Support For NASA Spending Depends On Perception of Size of Space Agency Budget

MarkWhittington writes "Alan Steinberg, a post doctorate fellow in political science at Sam Houston State University, conducted a study surrounding the vexing problem of how to motivate more people to support increased levels of funding for NASA. In an October 14, 2013 piece in The Space Review, Steinberg announced the results of a study conducted with a group of college students. Steinberg's approach was based on the findings of a study by Roger Launius conducted in the late 1990s that suggested that the American public believe that NASA spending takes up about 20 percent of the federal budget. It has in fact never exceeded four percent, which it enjoyed at the height of the Apollo program, and is currently about .5 percent. Steinberg was testing a notion advanced by Neil deGrasse Tyson that if people knew the true size of NASA's budget they would be more likely to support increasing it."

Comments

Too cool for NASA

[OzPeter]

The public has no idea about the level of US spending. They need to know things like Air Conditioning The Military Costs More Than NASA's Entire Budget. Until they understand that NASA does so much for so little they will never want to expand its budget.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[gman003]

No, we need human spaceflight now more than ever. We need a self-sustaining colony, off-planet, ASAP. I don't care if it's a lunar colony, Mars, an asteroid, or even a city-sized space station at a Lagrange point, as long as it can sustain itself indefinitely. There's relatively little scientific gain to be made from this, but that's not why we should do it.

Tell me, what is rule #1 of computing? "Always keep a backup". Well, right now we're running on a single, non-redundant biosphere, and we seem to be actively sabotaging it. But even outside human-caused damage, there are easily dozens of things that could wipe out our planet's ability to sustain human life. Asteroids. Supervolcanoes. Major climate shift of any sort - anthropogenic or natural, warming or cooling. Oh, and don't forget we have enough nukes to murder ourselves quite efficiently.

Are these slim chances? Yes, but not as slim as I'd like, and considering that a lack of redundancy means the complete annihilation of the human race, I think we can afford a few trillion dollars to get things running.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Areyoukiddingme]

You may be right that the ISS isn't producing much in the way of useful science anymore, and it's certainly no longer doing so cost effectively, but then in your next paragraph you start touting the benefits of robotic rovers and orbiters and you include engineering knowledge as something valuable. The ISS is still producing lots of valuable engineering knowledge, despite the relative lack of new scientific knowledge. Learning how to live in microgravity is essentially impossible without having somebody living in microgravity and trying to keep them alive. We're still not too good at that. The ISS remains valuable for that alone. Even if we're not going to put a whole lot of humans into space soon, learning that engineering is worth doing.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

"No, we need human spaceflight now more than ever. We need a self-sustaining colony, off-planet, ASAP. I don't care if it's a lunar colony, Mars, an asteroid, or even a city-sized space station at a Lagrange point, as long as it can sustain itself indefinitely. There's relatively little scientific gain to be made from this, but that's not why we should do it."

Exactly. Some things are important beyond consideration of budget.

For example (along a different line from what you were saying, but just as important), most of the big countries like Russia, China, EU are setting their sights on the Moon, while the U.S. is off pissing away money on some jaunt to an asteroid, thanks to Obama.

But the strategic (not economic) value of the Moon cannot be overemphasized. We MUST get there, and stay there, if for no other reason than to keep others from getting too far ahead of us. Whoever controls the moon pretty much controls the Earth. Never forget that.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[NikeHerc]

But the strategic (not economic) value of the Moon cannot be overemphasized. We MUST get there, and stay there, if for no other reason than to keep others from getting too far ahead of us. Whoever controls the moon pretty much controls the Earth. Never forget that.

Other than Robert Heinlein, what is your documentation for "Whoever controls the moon pretty much controls the Earth"?

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Teancum]

The human spaceflight portion of this agency should be entirely decimated. In particular we should end US participation in the ISS. Little good science is returned from that endeavor at this point.

Those who complain about human crews in space simply don't have a damn clue about what it is that people actually do in space.

I'll agree that the current manned spaceflight program is a total joke at the moment, particularly with the infatuation with the manned program for going to Mars that is really nothing more than a jobs program to keep the companies who build ICBMs in business until the next round of missiles need to be developed. The Constellation/SLS programs in particular are a complete and total joke and a waste of money on such a monumental scale that it amazes me that anybody involved can keep a straight face when they talk about it. Considering that the Manned Spaceflight Center has no vehicles currently or even under contract that can take astronauts into space, it shows how little they actually give a damn about even trying to get a crewed program going. If it wasn't for the Soviet-developed Soyuz rockets, there wouldn't even be a manned spaceflight program.

This said, I think a responsible crewed spaceflight program can most certainly be developed... even a government program that is slightly more wasteful simply because it is a government program. Realistic goals and pushing the frontier of human existence is what was the original manned spaceflight program under NASA. There was a time when astronauts really were going "boldly where nobody has gone before" instead of "meekly going where hundreds have been". There is a point to having people in space being able to react to the environment and be able to perform tasks that machines simply are horrible about doing. It certainly shouldn't be seen as "robots vs. humans", but instead as complimentary uses where each kind of exploration program can help the other.

The ISS program was certainly not done for any science, but instead needs to be viewed as a foreign aid program. From that perspective, the ISS has been a tremendous benefit for world peace and has done a whole lot of good, at least as good as any other foreign aid program of comparable size. For myself, I sort of go "meh" in terms of continued support of the ISS. It did its job and is a nice facility for the amount of money dumped on it. If continued use of the ISS doesn't cost all that much additional money, there are some real positive things that could be done there. The best would be some real research on partial gravity (not microgravity) in a rotating reference frame, trying some technologies that will be needed for crewed missions to Mars (like perhaps even inflatable modules like the Trans-Hab.... let's get that up there finally!), and running some long term duration tests with ion engines or the VASMR engine. These are all technologies that simply can't be tested on the ground and the ISS is a perfect place to perform those kind of engineering tests. Note, I'm not saying science should happen, at least not pure science. Still, there are some things that having people in space can most definitely do.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Teancum]

One thing that the ISS has that is of particular note is the largest solar power farm in space. For all of those who think that the future of energy needs can be obtained by harvesting power from space, I don't know why virtually none of the "space solar power" advocates use any of the lessons learned from the ISS, nor why it isn't being used more actively to conduct tests from orbit.

Keep in mind that the ISS has a solar power plant of about 100 kilowatts, with an effective 30-40 kilowatts of continuous usage. That is a considerable power reserve that could be put to use in a number of ways even if people are pulled from the station completely.

Yeah, there is a whole lot of engineering research that could happen on the ISS that simply isn't being done right now.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

Other than Robert Heinlein, what is your documentation for "Whoever controls the moon pretty much controls the Earth"?

The military "high ground" has been a known principle for over 2000 years. Nukes don't change that, even a little bit.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Teancum]

As Ronald Reagan said: "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money."

That wasn't Ronald Reagan who said that. Instead, it was Everett Dirksen, who admittedly was a Republican congressman in the 1960's. He supposedly said this on an appearance with the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Bo'Bob'O]

Why? The universe doesn't need us, and won't miss us when we're gone. Whether we're on one planet, or a million, nothing lasts forever.

Frankly deferring massive amounts of resources to putting some people in cans on a frozen rock will probably worsen our chances for progress and survival. If we are concerned about our fate and want humankind to do something interesting with our future we should be putting our money in research and pure sciences. I think some sort of manned spaceflight program is probably an important part of those sciences, but massive engineering projects as a monument to our narcissism just seems like a waste of our resources.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Em Adespoton]

So you're stating that if someone on the Moon were to fire some missiles at any target on the planet, missiles that would take a few days to reach the planet, nobody would be able to do anything about it? You're suggesting that a couple of days warning of an attack is insufficient to take any kind of precautions?

Stop putting words in his mouth -- he's obviously talking about moonsharks with lasers mounted on their heads....

Re:Too cool for NASA

[gman003]

The universe doesn't need us to survive. But *we* need us to survive.

Sure, that's probably just evolution talking - species who don't consider their species important enough to protect probably don't last too long. But just because we live in a cold, uncaring universe that would just as soon kill us and forget we ever existed, doesn't mean we have to accept it. Just because it's humanity, alone, against a universe that is larger than we can even comprehend, let alone conquer, doesn't mean we need to just give up.

How much would such a project cost? In the trillions of dollars, easily.

We can afford that. The world has a collective GDP of 70 trillion. Both the US and the EU produce about 15 trillion individually. Hell, we spent nearly a trillion on Iraq alone, and that's not counting the long-term costs of that war (because you know nobody factored that in when they started that war). Even if it costs us a trillion dollars per year for a generation, we can totally afford that. And given the potential costs of failing to do so, I'm not sure we can afford not to.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Rockoon]

The problem is never the spending itself: Its the doing it inefficiently part that has always been the problem.

Computer science analogy: The problem is that sort() calls bubble(). Replace sort() with NASA spending, and bubble() with crony capitalism.

The government doesnt normally do things efficiently. It sometimes does a few things efficiently for short periods of time, but the lack of actual accountability always degrades the situation into inefficiency. So the question we must ask ourselves is not if NASA's "mission" is worthy of resource allocation, but instead if its worthy of a SPECIFIC AMOUNT of resource allocation. Its pretty clear than $8 billion dollar telescopes are an obscene waste of resources.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Mr. Slippery]

Tell me, what is rule #1 of computing? "Always keep a backup".

For the next 100,000,000 years at least, there are no circumstances under which the surface or near surface of the Earth will be more hostile to survival than space. You've got gravity, water, building material, air...far more practical to build those "backups" in underground or undersea bunkers.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[wagnerrp]

Earth is a pain in the ass to get off of. The Moon is much much easier, and that's even if you don't bother building a launch rail that would nearly make orbital launches free. The Moon is a stepping stone to the rest of the solar system. Low gravity, easy access to power, easy access to space, easy access to minerals; the surface is pretty nasty, but once you get below the charged, irradiated, pulverized top soil, it's an industrial mecca.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[El Puerco Loco]

Ask the average tea partier how much of the federal budget is spent individually on nasa, welfare, foreign aid, food stamps, obama phones, free abortions and qurans for terrorists and their numbers will add up to about 400%. The other half is spent on obamacare.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[wagnerrp]

The only thing that could really be done on the ISS related to beamed solar power is actually attempting to beam solar power. Throw a few dozen kilowatt microwave transmitter up there, and actually try to do it. The array itself is big and powerful, but it's nothing we haven't been doing for decades, and not the kind of design you would want to use if your whole mission was power generation.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

"Well, if you're firing missiles from the moon, it's pretty easy to get them to collide with earth at 10 km / sec or so, and you can do it for a lot less gas than it would take from the earth's surface."

Thank you. Particularly what I had in mind, was little different than the "smart pebble" idea from... I think it was the late 70s?

When you have that much kinetic energy behind something, all you have to do is make sure it hits the target. You don't have to do much else.

The original "smart pebble" turned out to be beyond the technology of the day. But it isn't now.

As Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote (this is a paraphrase): "What do you do if you want to destroy something from high orbit? Simple. Drop a rock on it." I believe in the novel they used something more along the lines of "smart rebar". Just give it a little directional capability, put some fins in the back, and just drop it in the general direction of the target from high enough. Mission accomplished.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

"Would a guy spontaneously describe his ass using words like smooth and shapely? I think not."

Well, he might. But there isn't much chance he'd be in my particular circle of friends.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

"Why not?"

Seriously?

Not because I have anything against gay people. I don't. But because flamers (which is NOT the same thing) irritate me vastly.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Teancum]

The array itself is big and powerful, but it's nothing we haven't been doing for decades, and not the kind of design you would want to use if your whole mission was power generation.

Oh, really? I've seen all kinds of whimsical proposals for space solar power that sort of presumes that the solar panels you can pick up at Harbor Freight (or whatever dealer you can find online or via Amazon) can simply be slapped together with super light weight duct tape and bailing twine and magically be able to transmit that power to the Earth.

From my perspective, the actually transmitters are the easy part of the whole space solar power, not the deal breaker. Instead, you need to find a way to scale up these arrays in a way that will actually work. You need to find ways to cool down those arrays and also find a way to actually get them built. While no doubt there might be some ways to automate the deployment of these panels, some considerable experience can be gained in terms of how the ISS was constructed in the first place and may very well require getting a few people to get "out there" to perform some EVAs in order to get such large scale structures built. Scaling structures is never easy, and I contend that the ISS, as well as experience on both MIR and Skylab for their solar arrays can prove to be invaluable in terms of realizing what real world issues you will encounter when trying to actually deploy these kind of devices.

Yes, this is something that is very different than what has been done for decades on other spacecraft. I will admit that the basic solar cell has been largely identical the whole time, but again that isn't the show stopper in terms of getting one of those large mega arrays built. The solar panel array on the ISS simply has no equal and is a real world example and something that is in current use as opposed to something that is a fairy tale and pipe dream on some designers desk. Anybody who ignores the engineering challenges that were discovered and overcome (much less some serious problems that the station has had to deal with over its lifetime) is ignoring a huge database of information that will be absolutely vital to building a real large scale solar panel array.

At the very least I would expect designers to try and explain why their design is superior to the ISS array and mention specific engineering flaws in the ISS array as something they intend to overcome with an alternate approach. That is real world engineering here, and in the literature I've read I simply don't see that kind of thing happening at all. They simply pretend that the ISS was never even built in the first place.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Aighearach]

No, we need human spaceflight now more than ever. We need a self-sustaining colony, off-planet, ASAP. I don't care if it's a lunar colony, Mars, an asteroid, or even a city-sized space station at a Lagrange point, as long as it can sustain itself indefinitely.

While I agree with the first part, the latter part splashes some cold water on it. Where it is is directly related to it being self sustaining, currently. And we don't have a good location.

I'm of the opinion that non-manned space flight is the best way to push the technology forwards, though. A giant farm in the sky operated remotely from Earth would get us a whole lot closer than building moon bubbles just to be there.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[TheRaven64]

There is no such thing as stealth in space. Anything coming from the moon to the Earth would either need a huge amount of thrust to go straight down (which would be easy to detect), or would cross into daylight and reflect a lot of heat even if it were black. And you can bet that anyone who had a launch capability on the moon would be under close scrutiny.

They'd also better have a first-rate missile defence shield, because in the two days it would take their projectile to reach Earth, their target would launch a lot of ballistic missiles (which take a maximum of about 40 minutes to arrive, anywhere in the world) and render their cities smouldering ruins.

And if they're relying on a large mass, not a warhead, then they won't have much delta-V for dodging, so they'll be easy to intercept. If they've painted it black, then it will be very vulnerable to heating by laser weapons and whatever colour it is it will be easy to fragment. The kind of mass that you'd need to survive reentry would either need to be huge or covered in (very fragile and vulnerable to attack) ceramic tiles to dissipate the heat. If you fragment it, the atmospheric friction will cause the entire thing to evaporate.

If attacking from space were easy, then Earth would have had a lot more extinction events in its past. The atmosphere alone does a pretty good job as a meteor shield.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Aighearach]

Right, and as in Heinlein, that is mostly only useful in broad political strokes where a moon with a large population might be able to gain freedom. But if they were demanding anything important to us down here... rocks up there only need mass. But we have fuel down here. And while a rock dropped from that height might be as bad as a nuke... so are nukes. ;) And a nuke dropped from up there is only as bad as a nuke dropped from a bomber. So you have a fixed position, that we can see, and you're going to add days to the flight time, for no other advantage. And if you're using mass, you lose the power to negotiate as soon as the rocks are launched because you can't get the back or detonate early.

Stations in Low Earth Orbit are much scarier.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Aighearach]

Good point! I know from the news the ISS is learning valuable engineering lessons about docking, air locks, and space suits. :)

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Aighearach]

If it wasn't for the Soviet-developed Soyuz rockets, there wouldn't even be a manned spaceflight program.

No, if it wasn't for the Soyuz, we'd have built the fancy new shuttle instead of any of these unmanned Mars programs.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[wagnerrp]

The array itself is big and powerful, but it's nothing we haven't been doing for decades, and not the kind of design you would want to use if your whole mission was power generation.

Oh, really? I've seen all kinds of whimsical proposals for space solar power that sort of presumes that the solar panels you can pick up at Harbor Freight (or whatever dealer you can find online or via Amazon) can simply be slapped together with super light weight duct tape and bailing twine and magically be able to transmit that power to the Earth.

When it comes to space, the primary thing you're looking for is ruggedness. You don't want to waste a several hundred million dollar launch because your solar array failed. If possible, you surface mount. If you need more power, you unfold an array with the smallest amount of moving parts you can, which means limited or no sun tracking, which means panels instead of focused solar. If your lifespan needs are limited, you may consider cheaper silicon cells. If you need longer duration, you use Ga-As cells, since they are less susceptible to UV damage.

This design of solar power only works because there is no alternative power source. If you're actually looking to compete with traditional terrestrial sources, you need to cut down on costs. That means cutting down on weight, increasing lifetime, and trading ruggedness for redundancy. You get rid of big panels, and use sun tracked Mylar mirrors. Alignment becomes important, but they're significantly lighter, and unlike panels, micrometeorite damage will only punch tiny holes, rather than short out entire cells. You put heavy filtering on your focused cells to limit degradation. You cool it using... I honestly have no idea. You would probably need a real heat pump to cool those cells with a reasonable sized radiator.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[drinkypoo]

For example (along a different line from what you were saying, but just as important), most of the big countries like Russia, China, EU are setting their sights on the Moon, while the U.S. is off pissing away money on some jaunt to an asteroid, thanks to Obama.

The Moon would be useful if we currently knew what to do with He3. Otherwise, not so much.

But the strategic (not economic) value of the Moon cannot be overemphasized. We MUST get there, and stay there, if for no other reason than to keep others from getting too far ahead of us. Whoever controls the moon pretty much controls the Earth. Never forget that.

Well, no. In actuality, whoever controls orbit controls Earth, and there's no evidence that's best done from the moon. The moon is in a predictable orbit, it's a sitting target. Whoever controls the L-points controls the solar system. The moon may be less of a gravity well than the Earth, but it's still one. Better not to be in one at all. And whoever mines asteroids first is likely to also be who refines them in space first and they will control the L-points first.

The goals are Mars and Europa. The Moon is not necessarily all that useful. If you can bypass that stage entirely and go straight to asteroid mining, that's probably far better than messing with the moon at all.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[drinkypoo]

We've already seen thin film panels made here on earth consisting of many small cells, called Nanosolar. For a while someone was buying up all their output, I have no idea WTF is up now. If you poke a hole in the panel, they keep working, because of the way they're designed.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

"How fortunate that you're really female, then. Otherwise you'd vastly irritate yourself all the time."

You? Again? What part of "GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE" do you not understand? Is it really possible that you really don't understand the extent to which you're behaving like a gigantic asshole?

I got news for you, buddy. If it becomes necessary, IP addresses can be looked up.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

"How fortunate that you're really female, then. Otherwise you'd vastly irritate yourself all the time."

Just in case you did not understand my last reply (because in the past these things seemed to have gone over your head), I will clarify the situation for you: stalking laws are harsh. You really don't want to fall on the wrong side of that line. Which I am pretty sure you have already done, more than once.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

"Dude, you just called yourself a "flamer". That's fucking priceless! "

I did nothing of the sort, and that comment was pretty clearly flameBAIT.

"Go ahead, look up my IP address and sic the cops on me for my imaginary crimes. It was worth it."

I apologize *IF* I mistook you for someone else. But I very strongly doubt that I did.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Valdrax]

I don't care if it's a lunar colony, Mars, an asteroid, or even a city-sized space station at a Lagrange point, as long as it can sustain itself indefinitely.

Start on Earth first. Any technology to build a wholly self-sustaining community is so much easier when there is gravity, pressure, and radiation shielding. Once we solve the issues of sustainability on the ground, we can worry about the additional challenges (or work on them in parallel with non-sustainable space stations).

And, along the way, we may obviate the need for going off-planet to survive most of the disasters you list, which will help a LOT more people live through them.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Em Adespoton]

...and back to the original pedantry... I use the English gender-neutral "his" unless there is some reason not to online... at which point I use either "his" or "her". Maybe someday English will shift enough that we'll have a true gender neutral term. But in my opinion, his/her or randomly alternating them is as bigoted as continually saying "African American people" instead of "people" whenever the person happens to have that specific genetic/social history.

JQP: try not to let him get to you too much; while he likely does reside in the US where he could face lawsuits/fines/jailtime/ostracization/severely limited job pool for the stuff he's written (if it is indeed the same guy), he could be from anywhere American English is spoken, and not all countries have such strict stalking laws (although some have harsher ones).

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

JQP: try not to let him get to you too much; while he likely does reside in the US where he could face lawsuits/fines/jailtime/ostracization/severely limited job pool for the stuff he's written (if it is indeed the same guy), he could be from anywhere American English is spoken, and not all countries have such strict stalking laws (although some have harsher ones).

