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Neil Armstrong Gives Rare Interview
pcritter writes "In a rare coup for accountants' association CPA Australia, CEO Alex Malley interviews Neil Armstrong, whose dad worked as an Auditor, bringing him back four decades to the pinnacle of the space race. Neil reveals, 'I thought we had a 90 per cent chance of getting back safely to Earth on that flight but only a 50-50 chance of making a landing on that first attempt.' The four-part video series is now posted on CPA Australia's website."
I still don't understand this. We have the technology to do it, we have the people wanting to do it, and we have another group of people wanting to live and work there. Why don't we build a base on moon?
There would be no insects (I really hate those, but at least geckos take a good care of them!), and it would be a good base for our future discovery of new planets and solar systems. There ARE more there, earth is nothing special.
Is the United States incapable to do this? Does it take Russians, Chinese or Japanese to get there? What the hell happened to America?
A certain group considers it a waste of money for the government. Ignoring the fact the NASA at it's peak allows billion in revenue to go back to the government. But some people don't want to understand anything about long term payoff, spin-off, and the fact that they create cutting edge industries.
This is what happens when non scientific and ignorant people get equal say how the government works.
And yes, I DO believe people without a fundamental understanding of science shouldn't be allowed to participate in the government.
Same with people who can't do intermediate algebra.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What the hell happened to America?
Too busy spending money on killing people and figuring out more efficient ways of killing people.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Assuming the colony will produce it's own food, it may need insects to aid in decomposition of the compost.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Or maybe because even most scientists (actual scientists, not armchair commentators on slashdot) can't find an actual utilitarian reason to build a moon base other than juvenile delight at living out their sci-fi fantasies?
Isn't that reason enough? What happened to ambition, curiosity, and doing things "because it's there?"
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I think this line of reasoning is very short-sighted. History is filled with examples of discoveries made by accident while trying to push the boundaries of a field. How do you know that a more permanent presence on the moon wouldn't lead to the next major breakthrough?
To think that we can learn everything that we need to by doing all of our experiments at the bottom of a gravity well in our own tiny little corner of the solar system is absurd.
Blog
Well, finite resources don't allow for infinite growth. See global warming / climate change
Isn't that reason enough? What happened to ambition, curiosity, and doing things "because it's there?"
It got buried under quarterly budget reports and two generations of short sighted politicians whose only motivation is to get themselves reelected and to push a hyperpartisan agenda.
Oh, and Democrats, who are generally worthless at any form of argument or debate.
Indeed. If Osama bin Laden hid on the Moon you would be there by now... for about the same money and with fewer people killed in the process.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
it died with the educational system. now the new mantra is -- whats the ROI ? and whats in it for me ?
So why are we building so much other, even less useful, crap?
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
What's to understand?
Read the responses by the overwhelming majority of posters here for almost any space-related article, for starters. They already have the answers, so why bother asking questions?
Consider, perhaps, the huge aversion to risk, personally and societally, and the lawyerly legions ready to pounce on any 20-20 hindsight "mistake." Toss in the long-term trend of disparagement of learning, of exploration and discovery; the notion that it's somehow cool to be jaded by everything but the getting of more money and having fun, often as not at the expense of others, while thoroughly ignoring larger issues or even personal growth, and the rigid resistance to any kind of personal involvement beyond one's comfort bubble of prejudice and appetite.
I found it telling that Cdr. Armstrong estimated a 1-in-10 chance he wouldn't return. He went. He went, not because he was ordered to go, but because of whatever blend of desire, ambition, duty, honor, competitiveness, what have you. He damned sure didn't go for fame and riches.
All the astronauts at the time were pilots and aviators. All had degrees, many had advanced degrees, mostly in engineering. Many had been in combat. Most had done flight test. Every one believed, _knew_, that he was the best.
So, find that blend, those skills, that education, that dedication. Put behind them an infrastructure built to get things done and a public will to see it happen. I suggest you look elsewhere than the United States.
It's a pity Neil Armstrong did not explain about the remark he made to Mr.Gorsky.
Facepalm.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is part of why he never bothers giving interviews any more. Between the "Moon Landings were fake" trolls and these trolls you just lose faith in humanity.
It's an urban legend.
HAND.
We've spent well over $100 billion on a foray somewhat out of the bottom of a gravity well. So far it has produced almost nothing, its called ISS.
Chances are a base on the moon would be only slightly more productive than ISS.
