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The Fight Over NASA's Future
swestcott writes "The New York Times has an interesting article about the transition to the Obama administration and NASA's transition to the new Orion."
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Quit whining about budgets and work on cutting edge projects?
HELLOOOO
Why do you think they are not? Simple because their budget isn't there. They can't pie in the sky because they aren't getting money. They don't generate enough votes.
Politicians look for votes. Our money buys them votes. As such they will put the money to where it gets the most votes for the least investment. NASA is a large investment for a small return, 10 billion spent at NASA doesn't cover nearly as many votes as 10 billion on a new bridge or entitlement program. I am quite sure they have lots of CE projects on file, they just know they will not even get a hearing because the politicians are more concerned about feeding the greed of America's new looter class because that class keeps them in power.
Science and Math will become a priority when they generate votes. Just like your child's education, when those kids can vote then education will become a priority, they don't worry about the parents because every parent thinks their school is fine - its just those other schools. Hence education gets dumbed down, kids don't learn, instead of wanting to become a scientist they want to play ball and space sits out there waiting for a nation driven by pride and hard work will be the one to exploit it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If you want to die in a fire, then I suggest you go do so.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Where did he say the ends justifies the means?
I think you're making the assumption that everyone here is against the means used in this situation. Spending money on a mega highway in Alaska is the true definition of pork. Government spending on far reaching projects that otherwise wouldn't be immediately profitable for the business sector is perfectly fine, in my book. Don't assume that just because you think this is pork, everyone else is going to agree with you.
Actually, we have no freaking clue what killed the dinosaurs. But even if it was a meteorite/asteroid (as you smugly imply), it would still be a LOT smarter to pump our money into digging tunnels here on earth (where we at least have large existing supplies of oxygen, water, geothermal heat, and survivable atmospheric pressure) than pumping it into a pipe-dream of surviving the MUCH more hostile environs of any other reachable planetary body. Even after a large asteroid hit, I'd still rather be on Earth than anywhere else in the solar system.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Even after a large asteroid hit
Why do we have to take the hit if we have a workable space program? I'd rather deflect the damn thing than start digging tunnels while meekly accepting the fact that the vast majority of the human race and biosphere would die off.
The space program is pretty cheap if you look at it that way.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I disagree. A large portion of US Government owned patents come from NASA. These patents are then licensed out, or auctioned off in exchange for money. Give them funding to create money for themselves and US. It's only a liability if you refuse to utilize it as an asset. Where the other things you mentioned are pork, funding NASA can easily reap economic benefits if the administration in charge would choose to use it like they did back in the 1960's.
The whole Orion program was basically just a re-do of Saturn/Apollo anyway.
Columbus' journey was basically just a re-do of Leif Ericson's anyway. The ISS was basically just a re-do of MIR.
Free Martian Whores!
How many people in the USA lack food and shelter because of circumstances beyond their control, and how many of them lack food and shelter as a direct result of their own choices?
Is it right to take resources from productive people in order to allow other people to survive the consequences of their bad decisions?
Okay, sure. There are approximately 6 billion people in the world, all with their own particular values and opinions. You could surely collapse some values of certain swathes of people into a group of norms, but we're still talking at least hundreds of thousands of viewpoints, if not millions (depends on how specifically you try to categorize said opinions). Just looking at their books and various other writings, I can easily assume that they did not take into consideration hundreds of thousands of viewpoints. Therefor, they did not take into consideration all of the variables involved in reality.
I do not have to get more specific than that. They may have focused on the most prevalent viewpoints, but to say they considered every last aspect of humanity's individuality and its' effects on the average social viewpoints is patently absurd. The problem is, since everybody is different, the interplay between the individual and the social norm is subtle. The best way to describe the reality of society is to liken it to determining the weather. Chaos theory, perhaps, describes it best.
In essence, Marx and Locke focused on abstracts. The problem is reality has so many specific instantiations of unforseeable behavior that their economic models tend to break down the moment you put them into play with large groups of people. These models then need "fixes" applied, like patches, over time. It's not to say that Locke or Marx were idiots; they were quite intelligent men, regardless of your opinion on their socio-economic models. But to say the abstract models they specified will work flawlessly in society is foolishness. Every model currently in play in the world is an example of that. They were adopted with the purest of intentions, but patch after patch was overlaid upon them to rectify some perceived flaw in some specific case. Then you get American Capitalism, British Capitalism, German Socialism, Vietnamese Communism, Chinese Communism, etc, etc. They're all examples of how these models broke down upon entering society. In an ideal world, no one would want to modify the models at all, and then Locke or Marx's utopia would flourish and everyone would be dancing in the street as they basked in the fruits of their perceived "right way to live" socio-economic model.
But it has never happened and it never will happen, and therein is the entire point I was trying to make.
Actually, we have no freaking clue what killed the dinosaurs. But even if it was a meteorite/asteroid (as you smugly imply),
Given the evidence, the odds point to it almost certainly being an asteroid that did the deed. The crater at the same time, the iridium deposits, etc, all support the theory. Can we say that it was an asteroid without a shadow of a doubt? No, there is a slight possibility it was something different, but we're a hell of a long way from having "no clue" as to what did it. That's the same backwards ass thinking that throws up evolution as "just a theory" every time it's brought up.
As to the rest of your post, as another poster pointed out, a space program is far more useful in deflecting asteroids than in evacuating the whole planet. Something as simple as parking a satellite next to the incoming body for long enough (talking a span of years/decades here) can gravitationally perturb it enough to move it off of a collision course.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
How does space exploration have "no obvious returns"? The return is the ability to travel into space. Just because something is not profitable doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile.
This is why corporate space exploration will never be any good.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Further, people talk about spending money on "space" like we take the dollars, stuff 'em in a rocket, and shoot it off. Those dollars are spent here, on earth, and create jobs and opportunities for lots of people. Not to mention the spinoffs we get as a byproduct.
We can either just give money away (welfare), or spend it to create jobs and knowledge. I prefer the later.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Bailouts should NEVER be just gifts of cash (as recently done). A quid-pro-quo should always be demanded. A space program as a bailout is not good (it should be done for itself), but it's far superior to a cash handout.
Similarly, the bailout of the finance sector should have resulted in massive government ownership and control of the sector. It should have then sold those things off as quickly as the market would bear, but a cash handout was extremely bad. It follows an extremely bad precedent and maintains it. The lesson is "It's ok to gamble recklessly with other peoples money. If you lose, someone else will pay."
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.