The point is that I am pretty sure that I know who it is, and IF I am correct, he both lives in the United States, and has crossed the legal line more than once. He has harassed me on a number of occasions, and publicly made some rather ridiculous (but nevertheless offensive) accusations.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[kermidge]

"how dare any of you say we are worth saving."

Mozart.

Einstein, Newton, Euler.

A carved whalebone circa 10,000 B.C., a cave painting circa 40,000 B.C.; both artists unknown but knowable.

The list goes on, a panoply of the sublime, elegant, beautiful; describing the Universe and reflecting the best of us.

By his works is a man known. Seems to me there is a long list of works worth saving, We're too close in time to more recent things to properly judge what to add. For all the ills the species gets up to it does manage to produce people worth saving, and perhaps in time, itself.

I've read plenty of dystopian stuff over time, and alternatives. Consider, if you will, that we may regard ourselves as an accidental experiment of genes; who's to say where that leads? For as much as some of the possibles give me the willies, I'm in favor of continuing the experiment. To do so requires surviving eventual catastrophe to Earth.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[kermidge]

In point of fact now that construction is complete (additional modules to be added as adjuncts), with full power generation, and with a full crew complement, much in the way of originally-proposed and added science experiments are now in full swing. Prototyping production for pharmaceuticals and materials is progressing also.

I think you are right in that what has been learned and is being learned regarding engineering has already given rich reward, with more to come. Add in knowledge being gained in long-term space occupancy - medical and sociological; and in closed environment design and maintenance. (That's closed, as distinct from self-sustaining - for the latter we'd need a good-sized Moon base or O'Neill colony.)

A thing to do would be to drain the lower Van Allen belt, boost the ISS to a higher orbit so's to avoid most debris risk and ease orbit sustaining, and then go from there. There is plenty of money to be made in re-fueling and doing simple repairs to satellites. There's also Gerald Drigger's sub-orbital rendezvous to try out as a cheaper and easier way of getting stuff to and fro.

One of the things we don't know is how long the material integrity of ISS will last. That's part of the experiment. Also, it remains to be seen how the U.S.'s refusal to allow Chinese participation will play out.

Re: Too cool for NASA

[lonny-eachus]

What kind of offensive accusations?

Re: Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

"What kind of offensive accusations?"

What possible motive do you imagine I might have to answer that question?

By the way: thanks for confirming who you are, and giving me one more thing to record in my log book.

Re: Too cool for NASA

[lonny-eachus]

What possible motive do you imagine I might have to answer that question?

Yeah, I figured you were just blowing hot air.

By the way: thanks for confirming who you are, and giving me one more thing to record in my log book.

Why do you care that I'm Lonny Eachus? Why are you recording this?

Re: Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

"Why do you care that I'm Lonny Eachus? Why are you recording this?"

I don't care who you claim to be. The only relevant fact is that by using that name (Which you have brought up here before, remember?), you are confirming beyond reasonable doubt who you are... AND in doing so, have confirmed that you are, indeed, the person who has been harassing me now for at least a couple of years. And that is why I record such things.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions. And here's a hint, although you don't deserve one: you are not as smart as you think you are.

Re: Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

Why are you recording this?

And here's another hint: I doubt very much your professional colleagues would be very happy to find out about your conduct. If, that is, you are indeed a professional, and that's not all some other elaborate pretense, like your sock-puppetry here has been.

Re: Too cool for NASA

[lonny-eachus]

I doubt very much your professional colleagues would be very happy to find out about your conduct.

Gosh, that sounds like a threat. Luckily, it's a hollow threat because you're too much of a coward to do anything except whine endlessly using your Jane sockpuppet.

Re: Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

"Gosh, that sounds like a threat."

If you think it's a "threat", you don't know much about the law. It's merely a statement of opinion.

There is a HUGE difference, which you do not seem to understand or appreciate, between having a years-old, well-established, consistent online presence, and a "sockpuppet". The former is socially acceptable and even encouraged behavior, and the other is... well, to understate it a bit, not.

You aren't going to be able to bluster your way out of this. Not that you were any good at that before, either.

Re: Too cool for NASA

[lonny-eachus]

Sockpuppets aren't distinguished from pseudonyms by how many years they post. They're distinguished because "the sockpuppet poses as an independent third-party unaffiliated with the puppeteer" and a pseudonym doesn't. For instance, a male puppeteer controlling a sockpuppet who claims to be female is clearly posing as an independent third-party.

Re: Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

Bluff, bluster, and bullshit. You conveniently omit the very first part of the article, which says:

"A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception."

You are distorting the meaning. You might try to claim that a person using a pseudonym is deceiving others, but that is generally not the purpose of posting under a pseudonym.

You, on the other hand, have deliberately posed as Anonymous Coward in order to try to deceive people.

Bluff and bluster all you want. Nitpick all you want. It makes not a whit of difference. I -- and most other internet-savvy people -- already KNOW what a sockpuppet is. We don't need Wikipedia to tell us. It is very clear to any person knowledgeable about social media that I have not been engaging in sockpuppetry, but that you have.

Besides, I have to wonder why you're arguing with me. It certainly isn't me who you might need to convince. And "good luck with that", as they say. If it comes to that, you will probably need it. But I doubt you'll get it.

Re: Too cool for NASA

[Jane Q. Public]

And by the way: I won't be replying further here. I repeat that I feel your incessant prodding, and other such conduct, has constituted harassment. I do not intend to indulge you in it. Rather, I intend to contemplate my next steps.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Teancum]

When it comes to space, the primary thing you're looking for is ruggedness. You don't want to waste a several hundred million dollar launch because your solar array failed. If possible, you surface mount. If you need more power, you unfold an array with the smallest amount of moving parts you can, which means limited or no sun tracking, which means panels instead of focused solar. If your lifespan needs are limited, you may consider cheaper silicon cells. If you need longer duration, you use Ga-As cells, since they are less susceptible to UV damage.

There is also a huge difference between a solar panel that may be a dozen watts (for a nanosat) or even a few kilowatts (like a large telecom satellite) as opposed to the claims of practical space-based solar power transmitter that is in the megawatt range or higher. The only thing that has gone into space with that kind of power production (or at least anything near that scale) has been the ISS. It was built with several different payloads by a human crew involved in its assembly. If you are talking something 10x or 100x the power production (and that is supposedly a "small" solar power satellite) the complexity involved is going to be even larger and IMHO likely require some astronauts to physically work out the issues at the location directly. There certainly is no way that such an array would ever be built in one launch.

BTW, I completely agree with you in terms of cost, which is one of the things that IMHO kills even the discussion of such a concept. At the current launch prices of about $10k/kg, you could build solar panels out of pure gold & diamonds yet still be overwhelmed with launch costs. Trying to get cheap like is done for terrestrial based solar panels simply is just being silly as in penny wise and pound foolish. Actual manufacturing of the solar cells themselves might as well be geared toward high efficiency per pound rather than high efficiency per dollar... and for space-based applications they actually are built for weight and not per unit cost. Spending $100k for a kilowatt solar panel is actually a very reasonable expenditure if as you suggest it can be rugged and last as long or longer than the rest of the components on that spacecraft.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Teancum]

If it wasn't for the Soviet-developed Soyuz rockets, there wouldn't even be a manned spaceflight program.

