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GRAIL-A Enters Lunar Orbit
NASA's twin-craft GRAIL mission, launched way back in September (more information here), has successfully reached its destination. Grail-A has now entered lunar orbit; GRAIL-B is expected to enter lunar orbit tomorrow.
Beware the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!
Three Squirrels
This is no doubt good news, but why should I care? Folks I know, even in the IT sector, need jobs, period! ....
These missions can wait till our economy gets better. What's wrong with that?
Yep, shut down NASA and cancel all future projects - that ought to create more jobs!
If you ever run for congress, I'm sure you'll have no problem getting elected.
The crisis we find ourselves in was partly created by projects like these
NASA's budget represents less than 1% of the Federal budget. It peaked at around 5% during the Apollo years and has declined almost every year for the last two decades. If every Federal agency worked like that we wouldn't be worrying about turning into Greece.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Oops. $400M for GRAIL. If it were $400B you might have a better point.
...I've gone and confused my idioms.
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
That's no moon...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If we listened to guys like you this would be a poorer world for it. Not all value in monetary. What is the value of information? It really is the source of all other value.
Anyway, the time to complain about the cost was at the start of the project in 2006. The project cost around $500 million. All that money was spent here on Earth paying the wages of the guys who built the satellites and rocket and the people who supplied them. If you're worried about the deficit the first thing to look at is the fact that we spend on much on the military as the next 15+ countries combined.and half of those are allies. The US spends 43% of all money spent on the military in the world.
Just to clarify: NASA's budget itself hasn't declined much at all since ~1970, only as a percentage of the total Federal budget. It has remained fairly steady at around 15 billion (with a significant dip at the late 1970-early 1980 period to around 11 billion.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Annual_budget.2C_1958-2011
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
You forgot: massively cutting taxes and regulation... which is the only reliable way to create long-term jobs.
That voodoo economics has been tried and failed. All it does is ensure the booms and busts are bigger. If you control the booms, you make billions more, if you are a regular person, you get screwed worse. Trickle up economics only benefits the 1%. The other 99% are screwed by the corporate handouts.
Learn to love Alaska
Why it took them so long to reach the Moon? Lunar transfer takes 3 days. Does anyone know?
I love statements like this " we spend on much on the military as the next 15+ countries combined.and half of those are allies.". I need at least one mind boggler a day and this was the first. Now I may try to fact check, but my gut tells me you're correct...and how fucking sad is that.
I am all for a strong defense, I surely don't want my country invaded by 'fill in the blank evil people', but we seriously are over the top on our approach these days. We have enough nukes to ensure that any "major" country who tries to attack us will get melted, yet we still build airplanes (at mega-millions a pop) to fight against....who, what? China, blow them up. Russia? Blow them up, Yet these guys are not really an enemy, more like neutral antagonists. "Terrorists?", ignore them or if needed to do something, blow up a house or send them money. More people die driving our highways then what a dumb-ass with a bomb can do. Hell, even if North Korea was zany enough to attempt a nuke missile launch against us they would not last long (assuming we use all this crap we build). Today's enemy is not fought on the military battlefield, it is fought on the economic one.
Ah, here is where we see true power struggles. China owns more then half the US debt, talk about a strategic hill position. I wonder what senator will be willing to charge up "bond hill" against that type of economic position. The middle east controls oil prices (not oil per say, big difference). Want to bring the US to its knees, drive oil prices up by two in a week. This country cannot adapt to that type of economic attack, and it is this type of attack were we are most vulnerable too in this age.
Our leaders tell us to worry about Iraq having WMDs...because why? some idiot despot may use it against us? We got a lousy protection system (though we spend billions on it) if that's the case. We worry that Iran may have or will have a bomb...again so what? If they use it on Israel we have WWIII and the likes of China, Russia, and neighboring ME countries wont let that stand. All the major land is carved up, so now we rattle our very expensive swords, point fingers, and say "yo mamma can't touch this stuff". We have children running the show.
Were the United States to take all the Effin billions we spend in "defense" and begin translating it into defense of our economic and energy house then we would be stronger, and less likely for attack, both physical and economic. Take all those war dollars and begin investing back into education by providing more options for young minds to learn new things. Open space to commercial development and provide the framework to make it affordable. To paraphrase another poster "My God, there's jobs in space". Push hard on renewables (or nuke) and for God Sakes start changing the mind set that the only way to live is with two cars in the garage. Spend money on R&D. Instead of an enemy, find a goal that inspires people/inventors/scientists et al. (I could go on). I'll say it, because our most glorious leaders wont, We are a third world nation. We lag behind in education, in infrastructure, in care for our disadvantaged, and in economic growth. We lead in military spending, we open our doors to corporations for the exploitation of the land and its people, and our most exultant leaders are basically untouched by the laws they swear too. I love my country, I love the ideals written in our Constitution, so to see it crumble from within...a sad time indeed.
43% spent to "defend" against friends and a few foes...yep, boggles the mind.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
"Urgh!!! Because Obama's handouts have done so much to fix everything."
I had a friend comment (more like complain) that "We" spent all these millions of dollars in 1999 to change software....and nothing happened on Jan 1, 2000. "Really?" I exclaimed. "Nothing happened? So, like, all that money spent to avert a potential mess...worked?"
Would you like to ponder what could have happened had we not spent millions on coding against problems resulting from Y2K? "Ah fuggitabout, let the system work it out". (sigh).
President Obama felt the need to put money into the economy to stop it from tumbling into depression. Many economists certainly were stating that outcome pre TARP, pre Stimulus. So what did President Obama buy, a recession instead of a depression. He slammed the throttles full forward to avoid a crash, even though there was not much left in the tanks. Those that complain the most about stimulus are those least effected by either negative economic condition.
Now I would be glad to see him pull back on the throttle a little more these days. I'd love to see him divert our "gas" from one tank to another , but it seems that he not only battles external issues, but internal as well causing this plane to stagger and wallow in recovery. The formula for recovery is basic...
1 - Increase tax revenue (equitable)
2 - put people to work either through works programs or commercial incentive
3 - Adjust spending where needed and reduce where prudent.
4 - Deregulate to encourage growth, but strengthen regulations (through enforcement) relating to risk
When there were moderate, sensible thinking leaders these things were presented, debated, adjusted and passed. Reagan, Bush (I), and even Nixon raised taxes when it was needed. Clinton helped change welfare and medicaid. Today we have yahoo's (mainly in congress) who pontificate, posture, and do nothing to find common ground while they pad their pockets with lucre from insider trading.
So please, cut the crap about Obama buying a recession to avoid something worse, unless you enjoy living in chaos. I don't.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter