Swiss banks. But the likelihood that something so radical would occur is miniscule, so instead of worrying about where 40 billion dollars over 20 years could have gone, worry about how to get American AIDS victims to give Bill Gates an 8 ft condom instead of the Indians AIDS victims. Get money that doesn't have to funnel through the government into the hands of those causes you find justify their cost. NASA will keep getting top dollar projects along with the DoD for the forseeable future. The short-term goal must lie in monies garnered from someone else's pockets.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
That should read $25million.
thank you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I heard on the radio this morning that a conservative estimate of the cost of the US attacking Iraq would be on the order of $300B. That makes the space station cost appear kinda paltry.
Imagine what we could do with a space program outfitted with $300 billion dollars (pinky snaps to attention at the corner of my mouth).
Mu-hahahahaha....
1. 2.
Oh come on, ...
...
Ok, on one hand, you have an effort that benefits mankind as a whole and defines us: exploring and reaching out to new frontiers. I would certainly want to be around when man lands on Mars, or heck goes back to the moon for that matter...
What would be done with that money? I hope that you don't think that the administration would use it to e.g. diminish debt, build a half a decent health care system or help the disadvantaged in society?
If this were the case, one could consider scrapping the space flights or at lease reducing them in order to get the domestic situation better.
No, I would think they are going to bomb another country, manipulate politics threathen half the world,
As the situation is as it is, I don't think there is a better goal to use the money for... Even if it sometimes means sending a national idiot to space every ten years, burning billions of euros of research money to do some *cough* important *cough* tests...
I can think of _much_ better uses for that money, but the real question is, would politicians do the same thing? Isn't there some proverb about the Eye of the Beholder?
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
... roughly 17 million children $40 billion would provide health care for (under Medicaid, at a nat'l average of ~$2,300 per child)
$40 billion is slightly more than the annual budgets for the Departments of Agriculture and Transportation combined.
Say what you want about whether it's justified, but $40 billion isn't pocket change, even by federal standards.
Red All Over: Rambling Missives from an Aspiring Revolutionary
$507.37 per person, for the richest 50% of taxpayers. I doubt most of them would notice.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
The main problem is we're lacking the stiff competition that the Russians used to provide to us, so we're just moping along at our own pace. We're not worried about some damn communists beating us into space anymore. NASA should create a rogue nation for the explicit purpose of competiting with us to get to Mars. We'd get there lickity split! (Hell, GM did it to themselves by creating Saturn, why can't NASA?)
Actually there is no shortage of living space on Earth. Standing shoulder to shoulder the entire population of the Earth can fit in a medium sized city. If you divide the entire population into groups of 4 on lots 100ft by 200ft we could all fit in Texas. It's not living space but activities like farming which use comparatively more space but even that can be solved more efficiently on Earth.
For instance if we developed really cheap energy source then we could build a 100 story building and grow food indoors. It's called hydroponics. All you need is energy to power the lamps and to provide the fresh water. The largest cost with desalinating sea water is energy. Note, cheap energy = prosperity on Earth.
As much as I like the idea of space travel, I bet using the $40 billion to finance technical education over the same time period would have paid off already in better engineers and better technology. We'd be on the way to Mars instead of putzing around in Earth orbit.
But that would mean giving somebody something for nothing (bad). Big contracts for aerospace firms, good.
Hah!
You bottom-line, industrial types scoff at the bad NASA decision-making, do you?
I challenge you to:
- Replace your Corporate Board of Directors with a Congress full of politicians that dole out your budget and tell you what's cool and what's boring.
- Try to hire good C-level managers without stock option incentives and give them salaries more appropriate for good mid-level industrial managers.
Then, tell me that NASA management has performed poorly."Provided by the management for your protection."
I don't think this detracts from your argument, but probabilities do not add -- they multiply.
.634 failures.
.01 failures. Your simplified analysis got this one right due to the laws of small numbers.
So, for 100 parts, each good 99% of the time, the chance that no part fails is about 36.6%. Thus, one could expect an average of
For 100 parts, each good 99.99% of the time, the chance that no part fails is about 99.0%. Thus, one could expect an average of
-- jetlag --
Just think of all the poor we could have fed and the whales and owls and such we could've saved! We could've solved the global warming problem as well!
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
Actually, I think they would. If their Adjusted Gross Income was more than the unbelievable sum of $26,415 last year, they are in the top 50% (for the US anyway). More
Yeah, you know who else did make work project so that people would have jobs? Stalin! Lenin! Brerznew! Gorbaczow!
You sir, are a communist!
Putting $40 billion in context:
The US produces crops worth an annual $125 billion (much of it surplus) and has decided to shell out $180 billion on farm subsidies.
[ Source: New Scientist vol 174 issue 2348 - 22 June 2002, page 11 ("Biotech's cash benefits may not be what they seem") ]
Meanwhile in the EU we pay folk to grow things, to store the surpluses, to destroy the surpluses, to sell the surpluses below cost outside the EU and not to grow anything at all (the "set aside" scheme). Don't know what it all costs but you could probably have gotten a matching set of ISS's for it over the years.
Go on and read "No downlink" (review). As long as NASAs controlled by politicians, who basicly just worries about their votes (which means getting some heavy contracts for their homestate), we dont get to see a NASA controlled by logic and reason.
Real shame, that is...
Question begging is an attempt to use hidden premises in a question posed so as to reach a desired conclusion. Please stop murdering this phrase. Instead, put it like this: "it begs one to ask", "the question remains", or something similar. Don't contribute to continued ignorance!
Thanks.
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
Lets look at return on investment for the space program as a whole. Over the course of the space program probably 2-300 Billion dollars have been invested in R&D and Space based activities. The market for GPS related productsis predicted to be $45 billion a year in the year 2006. At that rate, the initial investment for the entire space program will be paid back to the economy in 6 years. The market for satellite communications is also in the tens of billions a year category. Look at the market for satellite TV, Satellite radio. The launch industry alone is a 10 billion dollar a year industry, and the majority of those launches are commercial ones. It took 30 years to get to this point. Can you think of any VC companies that invest several hundred billion dollars on something that is going to have a return 20-30 years out? Yes, the space station may seem like a giant boondoggle now, but whats it going to be 20-30 years out? How many private commercial space stations will there be out there? Think im joking? if you were around in 1957 did you ever think that there would be companies based exclusively on owning satellites? Probably not.
Apple's never sold that many MacIntoshes! They wouldn't know how to fill such an order!
To put this into perspective, the annual US defence budget is over 300 billion dollars. Who gives a shit about 40 billion over a decade or longer?
We've spent FAR more than $40 Billion on those
and last time I checked, we still have poor
people (except of course when a Democrat is in
the White House, when they all magically vanish,
only to reappear when a Republican wins...)
40 Billion, put it in a Microsoft bank account for a rainy day.
Anyway, it is one hell of a magic trick!
You have no idea how much money the government takes from you each year. A national sales tax is about the only fair way.
Say the tax is set at 12%. When a low waged worker buys their Ford Focus for $15,000 they will pay $1,800 in tax. When a rich person buys their $80,000 mercedes, the government will take $9,600.
Both people buy a car, but the rich person pays $7800 more in taxes!!
A sales tax is so simple that even the government shouldn't screw it up.
In Soviet Russia, space station tax you!
I was just tellin' Mabel, "Slashdot's been pretty dull lately, You know what slashdot needs, is a good honest-to-goodness pro-Christian troll, that's make things interesting!"
I'm with you
And with all the improvements in health care people will live longer, and because the body degrades like Mir under radiation, we will need even more medical advances and so on.
Lets fix the ill today, we don't need cloning
National debt, fooey. Who is the bank, national bank of the universe? Its all artificial.
Space and science are the one thing this generation can give back to the human race forever.
Considering that the invasion of Iraq is estimated to cost $200 billion, I'd say $50 billion over a few decades is a bargain. You never know what good will come of research. People were screaming (and still are) bloody murder about AIDS research. Now it looks like a cure for parkinson's will use the HIV virus as a delivery mechanism for gene therapy.
You don't know what you'll find if you don't go.
Cat
"It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross... But it's not for the timid." -- Q
Since those times, people have gotten more cautious. People/businesses won't take a chance unless there is almost assured success. Unless you take an educated chance, you won't know whats possible. If a company's R&D won't research a possible solution that has a chance of failing, the scope of solutions is limited.
His final words were something along the lines of "Don't take the safe route everytime, you'll never see anything new". Unfortunately, CEOs and PR people will vehemently object to the possibility of failure, so we won't see that kind of thinking.
As I understand it (and I don't know orbital mechanics so I could be wrong) the ISS is useless as a waystation for a Mars mission because the orbit is too tilted.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Now you understand the relationship between NASA and Congress.
Oh, yeah, and a bunch of poor and middle class people all got tax breaks. That too.
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
NASA management may have been able to be better, but the real factor that would have helped streamline the project would have been a consistent position from Congress.
Every year that the ISS has been on the books it has had to fight for at least part of itself, and often for it's entire existence.
Most years, Congress has voted to trim the budget in some way or another, often causing some form of redesign. In truth, the cost of all of the redesigns has brought the true cost of the ISS up to what it would have been if they would have left it alone (and the result of leaving it alone would have been a much better space platform).
My family got stuck in some of the mess. My father was transferred from Wichita, KS to Huntsville, AL as part of BOEING's space station work. Before he had even been on site for 3 months his part of the station got chopped. He got moved into teaching ADA to other ISS programmers. A year later he changed positions again. 2 years later -that- part got chopped and my family (minus me this time) got transferred to Oklahoma City for another project at BOEING (which has been fairly stable since and has nothing to do with the ISS).
All of the morphing the project has gone through has far more to do with big, fluid government than it does NASA politics. I'm not saying I don't appreciate living in a republic/democracy/yadda, but it does have it's consequences.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
this is government money we're talking about.
it's not like the government is going to grant some managerial dream team this amount of money to spend as they see fit to better the world.
there isn't really a government outlet for that money that is even close to 'far superior management'.
why not ask: "why can't we shake up the damn government so that -it- is develops far superior management?"
or at least:
"what other government program could do more good with $40 billion?"
but come on now. this isn't just a hunk of metal in space we're talking about. it's about a joint political and economical venture with all those world powers that we claim to be friends with. having our space program was a huge boon to our technological advancement. don't you think the europeans, canadians, and asians could go for some of that?
and besides all that, isn't this slashdot, where we rigorously protest that NASA doesn't have a lunar base, or a real plan for Mars?
it cost alot of money to get to the moon. it's going to cost alot of money to figure out how to keep people on the moon.
sure, hindsight management is always 'superior' to the way most things tend to get done - but is that realistic to think that whatever other magical venture we suggest would go flawlessly and be on target? do we even know if the cost overruns for the ISS were avodiable? c'mon, the hairline fuel line fractures in the shuttle fleet was a huge time and money drain for all our space projects. but would better management have avoided it? highly doubtful.
before we take potshots like armchair unilateralist dictators - can we at least examine the facts to determine if indeed it is the 'waste' that the question implies?
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Which translates to roughly $30/year for the last 18 years. Not $507/year, as you seem to imply.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
What is you're idea of a shoe string budget?
"It begs the question of what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management."
At least they spent US$ 40bi in 18 years and with a productive objective. The "anti-terrorism" war in afghanistan lasted just a few months and cost far more than US$ 40bi. They even failed to capture Bin Laden.
I'm all in agreement with you! I think they should have skipped out on the space station entirely and headed back to the moon.
We're goint to have a red moon in under a decade if we don't get back there first. With $40 billion, private companies could have colonized the moon and Mars and been on their ways out to other planets/solar systems.
Ah...if only they had given ME control over how to direct that money.
Mike
How many Packard Bell computers do you have at home? Because anyone dumb enough to say it would be better to have MIR than the ISS must be dumb enough to go dumpster diving behind every Goodwill store for the treasures they would rather throw out than sell.
Of course NASA should be focusing more on getting out of the gravity well of Earth, but the funding is centered on that gravity well. A better solution would be to give them a guaranteed 3 billion dollars a year specifically for going beyond the moon. Not have them begging each year for a bigger budget.
Isn't that an oxymoron?
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
4. ???
5. Profit!
"It begs the question of what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management."
With that kind of money, I could get laid.
I don't know, could 40 billion be better spent on foreign aid for your favorite country (say for instance, Israel, Egypt, or Pakistan?). Howabout highly successful ventures like Amtrak or the "War on Drugs/Poverty/Terrorism/Younameit"? Why not spend it on extending John Poindexter's (remember Iran Contra?) little pet project, "Total Information Awareness"? Our government doesn't answer to voters anymore. It answers to seats of power, whether the power is concentrated in unelected bureaucrats, congressmen and senators in safe, gerrymandered seats, or various bigwigs apparatus of the two major parties. NASA's just the latest drop in the bucket.
BS.....history has shown (more specifically the US) that the more money you throw at a project the faster it is completed (space program, atom bomb, subs, etc...). The second point I can't disagree with.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
Just an engineering student here, but doesn't the US have these tremendous debts for the sake of making investments? We borrowed the money in order to invest it in things which return at higher than 17% rate.
I mean, I agree that we should spend more on technology, but I don't see the reason we don't as being that our government can't control itself with a credit card. Isn't the idea that the US receives more loans than anyone else because they can most be trusted to pay it back, and having such good credit is a privilege because it opens up investment opportunities that others only wish they could take advantage of?
Also, military spending is hugely technology spending, so I consider it a poor example of misuse of money. Your CPU is the result of the military wanting to improve upon homing pigeons for missle guidance, for example. I can vouch that basically all of the research occuring at my mechanical engineering school is being paid for by DARPA (including my assistantship). The bills for the bullets and APCs and stuff are peanuts compared to bills for coming up with the technology that keeps our military ahead and everyone eventually benefits from the technology. Even if a tank costs like a million dollars, undoubtably 99.9% of that money is going to families of people that design and assemble the tanks, the cost of the materials is peanuts.
I guess we could have built some more fucking bombs.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
(be) invaded?"
By Canada? Mexico? I think the National Gaurd could handle the mighty Mexican Army pretty well while we bribe the Canadians with real beer. In fact, I would say we could probably even defend Alaska and Hiwaii just fine with ~%5 military budget, esp. if we spent the other %12 building a dominant presense in space.
From where we could always drop big rocks on anyone who bothers us.
Well, we talk about "Costs" as if someone took
$100 billion dollars, put it in a shuttle, and launched it into orbit.
That's NOT what happened to the money.
It paid for r&d infrastucture, it paid for development of materials and processes, and it paid salaries. It also paid for raw materials, and, yes, it probably built more than a couple of summer houses for a few politicians.
We talk about the "Costs" of the program apparently without realizing that we PAID ourselves. Jobs were created, University programs were funded, and the only real problem here is that the "taxpayers" are now unhappy about it and wishing they could have it to do over again and spend that money on something else.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I took a course in college on International Relations and I did a paper on the ISS as a tool in international relations. One of the big uses for the ISS budget was an opportunity for the U.S. government to help prop up the new Russia government by giving it cash.
We were supposedly giving it for their parts of the space station, but most people in the community largely agreed that there was never a strong expectation that the Russians would build their components for the costs we thought. There is a lot of supporting evidence that backs this up.
Yes, I realize that Reagan first proposed the idea for the ISS in 1984, before the fall of the Soviet Union. At that time, it was another peice in Reagan's plan to win the Cold War by out-spending the Soviet Union. After the Communist collapse, the purpose basically changed 180 degrees - but it still was not to build an actual space station. That was largely incidental to the two purposes.
The interesting thing would be to see how much of the money was given to Russia for their components.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Actually, the Navy was there with multiple carriers within days and as I recall the 101st airborne was there within a day or two and the Marines showed up with the first "permanent" ground forces (meaning they brought their own supplies and were self-sustaining) a couple days after that.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
If none had militaries than the US would be under no more threat then now. The issue is military escalation. The development of a stronger US military escalates international tension, the threat of war and requires the development of stronger international militaries. When the threat of war is not immanent then economic considerations become more powerful. Why spend Trillions defending from a nonexistent enemy.
According to White House estimates, for five space stations, we could pay for one war in Iraq. Sounds to me like the Space Station is a dang good deal.
It begs the question of what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management.
Well, it could also be the other way around, you biased reporter!
...the number is well over $40 billion in the U.S. alone. It begs the question of what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management.
I'll tell you what I'd do, man, two chicks at the same time, man....
Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I had 40 billion dollars I could hook that up, cause chicks dig a dude with money.
It sickens me that in the space program (and indeed, in many things) we don't take a chance with human lives anymore. "Oh no! There's a 0.02% chance that someone could get hurt. Even though this could be a huge breakthrough, we can't risk it!" That's not the attitude we had about getting to the moon - we took the gambles, and at times paid for it with human lives.
I got two words for that: INTERNATIONAL MEDIA.
Yes, welcome to the international media age, where blame crosses the globe at the speed of light. You just can't take risks anymore. You will end up on the Daily Show with a funny punch line. You can't lose men in a space program without the rest of the "world's space experts" calling you morons in minutes. Hell-O Senate inquiry. It will be a full on busybody alert.
Besides, the way things are going NOW, the three remaining members of the Al-Qaeda network will get a doctored tape out with some Star Trek bridge sounds and will be claiming that they attacked the space vessel in high orbit with Kalashnikovs and dealth a "blow of TERRIBLE DEATH" to all crusaders that think they can occupy the "HOLY SKY." See it on Al-JazeeraNN tonight! With special DEATH IN THE SKY GRAPHICS!
Sound funny? YES. But strangely truthful. Even funnier and more truthful? The Middle Easterners will FREAKING believe it. Pure comedy.
After all, if you haven't noticed, nobody cares about space anymore. There is no profit in promoting humanity. And honestly people... no money, no Lance Bass getting blown out the airlock sci-fi style. Where has all the fun in space gone without dead celebrities in space? I say nowhere my friend. I WANT WASHED UP BOY BAND LOSERS IN SPACE. I NEED DEAD WASHED UP BOY BAND LOSERS IN SPACE, with "Lance Bass Still Dead" underscreen crawls UPDATED EVERY FIVE MINUTES ON CNN-Jazeera. That is where I want my tax money to go.
After all, if you haven't noticed, the freakin' busybodies run the show now. I would say be thankful that we haven't seen NASA scientists hanging out in front of the Wal-Mart ringing a freakin' bell this holiday season.
In the meantime, the Russians simply used pencils.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Why? Because we can.
We have to pursue advancement. It isn't in the human nature to sit back and be idle- People who don't go out and explore their world end up with lethargic bodies, minds, or both. Putting a space station up doesn't have a huge likelihood of destroying society, or even a measureable likelihood, and we can do it, thus we should, for the sake of the experience. How many of you have gone out and done something, that had no tangible benefit for anyone, and felt it was absolutely worth every cent and second you put into it? I bet most of you have. And the space program has produced tangible benefits on earth in many fields, so... Since we can, we should.
That's like saying that if there were no criminals, then the police would be unneeded. True, but irrelevent to the world we currently live in.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Your correction is wrong, though more accurate than the comment you are correcting.
To 'beg a question' means to found an argument on an assumption which is at least as uncertain as the thing you are trying to demonstrate. This includes, but is not limited to, circular arguments.
HW Fowler (1858-1933) the great scholar of the English language defined 'begging the question' as "the fallacy of founding a conclusion on a basis that as much needs to be proved as the conclusion itself."