No, if it wasn't for the Soyuz, we'd have built the fancy new shuttle instead of any of these unmanned Mars programs.

You mean like the CEV before it was transformed into the Orion capsule? How many billions of dollars more do you think would have been dumped down that rat hole had NASA not gone begging and pleading to Roscosmos to let NASA astronauts fly on the Soyuz spacecraft?

The problems at NASA are very deep and a part of the culture. As I was trying to point out, future missions to Mars are already being cut AND NASA is still using Soyuz spacecraft for getting to the ISS. That hasn't changed. Your premise and suggestion simply isn't even true.

Re:Too cool for NASA

[Aighearach]

NASA doesn't get more or less funding depending on what projects they do, not for a long time. Your blahblah about Soyuz aside, if they weren't doing the Mars projects, that amount is exactly how much they would have wasted on the shuttle.

Doing Mars instead was a great victory for science.

ADS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoiler alert - popup, autoplay video and noisy tab within.

Re:ADS!

[Aighearach]

That's what you get for trying to read the story.

Summary or cliffhanger?

[pjt33]

And if you want to know the results, you'll have to RTFA. Submitter must be new here.

Re:Summary or cliffhanger?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with RTFA is that for a story like this, there are three articles, and it's not clear which one is most important. By the time someone actually does read 3 articles and come back to post, half the people will already have moved on.

One-page answer to question: Why spend on space?

[sighted]

In the hope that the principles in this study are correct, I made this little micro-site to quickly answer the question: "Why spend money on space when there are problems here at home?" http://www.ridingwithrobots.org/earth

Blah, blah, blah.

[Nutria]

Almost every federal project is a tiny fraction of the budget, and the same study can be performed on all of them, and since we want clean air, clean water, nice federal parks, more knowledge of the ocean, fewer turtles poached, etc, etc, etc, the results will come out just the same no matter what agency you look at.

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[bob_super]

Almost every federal project is a tiny fraction of the budget

Only true for the "discretionary spending", and then again only if you exclude the military.

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[Gr33nJ3ll0]

Let me introduce you to a small part of the budget labeled "Defense".... :)

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[timeOday]

You took the words out of my mouth, in particular let us not forget the debate over PBS in the most recent Presidential election. When quizzed on PBS funding:

A majority of poll respondents think the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a non-profit created by Congress that helps fund NPR and PBS as well as other public media, receives a share of 1 percent or more of the federal governmentâ(TM)s budget.

In the financial year for 2010, the CPB reported receiving $506 million in federal appropriations. According to the White Houseâ(TM)s Office of Management and Budget, the federal budget for 2010 was $3.456 trillion. Using those numbers, the CPB receives about .00014 percent of the federal budget. Of course, poll respondents are way off in other areas, assigning a median of 137 percent of the federal governmentâ(TM)s budget to various government programs, suggesting Americans think the government simply spends more than it actually does as a general rule.

Poll respondents always favor nonspecific measures like "cutting government spending." Then it reverses when you ask about specific programs, especially the ones that actually cost a lot, like DoD and Social Security.

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[Nutria]

Let me introduce you to a little word named "almost".

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[Kohath]

Every individual defense program is a tiny fraction of the whole budget. You can slice anything up enough so it's a tiny fraction. We should stop spending so many tiny fractions.

Funding for space exploration may be good for a country that isn't $17 Trillion in debt. Or a country with a balanced budget. Or a rich country with a healthy economy. For a country like the US, it's just part of the problem -- albeit only a tiny fraction of the problem.

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[green is the enemy]

The US economy has never been stronger or more productive. The government debt issues are mostly due to the unwillingness to raise taxes. We have plenty of room for large, ambitious, high-risk, high-payoff projects. We just have to decide to do them! We gotta hurry up already. Life is getting boring! The best and brightest minds are working on web advertising and stock trading.

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[similar_name]

The fundamental problem is that as productivity and population grows so should the money supply. Unfortunately we grow the money supply with debt. We owe $17 trillion in a currency that we create. Look into how the money supply works and you'll understand why from individuals, to companies, to the government we are almost universally in debt. Oddly, it would probably work better if the government printed the money instead of letting the fed do it and then borrowing it.

At the end of the day, what does it even mean. We have the resources and labor to build a house, but not the money supply. So the banks conjure it up and create money out of thin air with the expectation it be paid back with interest. Over 90% of the money in our money supply is from debt. If America ever actually did get out of debt, we'd all be broke as there simply isn't enough money. Which gets to the heart of the matter. Money is a human invention to facilitate trade. It should never get in the way of it. Yet, because of the way our money is setup, it is becoming an obstacle.

To be fair, this system can work. But, it requires the wealthy to constantly spend their money back into the economy so the population can get it to repay their debt with interest. However, when money accumulates, that doesn't happen and the only way to pay back the interest is take on more debt.

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[Rockoon]

The US economy has never been stronger or more productive. The government debt issues are mostly due to the unwillingness to raise taxes.

Taxes naturally go up when the economy improves.. you seem to be ignoring that entirely, that in spite of growing revenue the deficit grows even faster.

The wealth of a nation is the goods and services that its people enjoy, so its no surprise that with the sheer volume of inefficient resource allocation that the government is instigating that we are all poorer for it. Its not the taxes that cost us, its the inefficient spending that costs us.

If the government took in the same quantity of money that it does now but just burned it in a fire pit, we would all be better off than the government instead buying man-hours off the market (both directly and indirectly through contracting) and allocating it in such a poor manner. Those man hours could have been used to provide efficient goods and services (and WOULD be used for that if we let inefficient businesses fail) which would mean more goods and services to go around for everyone than the alternative where the man hours are used inefficiently by writ of law.

I would have no problem with the government taking 99% of my income if that didnt mean that at least 99% of the people were working (or paid for not working) directly or indirectly for a government-protected inefficiency. The problem is that that is in fact what it would mean.

Suppose in 1990 that the government froze spending, locked it to inflation. Well, 1990 wasn't so bad, right? Has there been great strides in the quality of life since then that we can attribute to government spending? Not at all, but the government would not only be debt free, it would have a completely monstrous surplus of revenue and a huge pile of money right now, and the GDP (and thus the goods and services that define our wealth as a nation) would be much greater than it is now,

The rate of growth of government spending as been significantly greater than GDP growth since the 1980s. Thats how we got into this mess, and you did not propose a solution: You just proposed to enable the government to make it even worse.

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[quenda]

So if you ask the people how much to fund each item, it will add up to well over 100% of revenue?

Of course it is inconceivable for the federal government to spend more than they receive.

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[Nutria]

it will add up to well over 100%

of current spending.

of revenue?

The Kobayashi Maru ploy only works when the other guy doesn't notice what you're doing.

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[green is the enemy]

You're right on many points. There is inefficiency in the way government spends money. Private companies are more efficient when they have to compete. However, private companies are incapable of investing in high-risk science and technology that may benefit us all 50 years from now. What I'm trying to get at is that we got bogged down in trying to improve the efficiency of mundane economic activity, but at the same time are failing to invest in our long-term prosperity. This is a path to eventual stagnation and then decline.