The moon might be worthwhile for mining water or Helium isotopes though this has not yet been well established. The far side might be a good place for some observatories. It might be a place to train for a base on Mars. Then the use cases starts trailing off pretty quickly
Its pretty simple, you need to build a strong, well thought out, case that there is something on the Moon worth doing that would actually justify the significant expense of returning and building a base. This is the step that was completely missed in the Apollo program which is why everyone stopped caring around Apollo 12 and the program ended at Apollo 17. An emotional case about the coolness factor, and pointless space races with other countries, doesn't really cut it.
The spinoffs from Apollo did end up making it worthwhile but its not really clear you would get anything close to the same spinoffs going back. Apollo had to actually invent a lot of things to pull it off. If you go back to the moon you would mostly be revisiting technologies that have already been developed so the spinoffs would almost certainly be much less.
Mars would be a much harder destination but it would be substantially more worthwhile since it is an almost colonizable planet. A case can be made for the that though it wouldn't be easy. It might also produce some new spinoffs since it would be a much harder journey and much more challenging to do.
@de_machina
The spinoffs from Apollo did end up making it worthwhile but its not really clear you would get anything close to the same spinoffs going back. Apollo had to actually invent a lot of things to pull it off. If you go back to the moon you would mostly be revisiting technologies that have already been developed so the spinoffs would almost certainly be much less.
Yeah, but you wouldn't just be "going back". Building a long-term habitat on the moon is likely to bring about just as many - if not more - useful spinoffs. In fact, since the challenges that need to be met are largely centred around making a limited-resource environment friendly and liveable, I'd think their application would be even more direct, since we're all into the whole sustainable living/climate change/peak oil thing these days.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
" All countries should be working together on this."
Excepting that multinational consortiums tend to turn in to bureaucratic quagmires. Haggling over who does what, who pays for what, whose astornauts get what rides. Some countries fall short on their commitments, others have to pick up the slack, schedules slip, budget soars. Just look at the history of the ISS.
If you want to do things fast, cheap and well a Kelly Johnson Skunkworks model is probably a much better choice than a bureaucratic quagmire. Find very talented engineers and program managers, give them a very precise goal and sufficient funds to do it, and keep the politicians as far away from it as possible.
Ones of NASA's now fatal flaws is politicians change the goal and the plan about every four years right before anything is actually done. They also dictate where and how things are done, not for engineering reasons but to insure they get pork in their states and districts. For example, every recent NASA proposed launcher has Shuttle SRB's in it just to insure Orrin Hatch wont try to kill it. That's why Ares I turned in to the monstrosity it was, and why Allient and Astrium have resuscitated the design that will not die as their proposed Liberty launcher.
@de_machina
Or farsighted politicians who don't want to have a multi hundred billion dollar base on the moon sucking up cash for no reason 10 years from now in circumstances they can't predict.
When you have money to burn a lot of things look like ideas you can fling money at, including tax cuts for people who don't need tax cuts, bridges to nowhere etc. The problem is that when the economy takes a negative dip (as it always does) you need to cut things which aren't necessary so you can focus resources on something that really needs it.
Any sort of adventure like a moon base needs to be as part of an investment into something. Maybe that's as a jumping off point to Mars, maybe that's for mining asteroids, or maybe it's just because we desperately need living space and it looks like it might be viable. But right now, it's none of those things.
National prestige is worth something, as is general investment in scientific curiosity. So you pay a bunch of scientists to figure out what is a good use of scientific money, and if they tell you 'not a moon base' then you should probably follow that. There are lots of other problems to be solved that look far more likely to be successful at this point.
I'm willing to wager a long term habitat on the moon would look disturbingly similar to the ISS . . . . but on the moon.
I am williing to bet it would be operated with a supply chain disturbingly similar to the ISS with just about everything shipped from Earth. I suppose they could open a land fill and dump the trash on the Moon saving having to fly it back to Earth like ISS. Is that what you would call a "spinoff"? There will probably be objections from the environmentalists on that one.
If they really pushed the envelope they might mine water on the Moon and get some Oxygen and Hydrogen, but I think that would require you to put the base on the South Pole and its not clear yet if there are in fact large ice deposits there.
If they were to put a nuclear reactor in the base that would be interesting but I'm willing to bet the opposition to launching one and doing that would be massive. I'm willing to bet instead it will have a big array of solar panels, like ISS.