Fowler provides the following non-circular examples of 'question begging': "Fox-hunting is not cruel, since the fox enjoys the fun." and "One must keep servants, since all respectable people do so."
If you are going to be a pedant, at least be pedantic about it.
Programmers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your strings.
Yes, that's right they hate him. It's unlikely they would find a safe haven there. It's interesting to note that the kurds are friendly with al Qaeda according to our own CIA, which by the way does not consider Iraq a threat.
You mention nuclear weapons. That's interesting because it is often repeated by the administration and by the media that Iraq could produce nukes in 6 months if they had plutonium or uranium. Well here's a flash; so could I or any other modern day, halfway intellegent person. The hard part isn't making the nuke it's getting the fissionable material.
Keep believing the propaganda.
Cat
The amount of real science that could have been gotten out of 40 billion dollars is phenomenal. Instead, we spend it on "the real world" space station. 390 million for an I beam!?! You have to be kidding me. I would rather fund poultry research.
Don't account your chickens before they hatch. `Could save' and `does save' are not synonymous.
That said, I believe that Fred could have got this far for a small fraction of the cost, but even at $40G is almost certainly worthwhile. If you could account for the value of all of the tech spinoffs, they alone would probably pay for it.
The other question is: would we have been better of spending a trillion (ie 25x as much) and whacking together an L5 colony? Certainly, the $200G earmarked for razing Iraq after the S&M experts have finished playing with it would be better directed towards such an enterprise. There are much cheaper, more permanent and more effective ways of defanging Iraq, none of them involving explosives, poisons or bioweapons.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Or like saying that harsher penalties for crimes or more police don't reduce the number of crimes.Hay wait a second that is what most criminologists are saying.
Porn, pot are keys to NASA salvation
Laws are for people with no friends.
Since I got it I drive my cars less than once/week instead of every day.
A co-worker has an electric scooter from EVDeals, which is also very fun to ride, nice cruising along at 20mph with the wind in your face and making almost no noise or smog.
If you need more speed, the Voloci electric motorbike is also very kewl. We can all stick it a little bit to Saddam and the Quaeda funding Saudis by going electric.
In fact I would say that folks who go electric should be applauded as patriots while the 12mpg SUVs with their "God Bless America" flags seem just a bit oxymoronic, if you know what I mean...
If you want to look at where money is being wasted, look no further than the bloated, wasteful military and "intelligence" apparatus. What are they running now? Somewhere in the 350-400 BILLION $/year range?
The Farewell Tour II
This does not include the cost of rebuilding these places, or even address things like the thousands and thousands of civilian lives taken or ruined. Everyone from your workmate to your neighbour's baby. Even so, we're well on our way to a trillion spondoolies. A Terabuck.
A trillion dollars spent on Energia-style launches and equipment to launch with them would have bought the USA a real space presence, an L5 or similar colony, and the ability to drop rocks on anyone who annoys them. So even from an aggressive, miltaristic PoV, the USA has really gone about this the wrong way.
A mere $10G - one measley percent - spent right now on a space elevator would yield even better returns. Instead of murdering more Iraqi citizens, how about offering them a seat on it? If they're rich, and their wealth is firmly tied to the West, they'll deal with the terrorists themselves to protect that.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Or like saying that harsher penalties for crimes or more police don't reduce the number of crimes.Hay wait a second that is what most criminologists are saying.
Yes, that's what a lot of idiots say. But they are trivially proven wrong.
If you reduce the number of policeman to 1 in Los Angeles, you will have more crime. Therefore, more police reduces crime.
If you make the penalty for parking in a red zone death, you will have a dramatic drop in red zone violations. Therefore, penalties matter.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I'm just imagining the crew of the ISS watching the earth being destroyed below them and then turning to the nearest female crew-member and saying "Do you think we could ever be more than friends? For the survival of the human-race, of-course..."
Does this make my brain look big?
$4e10/(200e6 avg. # taxpayers)/(19 years)/(365 days a year) ~= $0.03 per taxpayer per day.
The entire Apollo moon program was carried out for a nickle a day per US citizen.
I always get the shakes before a drop.
Tim Roemer, D-Ind., mockingly dubbed the "International Sucking Sound..."
Are we putting NASA interns in orbit?
Oh yeah, I guess they're cheaper now...Hmmmm, maybe we could have bought 40 of them!
I strongly suspect the unit price (per pound) for B-2 bombers would be vastly superior to that of the space station, and am outraged that Congress and the President could have squandered 40-billion of MY tax dollars on such a foolish enterprise! Just how much does the space station weigh anyway, huh? How stupid do they think we are!? I mean, I'm on a budget, and when I go to the grocery store I don't buy the 9-ounce TV dinner for $3.99; I buy the bargain brand 9-ounce TV dinner for $2.89 because it's the economical way to go. So I don't see why the government shouldn't have to balance its checkbook just like I do.
It is very true that if the government were "better managed", we wouldnt have nearly as much debt, and things like space stations wouldnt be in the sorry state they are in today with as much as 40 billion $$ thrown at them.