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[timeOday]

Suppose in 1990 that the government froze spending, locked it to inflation. Well, 1990 wasn't so bad, right? Has there been great strides in the quality of life since then that we can attribute to government spending? Not at all,

You are completely ignoring the main reason for the budget problem! It's demographics. In 1990 there were almost 20% more workers per retiree than now. The effect on social security / medicare is very predictable. Meanwhile healthcare costs have been increasing much faster than inflation. This is true both inside and outside government programs, but the government picks up the tab for the elderly, who incur the most expenses. So, have we got anything for our money since 1990? Yes! average remaining life expectancy at 65 has increased by 2 years since 1990.

So, the idea that government expenditures went up mysteriously, or due to largesse, is incorrect.

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[Valdrax]

Almost every federal project is a tiny fraction of the budget...

NASA isn't a single federal project. It's a department with a large variety of programs under its wing. Not every equivalent branch of the government is funded so little ...or so much. The EPA gets roughly half of what NASA does. The National Parks Service gets about 1/6. NOAA gets 1/3. On the other hand, Homeland Security & State get over 3X NASA's budget each. Veteran's Affairs gets almost 8X. Defense gets about 38X.

They're not all the same, unless you deliberately slice them to the same size to win the argument through definition rather than merits.

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[kermidge]

Outstanding chart from the link. Thank you! Hypocrisy indeed - those guys exemplify Goebbels's credo about the big lie.

Re:Blah, blah, blah.

[kermidge]

Because the populace prefers lies that conform to their comfortable prejudices rather than truth that confronts them.

Re:Defund NASA.

[bobbied]

There are some things that are best developed by government due to cost, risk and lack of a valid business case for profit that drives private enterprise. Of course, it should be handed over to private enterprise as soon as a business case is found.

How long will it be before there is a business reason to go to Mars? I'm thinking a LONG time.. So NASA is a reasonable expense, if you have the money.

Easy way to increase NASA funding - China success

[Anonymous Coward]

A successful one-up of NASA by the Chinese space agency would be a powerful motivator for Congressional funding efforts.

Capcha - "mandarin"

Unmanned, yes, manned no

[coyote_oww]

The problem is NASA's obsession with manned spaceflight. The best work is done unmanned, and it's way less expensive. Toss the astronaut suits and use the whole budget for unmanned missions.

Manned spaceflight only makes sense with a huge breakthrough in propulsion. Otherwise, there is no where to go where a human being would be useful enough to make it worthwhile. As it stands, manned flight serves only to fulfill fanboy Star Trek fantasies.

Until then, I will be a techie steadfastly against more NASA spending. Its not just the general public you need to convince, its at least some of the STEM people too.

Re:Unmanned, yes, manned no

[Nutria]

The best work is done unmanned

For the first 30 years of NASA, though, computers weren't small and powerful enough. Thus the focus on manned flight.

Now they have to change that mindset, but it's an incredibly deep way of thinking, and government agencies aren't that well known for their ability to change... :(

Re:Unmanned, yes, manned no

[Anonymous Coward]

First, how do you define "best work"? I'm pretty sure the challenge of hauling our primitive carcasses up to space is a big enough engineering challenge that it yields some interesting science/engineering results.

Second, most of what NASA does is robotics, and for the same reasons you state. It's mostly been presidents eager to leave a mark on history that push for manned missions.

Re:Unmanned, yes, manned no

[green is the enemy]

There is a pragmatic reason for continuing manned space flight: It is easier to get funding for it from the general public. It could even be that most robotic NASA missions are piggybacking on the manned space program for their funding.

Having said this, is it really that bad that we spend money on manned space flight? Sure, some of it is wasted, but so is much of the money spent on defense, for example. We still get some scientific and technological benefit. The losses are a normal part of the way humans function.

Re:Unmanned, yes, manned no

[VortexCortex]

Hello fool. If you want to see space funding, you must get Joe 6-pack interested. That means putting people in space. Additionally, all the tech that will solve the problems of manned space exploration will improve life here. Finally: ARE YOU EVEN SENTIENT?! Look, if you were sentient you'd know your chance of extinction is 100% unless you get off that cozy little wet rock. You're hundreds of thousands of years OVER DUE for a mass extinction event.

How can anyone sentient be against manned space flight? You're living on borrowed time. How can you bury your fool head in the sand and ignore the fossil record therein?! If it was discovered tomorrow that this planet would be sterilized by this time next month, it would be YOUR FAULT. Folks like YOU are why we've spent 40 fucking years NOT doing anything about it. I've got one word for you smug mother-nature fuckers: Chelyabinsk.

Re:Unmanned, yes, manned no

[FatLittleMonkey]

For the first 30 years of NASA, though, computers weren't small and powerful enough. Thus the focus on manned flight.

Nonsense. Pioneer, Mariner, Voyager, etc. All the Earth-observation sats. Even Apollo sample return was within reach of an unmanned program, given the Luna 16 sample return that occurred during the Apollo program. Humans did nothing in the first 30 years that unmanned missions couldn't, except being "humans in space".

The only things humans are better than robots is in-orbit construction and fixing the robots. Two things that NASA is now avoiding like the plague in mission planning.

Re:Unmanned, yes, manned no

[Valdrax]

Manned spaceflight only makes sense with a huge breakthrough in propulsion. Otherwise, there is no where to go where a human being would be useful enough to make it worthwhile.

There's plenty of interesting science and engineering to do just right in our orbit. At the very least, it serves as an important testbed for building the technology to support human life in space as well as to discover the health risks of being in space that aren't apparent on the ground. (e.g. Space blindness.)

It's like all the people pooh-poohing ITER in the article about it today. ITER isn't going to be a commercial reactor. Neither is DEMO. But PROTO won't be able to be build without ITER and DEMO to do the fundamental research into addressing the problems we know about and to uncover the ones we don't. Manned space travel will never be practical without working our way through impractical manned space travel first. Real life isn't some sort of game where we can just spend enough research points and pop a working technology later. You have to meet problems head on to solve them.

Re:Unmanned, yes, manned no

[coyote_oww]

The problem with manned space flight, that is, getting somewhere else isn't putting people in a tube and blasting off. Its propulsion. If we are wasting money moving people around pointlessly, you aren't using that money to develop propulsion systems.

Think of it as a long term project that has bottlenecks. The big bottleneck isn't people, its getting something, anything to a meaningful destination. If you can't move 1kg of computer to Alpha Centari, you can't move 80kg of human + the several tons of support systems s/he will need to stay alive.

So, do the logical, and develop a system that can move 1kg before you stack 2 tons on your spaceship.

And, of course, try to be respectful of people that you disagree with.

Re:Unmanned, yes, manned no

[kermidge]

NASA has been given manned missions from time to time by Congress. They also have manned missions they'd like to do. However, going back to their NACA roots, NASA has always been about research, first and foremost; and only some of that requires manned craft.