You are seriously kidding yourself if you think its a given there will be huge technological breakthroughs as a result of this particular program.
@de_machina
More likely, that 10% survivor rate will be someplace out in the 3rd World. Kill off the skillage needed to sustain a high tech civilisation, that civilisation will fall. For instance, kill off anybody who knows how an oil refinery works and how to make it produce gas & diesel. When the current stockpiles dry up, there'll be no more. Modern agriculture depends on that (relatively) cheap energy. No way we'll be able to feed 7 billion people on Bronze Age farming gear. The people doing Bronze Age style farming right now will still eat. Mostly. Unless they need to refrigerate some of their food. Then they're fucked.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
juvenile delight at living out their sci-fi fantasies
What's wrong with that? What do YOU live for? We have a lot of other things needing, but fulfilling my childhood fantasies is the long-term end goal, even if it doesn't happen in my lifetime.
They didn't democratize education in Europe with any of that 'no child left behind' and 'let's teach them to embrace their diversity and acknowledge their uniqueness' bullshit. In Europe, they actually (gasp) try to make the kids read, write, do basic math up to elementary mathmatical analysis, speak at least 2 languages, learn their own and world histories, and more. Google up the stats on how the schools of the various countries are rated. Do it. I dare ya.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Watching and listening to the lunar landing sends shivers down my spine. For all our cool tech these days, nothing compares to that moment, and I can't help but wonder if our generation will have such a defining moment. Right now the world seems too obsessed with "safe" and "profit", and appears to have lost the vision and drive to push our boundaries.
I wish we would have some leaders who would follow in the footsteps of "we do these things not because they're easy, but because they're hard."
Or maybe because even most scientists (actual scientists, not armchair commentators on slashdot) can't find an actual utilitarian reason to build a moon base other than juvenile delight at living out their sci-fi fantasies?
You sound like a dinosaur to me... You know, the kind of ignorant fool who scurries about, oblivious to the Universe at large, worrying over utterly inconsequential crap while there's a huge asteroid headed for Earth about to make them extinct. Make no bones about it, one is headed this way right now. EVERY scientist will tell you that it's just a mater of time. What if we got out to the asteroid belt, captured us a few and had them orbiting the moon for quick dispatch. Meanwhile we mine them, not because it's oh so much cheaper to ferry them back to Earth, but because the raw materials aren't trapped in the bottom of a gravity well and it's cheaper to build shit in space.
The moon is just the first foothold, there's a whole solar system full of resources to utilise and SPACE to EXPAND since we hate the idea of state regulated birth control... Thirsty? Hell, Ceres is about 1/3rd the asteroid belt, and is probably full of water we can use. There's probably other BIG things floating about we have no clue of. You're either really clueless, or just chauvinistic because you're not extinct yet.
EG:
Eris, is the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the ninth most massive body known to orbit the Sun directly. It is estimated to be approximately 2300–2400 km in diameter, and 27% more massive than Pluto or about 0.27% of the Earth's mass.
Eris was discovered in January 2005 by a Palomar Observatory-based team led by Mike Brown, and its identity was verified later that year.
Now look here, you short sighted, ignorant twit: You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Get your damn priorities straight. If getting off this rock isn't priority #1 then you're just burring your head in the sand, and ignoring the fossil records found therein. We've got a CHANCE to dominate our corner of the Universe, and prosper wildly beyond your puny minded dreams, you're saying: Nope, I vote for certain death at an uncertain time. FUCK YOU MAN, that's NOT how any rational being should think. Just off yourself now, you're hindering the herd.
The Russians, Chinese, and Japanese are just talking about it, which is cheap. Practically free. Doing it is another matter.
Why would any government want to set up a trillion dollar base on what amounts to a lifeless rock in the middle of nowhere? Because you watched too much Star Trek as a kid, and want it really badly to be true?
We wouldn't get anything out of it, except things we could have gotten for a tiny fraction of the cost here on Earth! Spin-off technologies? That's like saying we should burn huge piles of money to stay warm in the winter. It's bureaucratic buzzword talk for "only 99% wasteful!".
If you think isolated cold rocks in a hard vacuum are so fantastic, why don't you move to Bouvet Island for the rest of your life? You can set yourself up a nice vacuum chamber there, sprinkle some radioactive isotopes around it to simulate the harsh radiation of outer space, and you have yourself a perfectly adequate simulation of life on the moon. For extra credit, take drugs that cause osteoporosis, and do all work outside the habitat in scuba gear. Make sure to carry your water, food and oxygen with you too -- no cheating! You're allowed supplies from the outside, except that you have to give $1000 to charity for each pound imported to the island.
Does that sound like something you want to do for the rest of your life? Would you want your family to live there like that, away from friends, family, and an "outside" that won't kill you in seconds? What would you do with your time there? Break rocks?
If you can't think of a good reason to move to Bouvet Island, then you don't have a good reason to live on the Moon either, which is a worse place to live, further away, and more expensive to get to.
So why are we building so much other, even less useful, crap?
Because the human race would stop if we didn't have this:
http://www.fragrantica.com/perfume/Nicole-Polizzi/Snooki-13729.html
Obligatory "I don't want to live on this planet anymore."
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
The space race was never about that. It was a dick-measuring contest between two superpowers. Ambition and curiosity were good for the rousing speeches but not much else.
ISS with gritty dust that fouls all the seals and bearings. Can't do micro-G stuff because of 1/6th gravity. Really bad ping times, can't game or hold a decent conversation. No atmosphere to brake a landing, nothing but regolith to putz around in. The only thing that rock is good for is tides and sonnets.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Or maybe because even most scientists (actual scientists, not armchair commentators on slashdot) can't find an actual utilitarian reason to build a moon base other than juvenile delight at living out their sci-fi fantasies?
Well, how about experiments conducted in a low-gravity environment?
How about telescopes and other such sensors that are capable of things we'd never be able to do on the Earth?
How about because fuck it, it's there, which is one of the most important driving factors in humanity?
Why did we climb Everest? Because it's the tallest mountain. Why does man try to skydive from ever-increased heights? Because we've never skydived from that high before. Why does the Heart Attack Grill make a Quadruple Bypass burger? Because honestly, a good cheeseburger has more calories in it than a month of your salary.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Isn't that reason enough? What happened to ambition, curiosity, and doing things "because it's there?"
Actually, the US space effort was motivated by "because Sputnik's there".
Don't worry; it's just a matter of time until someone provokes our latent inferiority complex again.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You need to work on your tail-recursion.
I'll get on that as soon as I finish working on my tail-recursion.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
somewhere, hopefully for a profit. The recent success of the SpaceX rocket is crucial because its vision pushes the envelope for cheaper launch costs, now. $ per lb is the hurdle for commercial space development. Mining, energy, colonization - flight has to be affordable for large scale development. That first step is hardest and most expensive. SpaceX just made a significant rung. Everyone else has to beat that, like the microprocessor manufacturers of the 1970s and 80s.
Indeed. If Osama bin Laden hid on the Moon you would be there by now... for about the same money and with fewer people killed in the process.
I doubt it. Only tiny amount of the USA's post-9/11 security spending went toward I'm gonna git that bastid!
Most of it went toward pointless wars and security theatre.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If we had told these men that it was near certain death: that there was almost no chance of survival whatever but we might learn something from their ashen corpse - it would not have made any difference. They were ready to GO. They would have strapped in with a smile on their lips. Once upon a time we were made of sterner stuff.
Actually, I suspect that the fraction of the population who would sign up for a job as a test pilot has been pretty constant since the invention of the airplane.
The notion of "the right stuff" is just propagandistic idol-making. Governments love to offer the public a hero.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Fine, but don't force me to spend my money on your fantasies.
/., SOMEBODY will complain.
I don't think anybody would object to private corporations making a moon base*, but if you want to use tax money on it, you had better come up with something better then "But it would be REALLY COOL".
*OK, this is
Do have any idea of the logistical and industrial "tail" that's necessary to sustain a modern army in the field? And bear in mind we're talking about a situation where the society behind that has collapsed.
To quote from Zulu Dawn: "Bullets run out, them bloody spears don't!".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
... less space than a Nomad.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Don't worry; it's just a matter of time until someone provokes our latent inferiority complex again."
Yep. Once another nation gets close to being able to throw rocks down the gravity well, we'll go into a panic, and get the military-industrial complex behind the project to "reach the asteroids first", or whatever.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Because people are nincompoops. Which takes us back to the original point.
There is something warm and fuzzy about a free market economy, where everything "just works" because everyone is making decisions that are optimal for themselves. Back in cold, hard reality, that is a load of shit, because people are nincompoops who make retarded decisions, which collectively results in a massive clusterfuck.
Perhaps a moon base specifically is not a great objective (I don't know, I'm not an expert, I want the experts to decide). But I sure as fuck do know that NASA, engineering and hard sciences research, fusion research etc should get a lot more money than they currently do. I don't care what any nincompoop says, stop invading other countries, stop spending money on retarded shit that nincompoops want, and invest more in these things that benefited mankind and made USA the most respected and envied country in the world.
Half of your post is about the economy of it which is a good point, but the other half is projecting on everyone else. Why are there people living in the coldest parts of Siberia when they could move to the tropics? Why do people live on Pitcairn Island thousands of kilometers from civilization? Why do people want to battle their way to the poles or the top of Mount Everest? Not everybody wants it easy. Not everybody wants it comfortable. As long as we send the right people they will thrive because it's the challenge and the difficulty of surviving that drives them.
Weed out the romantics and idealists, let them live a few months in simulation and I think 99.9% would freak at the idea of the rest of their life being that way. Hell, even if the right kind of type to go is one in a million there's still 300 of them just in the US alone. You might not understand them, you might not share their point of view but they are there, and they're really just waiting for a space base mission to ask. That really is not the problem.
We wouldn't get anything out of it, except things we could have gotten for a tiny fraction of the cost here on Earth! Spin-off technologies? That's like saying we should burn huge piles of money to stay warm in the winter. It's bureaucratic buzzword talk for "only 99% wasteful!".
Well for one we'd have to make a really sustainable, closed ecosystem based on renewable energy. We couldn't go around polluting and making landfills and it wouldn't have oil. Sure you can't say it's strictly necessary that we do it in space but than there's no cheating, no shortcuts. A lot of that would probably have spin-offs to make us more sustainable here on Earth too. And I'd consider a first base a trial run for trying to bootstrap a colony and by colony I mean a situation where each added person adds more self-sufficiency than cost. It'll probably be a running expense but we can't afford an accumulating expense that only gets bigger and bigger then more people go.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Military bases along with national (or private) ownership of the moon real estate are forbidden by the treaty. But research bases such as the ones in Antarctica are permissible.
http://internationallawobserver.eu/2012/01/28/moon-colonies-and-international-law/
If you want to do things fast, cheap and well a Kelly Johnson Skunkworks model is probably a much better choice than a bureaucratic quagmire.
I agree, though keeping in mind that it still took gobs of govt money. I think what's going on regarding govt contracts with SpaceX & the others is a good direction to go. These companies are our "Skunkworks" for the time being.
This doesn't provide directly for exploration, of course, but I think it will eventually facilitate it.
sr
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
If they can raise the money and do it themselves, then who would object? At any moment in time whoever wants to run a project can ask for donations or release token bonds to be bought and advertise this and if there are enough people who want to see a moonbase and they pay for it, then it wouldn't be a problem for anybody who doesn't want to see gov't spend money this way.
As to voting: those who don't pay taxes to government shouldn't be able to vote. Those who pay more taxes than others should get extra votes.
You can't handle the truth.
1) No insects -> no pollination -> no fruit or vegetables - unless you want to go around with a paint brush, busy like a bee pollinating your rock garden.
2) Also, but probably not as relevant, no insects -> no insectivores. No chicken for you, buddy. Might as well become a vegetarian. See 1 for your daily schedule.
3) And why do you think there won't be any insects? It only takes a few stowaways for all your base to belong to them...
--frank[at]unternet.org
And if that's what we're doing, I'd rather do the measuring with Saturn Vs and Energias than Humvees and IEDs.
I still don't understand this. We have the technology to do it, we have the people wanting to do it, and we have another group of people wanting to live and work there. Why don't we build a base on moon?
Economics. There is presently no reasonable near term economic justification for a moon base. While there might eventually be such a justification, it doesn't exist at the moment. That's not to say there is no justification for a base - there are reasons to do it, just not near term economic ones. That means the only way to fund it is with tax revenue and good luck getting congress to fund a hugely expensive and risky moon base given the current economy. Even far less costly and easier to justify scientific missions are getting squeezed. Any economic benefits from a moon base are indirect, hard to quantify and will take considerable time to be realized.
BTW we don't actually have the technology to do it yet. It's feasible for us to develop it but there is a substantial amount of R&D that would have to happen before it is actually possible not limited to developing the heavy lift rockets, material delivery systems, habitats, etc. There has been some R&D but it's mostly been quasi-theoretical academic work, not practical engineering. What practical engineering there once was has been shut down for 40 years.
The need to go to space is because life has to outgrow this little rock.
If we stay here we will, eventually, die out. "Sustainability" is a myth.
If we had the resources to build giant contained cities, we could let the planet go back to nature. Urbanisation reduces cruelty and violence and civilises people. But we are not even half urbanised. We need more resources, be it using space rocks, to build the giant self contained cities. Then you can let nature flourish undisturbed.
The alternative is we go back to burning dung in mud huts and slaughtering every animal we can get our hands on. That's what we used to do. We were very good at it, hence our numbers grew and grew and we came to dominate the planet. Dismantling industrial society would only send us back to that, and we'd have to tear up the planet again a second time, because the mentality of people living in villages and tribes is much more brutal than what modern people have, and once your situation is back to that, your mentality goes back to that too in a dozen generations. There's a reason the "desert religions" were so brutal -- people were tribal and killing others was basically the only way to resolve things.
We have one chance now, in the 21st century, one window to get to space for real. If we don't do it now it is a downward spiral, and we won't have the resources from this planet to try industrialising again, so we will all hit the wall again, and slowly we'll poison everything, in our millions of warring tribes, and even nature won't really survive.
Either we get off this planet and figure out how to grab our materials from the lifeless solar system, or we slowly perish in a downward spiral of crises, violence, competition, wars, pollution and global extinction, taking this garden of nature down with us.
Also fine, don't force me to spend my money on failed military adventures into the Mountains of Afghanistan. The Russians weren't inept or weak, and after nine years trying, they just recently proved that there's nothing to gain from a military occupation there, do we really need to repeat their mistake, but more expensively?
If you really want to impress the world with your military might, a precision guided asteroid strike on a nuclear weapons production bunker would probably do the trick. Think long and hard enough and you might even come up with a "peaceful, scientific" pretext for the practice/demonstration (smaller) asteroid diversions.
ISS speed is 7.7 km/s and escape velocity is roughly 11 km/s... it would have to be a really big "push".
Given how close Eagle came to running out of fuel for the descent rockets before touching down at Tranquility, that 50-50 estimate for landing sounds pretty accurate.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
There is something warm and fuzzy about a free market economy, where everything "just works" because everyone is making decisions that are optimal for themselves. Back in cold, hard reality, that is a load of shit, because people are nincompoops who make retarded decisions, which collectively results in a massive clusterfuck.
Actually, this is exactly why a free market works. See, the smart, hard working, and let's face it, lucky people tend to win. They are successful and they multiply. Google creates a search engine. It is successful, more search engines emerge. Some may be better. The better ones will survive. The crappy ones will fail. The "nincompoops" almost always fail. Others see their mistakes and make it a point to not repeat them. The nincompoops usually end up working for the successful ones, benefiting both. It's natural, really. See Darwinism. The strong survive and the weak must multiply fast enough to feed the strong. They are dependent on each other.
The problem is when an external entity, like government, steps in to and starts meddling with things. A politician will point at a successful person and say to the nincompoops, "What has he done to deserve the things he has?" Of course, the answer is, work hard, be smart, take chances and eventually you'll get lucky. The nincompoops hear, "luck" and think it's not fair. This is when the politician, in exchange for votes, vows to punish those that have more and reward those with less.
How do you fix this problem? Education. Why is that not working? The nincompoops have taken over education. For example, I pay to send my child to private school. In pre-K, she learned to read, add, subtract and other things that public school kids don't learn until the 1st grade. She learned this in PRE-K! Next year, in kindergarten, she'll be doing stuff on that public school kids do in the second and third grades. Now I bust my ass to pay for that school, but at the same time, I'm also paying to send my kid to public school, even though she doesn't attend (not that pre-K is even offered). Now in a free-market world, I would get whatever money the school would spend to educate my kid to spend it on the school of my choice. Nothing would be lost from the school as they are NOT TEACHING MY KID. An added benefit would be that those that can't afford to send their kids to the same school my child is going to would be able to do so and give their kids the same opportunity my child is getting. It's better for the kids and takes nothing away from the public schools. Why is this not allowed? Because the nincompoops don't like the competition. They feel that they deserve to get paid for doing lower quality work. The nincompoops are running education and have convinced the voting nincompoops that allowing them to choose where they send their own kids would ruin the eduction their kids receive.
Perhaps a moon base specifically is not a great objective (I don't know, I'm not an expert, I want the experts to decide). But I sure as fuck do know that NASA, engineering and hard sciences research, fusion research etc should get a lot more money than they currently do.
Agreed.
invest more in these things that benefited mankind and made USA the most respected and envied country in the world.
Yeah... that would be the free market. The thing that allowed us to go to the moon and fund a space program was a strong economy. We have had the strongest economy because we have a free market. Yes, natural monopolies should be regulated and unnatural monopolies should be broken up. Yes, environmental regulations are needed to ensure responsibility. But for the most part, the market should remain free. People should be allowed to keep what they earn. People should be free. People should be allowed to fail.
You can't succeed when there is no chance of failure. You can not be free until you are responsible for you own actions. /rant off.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
You do realize that probably a quarter of the population has no income to tax, as they are under 18 and don't work, and another 10% are unemployed? Another bunch are pensioners on fixed income, or low income labourers, or labourers new to the workforce or students (college/university) who don't work a full year and therefore have very low incomes as well?
You realize that the 'bottom 80%' of the population controls about 7% of the wealth? http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2011/11/01/occupy-wall-street-and-the-rhetoric-of-equality/
In other words, about half of that group (50/80ths) is paying close to it's fair share, if not more, because of the effect I stated (which is that a large chunk of the total population isn't old enough to earn income, and another chunk, especially pensioners and people just starting to work, have very low incomes).
This is also one of the core differences between running an economy and running a business. If you tax the people at the 'bottom' who are spending all of their money already you simply depress their standard of living and inhibit their ability to become tax paying citizens.
Now the US situation, and I presume that's what you're talking about given the talking point you re-vomited back up is a specific case of one government. Unnecessary tax cuts, bridges to nowhere, 'pork barrel' projects, general looting of the public purse, ridiculously wasteful schemes are in no way unique to the US, if anything, on the scale of things, it's not bad, which is a sad commentary on the rest of the world.
It's about an hour of video. Here's a summary for those who don't want
to spend that much time.
Part 1
When he was a kid, he had an intense interest in aviation. His father
took him to airshows, etc., but his parents didn't try to direct him.
They let him do what he wanted. As a child he had a fear of death
(pets, relatives). His early interest was in being a designer of
aircraft, not a test pilot. He describes the job of a test pilot as
being basically the guy who tries to break things, find problems. The
safety culture back then was extremely different from today's; he had
an emergency ejection from a Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, and
immediately afterward went to his desk and started working again.
Part 2
He describes how the fatal Apollo 1 fire, which caused a 2-year
delay, gave them extra time to fix problems in all the different
systems. At the Apollo 11 launch, he recalls being "relaxed," because
"these things usually don't go off on time." An Apollo launch was
extremely noise, and a "very shaky ride."
Part 3
The crew got to sleep simultaneously rather than taking watches; in
order to do this, they spin-stabilized the ship so that the antennas
wouldn't drift away from Earth while they were asleep and cut
communication from the ground.
During the descent to the lunar surface, their computer signaled a
problem but "didn't admit responsibility." After checking with ground
control, they decided the computer was still functioning well enough
to allow a landing. The planned landing site turned out to be bad, so
he had to change at the last moment to land somewhere else.
While on the surface, there were a lot of worries about thermal ... it wasn't a time to meditate..."
problems, and they had to be ready to take off immediately. The
astronauts felt that landing ("the eagle has landed") was the big
deal, not stepping on the soil ("that's one small step"). They left
medallions commemorating the lives of both American and Soviet
astronauts who had died. He expresses appreciation for competition
with the Soviets, which spurred both sides on. "The check-lists were
all over us
In the bulky spacesuit, Aldrin inadvertently banged into a
circuit-breaker panel, hitting a circuit-breaker for the rocket that
was supposed to lift them off. As extra insurance against having the
circuit breaker flip during liftoff, they broke off a piece of a
magic marker to use as a "crutch" to hold the switch in place.
Part 4
They discuss conspiracy theories about the moon landing's being fake.
They compare Google Moon simulations to Apollo film, while Armstrong
narrates.
Re life after Apollo, "I'm an engineer by nature." He's
"substantially concerned about the policy direction of the
administration..." White house and congress are "at odds," and "NASA
is the shuttlecock." He sees the space program as a motivator for
young people.