But "Government" is management. You can't have the government be 'under better management', unless you want to reduce the elected leaders of the U.S. to positions with all the glamor and power that comes with middle management in any business.
And that is done in many places. A 'Puppet government' is set up controlled by some other power, be it a dictator or a nation. And when that happens, often there have been great leaps in developement, things really get going, and they are the envy of the world.
Not that you'd want to live in such a place.
Not that anyone would.
Yes the government would run more efficiently under the rule of some all-powerful dictator. No fucking SHIT.
Of Course if we had some Space-Hitler sending us off we'd be a lot better off in developement of the space program, but I personally prefer things to be shitty vs having Space Hitler around.
Sure, it would be nice for the government to not fuck things up, to sell the majority of its old systems rather than trashing them, to try and get the businesses they hire to do things better, but that is not going to happen.
It is up to Private Businesses and Citizens to make the advances that need to be made. The government is elected by the people, it should be the powerless middle management Of the people For the people.
When citizens, by themselves, accomplish things, the government doesnt waste money to do the same thing anymore.
Go out and DO something! If you want a space station for under 40 billion dollars, go get all of N'Sync together and build yourself a space station for under 40 billion dollars.
The technology to get into space was INCREDIBLE 40 years ago. Right now it's just pretty darn neat. Go make the technology used to get into space be dull boring uninteresting shit.
Then the government will stop spending 40 billion dollars on that, and work on something else that doesnt really matter.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Pathological extremes do nothing to illuminate the problem. Often, crime statistics don't do much better. Remember that when someone reports on craime statisitics they are reporting on crimes that have been _reported_ to the police. Reducing the size of the police force can after a while make it obvious to any citizen that reporting a crime (short of murder) is probably a waste of time. As a results "crime" can actually be reduced.
Take any statement such as "government official did X and as a result crime was reduced to Y" with a large grain of salt, they may have simply made the process of reporting, or recoding a crime more difficult.
Adverse != averse
DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
Ok whoever modded this informative needs to lose their mod privs.
What is $40B over 15 years... Like 1% of what what is spent on the millary...
Imagine what could have been done with 15 Trillion dollars and 'better managment'
-G
sure, and it was a great escalation of arms that led to the second world war.
Massive, incredibly advanced french and polish armies on horseback defending against equally sophisticated germans with betallions of tanks.
Amrs races don't cause war my friend, psychopaths with power do. And we have plenty of those to go around. Fortunately we're striving for a world were no single idiot can make the decision to pull the trigger first. Even those of you who would lean toward placing Bush in such a camp have to agree that it takes more than an incling for someone over here to send an army out. While in places where currently policing is much needed, there are insane dictators able to send millions of soldiers out to kill at a moment's notice.
We need a world policeman. One that is strong enough to prevent the hell that surely would now be the eastern block (where I was born) and the middle east, had not that balance been there.
Our population doubles every 30 years or so. No matter how well you parcel up the land, people will cover inch of the planet in a few hundred years. Exponential growth is a bitch. No matter how smart a cancer cell is, infinite growth is not an option.
To get everyone on earth into an efficient supercity would require an impossible dictatorship.
Population growth will cause war and disasters long before actual physical crowding occurs. People will fight for optimum land. And they will have numbers to back them up. In a sense, our population growth is spurring us, for instance, to take over Iraq for the optimal oil reserves under its land.
The current terrorism problem is a mere taste of what the angry poor masses of the world are going to be up to in the next hundred years. This is a war of too many people growing too fast against those they are jealous of. No hydroponics will beat Maslow's hierarchy -- the majority of the earth's numbers are poor, hyper-religious, half-educated, and are developing excuses to attack those with better resources. Welcome to Malthus' world... Asimov was so depressed as he grew older, because what is happening was inevitable.
Offtopic? wtf?
Wait, $40 billion? That's what we spend each year on the War on Drugs.
You mean we could get all that done every year if we'd just end the War on Drugs and give the money to NASA instead? And we'd stop killing innocent people and reduce the crime rate too?!?
Well, what are we waiting for?
"I believe Mass Drivers are illegal according to the Geneva Convention."
I believe you're wrong, but we could always earmark the first rock for Geneva, if it came down to that...
-- Terry
--Is precisely why the United States will not advance further in space. Had our ancestors this mentality we'd still be living in mud huts, cowering at the weather. I've said this before and I'll say it again--I bet that 1 or 200 years from now, when humanity has really moved out into space and colonized the solar system no one will remember that it was the United States that first landed on the moon. They'll think that it was the Chinese or the EU or even the Russians, that is, whoever takes the risks, goes out there and stays out there.
I am certain-sure now that it won't be us. Pity.
Yeah. .
Or have you forgotten Tiananmen Square (not to mention what's been happening to the Falun Gong) so soon?
And, for what its worth, Germany in the 1930s was engaged in an arms race, primarily with France, and it did eventually lead to the Second World War. Keep in mind that one of Hitler's most popular platforms was regaining military parity with the rest of Europe following the post-WWI disarmament. Hitler's reasons may have ultimately been psychopathic, but its not like he didn't have a sizable portion of the German people backing him, largely because of French military (who were most assuredly not on horseback...) buildup along the Maginot Line at the border of the two countries. As far as arms races go, it wasn't the most dramatic, but it was an arms race of a sort.
An arms race never solves anything. It's, at best, an extremely dangerous gamble: it might prevent an intelligent, cautious leader from waging war against you, but, since we've already established we're dealing with psychopaths, you can't neccessarily rely on dealing with intelligent and cautious leaders. And the further you get along in the race, the more deadly the stakes are.
That the US "won" the Cold War arms race was a lucky fluke, but it was never a sure thing, and it could have ended hideously badly. Basing future foreign policy on a similar model does not fill me with a great deal of confidence.
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
The reason that all tax cuts go to the middle and upper class taxpayers is because they are the only ones paying taxes! The top 50% of income earners pay 96.09% of total tax revenues collected by the IRS. You can verify this at the IRS's own web site. Every year fewer and fewer Americans pay a larger and larger share of taxes as the burden shifts. It is hard to expect a tax "cut" when you're not paying any income taxes to begin with.
In addition, every time the federal government has significantly reduced taxes, starting with the JFK administration, tax revenues have INCREASED. Less tax rates mean more money in the hands in the people, which means a healthier economy, which means more taxable income and more taxpayers, which means more tax REVENUE.
OK, we put the money into training programs.
All the homeless people now have their MCSE certificate to hang on the inside of their cardboard boxes to prove that they can write MS Word Macro Viruses in VBScript.
Uh, then what?
-- Terry
Yeah, but just think of all the people the rich will be able to hire with that money...
What, you don't think they take it home and bury it under the gazebo, right?
-- Terry
Whereas the US doesn't want to be part of any international organisation that it can not dominate, many other western countries have no objection. This is why the EU works. Hell, there are some major rows there, but it is better that they take place in Brussels/Strasbourg than the Somme.
The orginal principle of NATO is all for one meaning that no country needs to be able to defend itself because it's partners will help. This significantly reduces military spending and allows money to be blown on other more useful things than killing people.
$40b is less than the cost of all lipsticks sold.
Its nothing compared to USAs 33trillion total debt, its nothing compared to 38billion extra monthly debt.
$40B is nothing compared to 1920s when $60B was sucked out to germany in gold bullion.
$40B is nothing compared to 200-400 trillion dollars being played with by your banks on the derivitives markets.
nothing compared to 32 trillion in bonds (which are worthless)
Get over it, You guys spend $350B each year on a millitary.
If you used the military budget from the last 20 years, we could have built new york on the moon!
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Defence Budget for 2k3
um... we are going to spend almost 10x that next year in defence alone. We could create a beowulf clusters of space stations instead!!
Then the other armys would have no weapons to invade with. Problem solved.
But while america continues to arm small factions and countries, they continue to unstablilize the world, drumming up more demand for their weapons.
This is one screwed up way to make money.
The U.S. not ignoring the Geneva Conventsion; they prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay are not prisoners of war, since war has not been declared by a state (either Afghanistan, proper, or the U.S. -- a U.S. Declaration of War requires a passing vote of Atricles of War by the U.S. Congress, followed by a non-veto signature by the President of the United States). They are merely members of a terrorist organization.
The holding in Cuba, rather than the U.S. proper is to ensure that they do not claim civil rights under the U.S. Constitution (forget for the moment that the constitution merely recognizes these rights as existing, it does not grant them, since they are inalienable from the individual). This is also the reason the Coast Guard attempts to prevent economic refugees from Haiti from landing on U.S. shores: if they land, they gain access to a long, expensive, and drawn out deportation process, rather than merely being refused entry.
The alternative would be to hold them in the area where they were captured, which could lead to an attempted rescue, with additional loss of life on both sides. Better to remove the temptation, but not complicate the legal situation.
-- Terry
Cutting tax rates increases government revenue, although it can take a while for an economy as large as the United States' to turn. It worked in the '60's, it worked in the '80's, and it's going to work again this time.
Spending money on exploration of the unknown is always a good investment.
-- $G
Even with the terrible management and the useless scientific experiments making it into the mission plans it sure looks cool. The least they could do is perform a wider variety of science instead of the never ending effects of weightlessness experiments.
Our population doubles every 30 years or so.
historically, yes. but who is to say that we will continue this growth. the 'western' world does not contribute nearly as much to this growth as china or india does. i reserve hope that these trends of rapid growth in certain parts of the world will not continue. china, for example is moving towards (or already?) a capitalist society heavily influenced by 'western' culture which no longer has such large families. mmmm, capitalism...
who knows. i'm talking about things i don't really know about... it's slashdot, what's new?
fear is the mind killer
The global birthrate is actually declining and most of our population growth is due to the fact of increasing longevity all over the world. Even the 'Club of Rome' acknowledges the global inrease in life spans. The U.N. estimates that our population will level off at 16 billion which is well short of running out of living space by many orders of magnitude. Please read Julian Simon's ultimate resource 2, he's an economist that studied population & economic growth's affect on the environment.
I'm sorry to hear that Asimov was depressed since EVERY doomsday prediction made in the 70's (most infamously by Paul Erhlch) did not come true. In fact the end of the 20th century there was more food per capita and longer life spans globally as compared to the 19th and 18th centuries. These are facts, even the population doomsayers say yeah but the apocalypse is just around the corner.
Regarding hydroponics, it is already used commercially for specialty food items. It is not just used for growing 'pot' as someone else said. The reason it is not more widely used is that it is currently cheaper to use land to grow food. However, a decreasing the cost of energy could change that. Low cost energy would make fresh water and food even more available than it is today.
I don't think NASA ever spent millions to hire rock bands to play for a launch party.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
What to buy instead for all this money?
Why, weapons of course! Heck, with all that cash you could have bought another two or three stealth fighters! Wow! What a deal!
Okay, I won't start ranting. But it *is* idiotic. Imagine if the US didn't build yet another worthless aircraft carrier. With the money saved, you could have a permanent moonbase, well funded for the next 100 years.
Bah.
Ciao,
Klaus
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Our population doubles every 30 years or so.
The current global population doubling time is around 50 years, and increasing.
Perhaps if you got some facts that were actually true you'd be able to reach more sensible conclusions.
Microsoft's R&D budget is roughly $5 billion, and their products are orders of magnitude less robust than our space program and the space station. Then consider how many $'s are spent on features versus quality/stability. I'm amazed that we have a working space station after pondering this...
That could have funded US defence needs for over a whole month. And if you think I'm joking, you need to spend some more time investigating what your taxes are actually being spent on.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Well, having worked as an engineer with security clearance at both GD Electric Boat (maybe having helped design your sub), and having done some shuttle-specific work for BPW, I can assure that I probably have pretty good qualifications to judge.
I can also tell you that the shuttle, as I said before, is WAY overengineered, even when compared to the scariest nuclear beasts of the USN. If we required the same level of BS with our sub programs as we do with the shuttle program, we probably wouldn't allow our subs to dive more than 50 feet, and we certainly wouldn't have exotic, risky things like vertical launch platforms. We take WAY more risk with our sailors than with our astronauts, and you know it, bub.
Everyone that volunteers (yes, you must have) for military service adopts a certain level of risk in the name of duty and adventure. Astronauts do not take on the same level of risk that even the boatswain's mate on a nuke sub take on every day. Anyway, I made a serious effort to point out, too, that it's not the component manufacturing that's problematic, it's the process behind it. I never said subs or other military equipement were overengineered, and you damn well better believe I'm qualified to judge.
Disclaimer: this A/C is a former JPL employee from the Viking era.
Say, have you ever read Kings of the High Frontier?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Does that mean that this is an homage?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You're assuming that each of those 450 parts, if it individually fails, will cause a disaster. I really don't think there are that many "mission-critical" pieces. That's why we have backups, folks.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Bullshit. The Laffer Curve takes effect at tax rates of eighty or ninety percent, not twenty or thirty as we have here. There are good reasons to drop taxes (for actual people, not just keiretsus and Enron flunkies), but the Laffer Curve ain't one of 'em.
(The Laffer Curve says that when taxation reaches a certain level, increasing taxes will actually decrease tax revenue, because people will not be motivated to work if they can't keep any of their money.)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
[Lisa refuses at first, then takes the exchange]
--Simpsons [3F20], "Much Apu About Nothing"
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
This is the "there's a job for everyone" fallacy.
Why is it when you mention any problem, people always think that you can educate the problem away, that it's an inequity in educatrional level that causes people to be out of work?
The truth is that there are more people than we need to have to produce everything that we consume.
Eventually, we will get to the point where one guy named "Bob", living in New Jersey, can produce everything every man, woman, and child on the planet needs.
And then we will get the the point where we don't need Bob.
PS: The reason everyone always things "IT training" when people talk about skill retraining is because that's the area that, according to popular perception, has all the money.
-- Terry
Why is it when you mention any problem, people always think that you can educate the problem away, that it's an inequity in educatrional level that causes people to be out of work?
Because it's true, probably. The problem isn't that there aren't enough jobs. The problem is that there aren't enough jobs for unskilled labor. There are only two solutions to the problem:
1) Artificially create job demand for ditch-diggers.
2) Train your unskilled workforce so that they can be productive in skilled and semi-skilled professions.
The truth is that there are more people than we need to have to produce everything that we consume.
Brilliant. So I guess we just keep our fingers crossed for world war, a meteor strike, a supervolcano, or a plague. Good plan. Unless of course, you want to get "proactive"...
PS: The reason everyone always things "IT training" when people talk about skill retraining is because that's the area that, according to popular perception, has all the money.
There's the real fallacy.
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an
anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt
already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the
engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later
the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now
has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper. This leaves the
mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he
was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of
humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too
trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...