If you look at the totality of NASA's projects only a small portion involves manned flight, now and historically. In that regard, the whole Apollo-era was an anomaly, albeit with the sustained role for manned testbeds going all the way back to Langley Field and now at Edwards and a few other sites.

The "obsession" is mis-perception, not reality. ISS, for instance, is an international outgrowth of various research efforts but reflective also of political diktat, and but a relatively small part of NASA's overall work. Such manned flight as it is now is helping to expand our knowledge in a variety of useful areas. You'd know that if you looked into to things a bit.

Nonsense

[djupedal]

It's never been about spending or how much - it's always about value, plain and simple ROI. NASA has always appeared needy, these days more than ever, and when someone gets noisy about needing funding, people get suspicious.

Why is it NASA always wants just a bit more and their promised discovery is right around the corner? They get used to being funded and hate updating resumes for the private sector. No surprise there and no surprise tax payers mistrust funding them without end.

Re:Nonsense

[Teancum]

Since you bring up ROI, I would have to agree that the money spent on Apollo has ultimately resulted in more money going into the American economy and in the long run far more economic activity from the resulting technology developed than if the money had simply been refunded to the tax payers for them to spend on Super Bowl tickets and other frivolous things. That said, how much of that kind of extreme cutting edge technology is being developed at NASA at the moment?

Computer technology for NASA missions is using not just yesterday's technology, but even a generation or two even further back. To give an example, the computer being used for the New Horizons spacecraft (currently enroute to Pluto) has the same CPU (admittedly radiation hardened and a bit more robust) that the Sony Playstation One uses. The Space Shuttle guidance computers were 16-bit computers that were about as powerful as the original IBM-PCs.

The SLS program seems to be a reboot to the Apollo program. The engines on the SLS are going to use the Space Shuttle Main Engines (literally.... they are using the very same engines that were used on the now retired shuttles and will throw them away in the Atlantic when the 1st stage is used). They are even reviewing the J-2 engine that the Saturn V used for its 2nd stage.

I could go on, but my point is that so little is really breaking new ground and pushing technology that I fail to see what NASA is actually doing at the moment that is worth even the limited funds it is receiving at the moment. From a ROI perspective, there basically isn't any.

Re:Nonsense

[similar_name]

Nobody cares about ROI either (I'm sure NASA has a better than average ROI as government agencies go). Regardless of ROI or how much is spent, people are either for more or for less. Same thing with every other political topic. Ask someone if we should spend more or less on education and they will give you an answer. Ask them specifically, how much we should spend per child, or if we should spend the same on gifted, average, or special needs per child, and they have no idea. Ask them how much the military budget should be and again, no one has an answer.

So, people say more or less funding for NASA, no one on either side actually puts forth a number. If NASA's budget is around $17 billion and you ask someone who says NASA should get more if $20 billion would work they won't know. If someone says they think NASA should get less, ask them if $15 billion would be right and they're unlikely to know either. There's not even the appearance of logic or reason in our public debate, it is completely fueled by emotion and political dogma.

Re:Nonsense

[Teancum]

That may be true, but in the 1960's NASA was at the forefront of computing technology. The Apollo Guidance Computer was nearly the very first major device built with integrated circuits. So many chips were used by NASA that it represented something like 60%-70% of the global production for computer chips at the time and one of the reasons why many people associated NASA with computer technology. NASA also created the first real-time operating systems, as well as the notion of a time-share system that would have multiple users concurrently using the same computer resources. Web servers are a lasting legacy to this early technology. There was a time that NASA really did push the technology and got software and computer engineers to really do things, very basic and fundamental things, that had never been done before and helped advance the industry in ways that still are being impacted by those efforts.

While I will admit that Velcro and Tang (much less the Fischer Space Pen) had nothing to do with NASA other than NASA used all of those items, there certainly were many advances in technology that happened when NASA really pushed the boundaries. It really is remarkable realizing just how little was known about the Moon in 1961 when Kennedy made his famous speech about going to the Moon "before this decade is out". Even when the Gemini flights were happening, there was still debate going on about how many of the craters on the Moon were volcanic vents as opposed to impact craters (some apparently are, but far fewer than was thought at the time). Theories like the Late Heavy Bombardment simply had never even been considered until after the astronauts actually got to the Moon and were really examining the features up close.

My point is that NASA is no longer in the forefront of pushing technology like it was doing in the 1960's. As a result, while there certainly are some interesting things that NASA is still doing, it is just a shadow of what it was like. Simply dumping money into NASA isn't going to change that either.

Oh, I think there still are some things NASA could be doing that could really push the frontiers of technology in a similar fashion. The NAUTLUS-X spaceship (yes, spaceship as opposed to spacecraft) is one of those wacky off the wall things that IMHO should be getting much more support to actually get built. A real space program with a strong vision for what it should be doing is another. There just hasn't been a president since LBJ that cared to do any of that, which is why NASA is just a lame government agency right now.

Re:Nonsense

[FireFury03]

There's a very simple reason why these spaceships are using heavily outdated electronics:
they need to be tough.

Those 16-bit computers you were talking about on the SS, well, were "radiation hardened," not exactly a property you would find in an IBM-PC...

Also, if it ain't broke and the job hasn't changed, why "fix" it? The computers on the STS did the same job when they were retired as they did when they were first built, where's the motivation to upgrade them if they are already working just fine with old well tested (probably more robust) hardware?

Re:Nonsense

[kermidge]

"There's not even the appearance of logic or reason in our public debate, it is completely fueled by emotion and political dogma."

Bingo.

I'd add: and those debates are variously framed, distorted, and steered, by the six companies that own all the big media companies, and many of the smaller ones as well. The six essentially can have control over what the public sees and how they see it. (As but an example, have you noticed the coverage of the efforts of the several intelligence and security agencies lately? From what I see on the networks' news, it's more important to know where "the traitor Snowden" is hiding than to discuss the issues he brought to the fore. That is, when it's not competing with the latest dismissal from DWTS or somesuch.)

From my forty-plus years of adult life I'm hard-pressed to recall any public debate couched in reasonable terms.

Re:Defund NASA.

[0123456]

How long will it be before there is a business reason to go to Mars? I'm thinking a LONG time.. So NASA is a reasonable expense, if you have the money.

I'm willing to bet $5 that Elon Musk lands humans on Mars well before NASA do, and for 1% of the cost of a NASA mission.

Sadly, today's NASA can take any amount of money you give them and blow it on pork without achieving anything.

Getting me started, man!

[Anonymous Coward]

The public has no idea about the level of US spending.

Here is a breakdown on where out money goes.Defense, SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP - where 2/3rds goes to Medicare.

The perception is that our tax money is wasted on Space, Welfare Queen's Pink Cadillacs and other entitlement programs which I take to be code words for giving money to "lazy (Black) poor people" from folks who want to appear to be PC.

When the truth is we are wasting money on wars and transferring wealth to the old.

And I find it laughable and sad that the Teapartiers are mostly old white people and if they REALLY wanted what they think they wanted, they'd have to shoot themselves in the pocketbook and give up this notion the the US of A has to have a superior military and go off fighting "evil".