Find free books.
Olympics vs. War.
Even the ancient greeks knew that competition was important, and games less destructive than fighting.
In a proper competition, both sides are better for it.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
And you'll send that food home how, exactly? 99% of all shipping today runs on diesel. No more diesel. Fly it? No more JP5. It's gonna take time to build those sailing ships and teach crews to sail them. And you'll need a lot of them. Economy of scale doesn't work so well when it comes to sailing vessels. The reason why they didn't build sail-powered supertankers is, the damned things are too big to move under sail. They figured that out in the 1600's already.
Besides, where you gonna find all the wood you need? Steel & aluminum hulls, you say? The US doesn't have any working steel mills anymore, and aluminum takes lots of electricity to refine and shape.
Mos likely, all those troops you send out to the 3rd World to exploit the locals (and you haven't told us how they're getting there without transport, btw...) are gonna get swamped once their ammo runs out, as has been noted already in another comment. Then they'll either be killed or assimulated just like the Chinese did to the Mongols. Ghenghis Khan might have won the war, but the Chinese took the long game and swallowed them up and digested them. Look up Kublai Khan sometime.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
" Of course, the answer is, work hard, be smart, take chances and eventually you'll get lucky."
sometimes. Sometime it's 'he was born with money' , other times it's 'made millions as bonuses even though they do a crappy job'.
There are many reasons.
Assume all rich people work hard, are smart, is stupid. Hollywood is filled with rich people who aren't smart, and word a few month out of the year.
My kids learned to read and do math in re- K as well. And K, and 1st. All in public schools. My friend has a high schooler learned differential calculus and computer programming in public high school.
BTW the vast majority of private schools are no better then public school.
But you wouldn't no that because you have the bias that is it's government it doesn't work.
You are unaware of the fact the 10s of thousands of projects are done by the 'government' every year on time and on budget.
You are completely unaware that government projects have far more success then private project. 90%+. NO large private company has a 90-+% success rate. You don't here about it because they control the PR. You can look at the budgets for the government in your library, and probably online now.
Yes, we need a free market, but there is a hell of a lot more to it then you seem to presume.
". You can not be free until you are responsible for you own actions. "
ah. Another person with a completely over simplistic view of the world.
Sure, if I am driving 100 miles an hour and hit a deer? my fault. My responsibilty. Get a tivket for speeding, I pay it becasue I was speed. If I decided to blow off work and got fired, My fault.
However there are a lot of things that can destroy someone life that they had no responsibility in.
Farmers who had there money taken from accounts that were contractually and legally supposed to be isolated from investments. Now they are loosing there farm. Not their fault. Hard working smart person get rear ended by a drunk and now has to spend 30 days in ICE, and will never walk write or turn their head.
There are plenty of things that can put you from hard working successful person to homeless.
"But for the most part, the market should remain free."
that's not even in discussion. Of course. The discussion is 'the most part'. How much is that?
"People should be allowed to keep what they earn. "
Are you saying people shouldn't be taxed? Because that's pretty ignorant.
"People should be free."
We are. What kind of FUD train are you riding?
" People should be allowed to fail."
Oh, They are. However having a method for them to stay working is well worth whole.
So, what do you mean by failed?
I know plenty of people who ended up taking money and food stamps from the government when the tech bubble burst. I was out ogf work for nine months. That money allowed my to eventually find another tech job and pay taxes back into the system. It allowed me not to have to move in with my inlaws so my kids would at least have a roof.
Now, mathematically, I could have made the same at a fast food place; but I wouldn't have time to see contacts, go to user groups, interviews, and advance my skills.
And yes I had been saving, And that was used as well.
", I would get whatever money the school would spend to educate my kid to spend it on the school of my choice. Nothing would be lost from the school as they are NOT TEACHING MY KID"
False. See this is the problem. You have no idea what you are talking about, it just seems right.
You no NOTHING about budgets, nothing about maintenance, nothing about the need for a school system anyone can attend.
YOU benefit from those taxes even though your child doesn't attend*. The more people that are educated, the safer, and more productive the social system you participate is. Less crime, more business.
you problem the same kind of nincompoop that doesn't understand why government spend can actual make money for the government
Stop thinking everything is like your life.
*I don't know if you know this, but you child has the right to participate in certain activities, even though she goes to a private school.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on