Cut military spending to post WWII levels. Stop this one man show when containing roque nations - we need more UN involvement; which is a whole other bugaboo with the Teaparty people and most conservatives.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[bob_super]

That pie chart should be a linear bar graph, and international assistance should be separated from military. That would make the point a lot stronger.

Then again, many people still wouldn't believe it...

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really fair to describe Social Security as transferring "wealth to the old". By this point in time, almost everyone collecting SS paid into it their entire working life. Most people won't collect more than they paid. You're just paying into the fun what you will later withdraw (...if our idiot government didn't treat SS as a piggybank that they can dip into whenever they want).

Because SS is regressive, you could call it "transferring wealth to the wealthy", as the wealthy are more likely to also collect more than they pay in (due to longevity).

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Jane Q. Public]

And I find it laughable and sad that the Teapartiers are mostly old white people and if they REALLY wanted what they think they wanted, they'd have to shoot themselves in the pocketbook and give up this notion the the US of A has to have a superior military and go off fighting "evil".

The people you are referring to aren't the real TeaPartiers. They are the Republicans who usurped the Tea Party banner.

Not the same thing. They may think of themselves as Tea Party but they bear little resemblance to the actual, original, Tea Party. Which did in fact want to stop the money wasting and "wealth redistribution".

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Teancum]

"And I find it laughable and sad that the Teapartiers are mostly old white people and if they REALLY wanted what they think they wanted"

The TeaPartiers know just that. Most aren't really against government spending, just spending on the Wrong Kind Of People. There's plenty of right wing conservatives (old white farmers) in Kansas and Texas getting agricultural subsidies.

It sounds like you have no clue what prompted the 21 Century Tea Parties in the first place. It is not spending on the "wrong kind of people", it is an attitude that the government is just too damn big for its own good and infringing upon our rights and ignoring the U.S. Constitution as if it didn't even exist in the first place. I suppose you happen to like having the NSA snoop into everything you've ever done, and want to see the TSA come in and search every car traveling on Interstate Highways since they obviously aren't molesting enough grandmothers and toddlers?

Yes, those involved with the Tea Party also know full well that they are shooting themselves in the foot in terms of cutting pork for their home states and wanting the government to be significantly scaled back on all levels, both federal, state, and locally. It tends to have a very strong Libertarian bent and thinking both Democrats and Republicans are screwing up, and that it will take a huge economic redistribution to "set things right again" that will most certainly hurt a number of people if all of those programs are cut. The hope is that if the government is cut down significantly, that those abuses of authority can be much more easily identified and removed as well. As it is, the government at all levels is so huge that many of the current abuses are really background noise.

I will agree with you that the "neo-cons" who have taken over the banner of the "Tea Party" and trashed any real progress that those involved actually tried to accomplish. These congressmen are largely stateists who really do want their their own special interests (aka campaign contributors) to get government money instead of the special interests of the other guys. The whole thing that is currently happening in DC is just churning my stomach and making me want to barf. Yes, I'm talking about you, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. And they're the best of the lot. Don't get me started on guys like Orrin Hatch and John McCain who are complete sell-outs.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[rtb61]

I thought the original tea party people were all about stealing a country away from the people they originally stole it for ie ultra super massive wealth redistribution a whole bloody countries worth. Realistically today's modern conservative can't see anything but their own ego, greed and selfishness. NASA is meaningless to them if they can't earn any money out of it, roads and footpaths on the other side of the block are meaningless because they are not in front of their house and that future generations choke on pollution out of control is meaningless as long as the tea baggers of today can profit on it today.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Darinbob]

You don't even need to cut the military that much. Cutting back 1/3 would cover the US debt interest payments.

We actually had a balanced budget when Clinton was president (and Republicans controlled congress). That was thrown out the window in order to fund two wars for which the American populace have been told to not worry about or sacrifice for.

The military however is the largest jobs program we have. Since it's an all volunteer army it seems most recruits may be joining in order to get a job or to get the resulting benefits . If you join you get the job training, you get the job, you get benefits. If there just happens to be a war that occurs while you're enlisted then you can get veteran's benefits as well. It's a pretty sweet deal if your local economy is bad and you have no hope of qualifying for or paying for higher education.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Darinbob]

I think a lot of the core of the tea partiers were also there in the core of the old Reform Party. Ie, disgruntled with the government and wanting to vote for none-of-the-above. Some of the ideas were the same in both movements. But essentially as soon as there's an "alternative" movement that gathers momentum it collects a ton of disgruntled voters like a political katamari. Many of those who follow along really don't have much ideology of their own beyond the "I'm against it!" feeling and thus are easy to be swayed by others with political ambition.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Teancum]

It is not spending on the "wrong kind of people", it is an attitude that the government is just too damn big for its own good

...never mind that, measured by the tax burden as a percentage of GDP, that "big government" was the smallest it had been in a long time. Teabagger protests were about Obamacare and taxes, about which their complaints were factually wrong, not about civil liberties.

I would rather use the number of federal employees as a yard stick of the size of the government, which certainly was larger under the FDR administration, that still doesn't give the notion that we are living under a less controlling government right now.

Hell, do you really think America as it exists today has the same freedoms that we enjoyed in 2000 (aka before 9/11)?

For myself, I don't give a damn about whatever or whoever calls themselves a "tea party conservative" as the term is meaningless at the moment. Regardless, such stereotyping nonsense that you are giving here also shows how utterly out of touch you are with those who actually tried to make a difference and have been cast off to the side as meaningless stepping stones on the careers of several politicians.

A good friend of mine was held as a political prisoner in America (his crime was getting elected as the chair of his precinct then speaking out against party officials). When the judge finally heard the case about a week later, the charges were dropped.... but still didn't get any kind of apology and indeed his "credentials" were stripped from him. Yeah, that is somebody who is full of ignorance, racism, and astroturf. Oh yeah, that week while he sat in prison was during a political convention that he was supposed to be attending. Anybody that supported him was also similarly threatened with arrest.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Teancum]

Well, there is mountains of indisputable evidence that illustrates how the Tea Party was funded by billionaires

I wouldn't mind some of those billionaire's funds being sent my way. No doubt there were some of the events that may have had some sponsorship as you suggest, and certainly a great portion of the anger and energy from these groups has been redirected to help support sell-outs. Everything I've ever been involved with has not had a single dime of that money so I know for a fact that you are full of it to even think that it is strictly the actions of a couple of billionaires.

None the less, your "mountains" of evidence completely betray the fact that there were millions of people who did come out to these events in protest and did want to make a difference politically. That they've been betrayed from the principles that they went to support is sort of sad.

The problem I've seen is not really that they are delusional, but rather that they are extremely naive in believing that the officially published rules and the proclaimed ways of doing politics (aka showing up to meetings and speaking out, writing letters to members of congress, etc.) actually work. Especially signing some sort of silly petition. Most of the people I've met simply don't understand hard ball politics as it really is the first time they became politically active. When they realize that being politically involved is a whole lot of hard work of knocking on doors and really digging deep to try and get support on some issue or the other, most of them pretty much fade away and just bicker on the sidelines.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Teancum]

I could have said the same thing about the Occupy movement, other than the fact that the Reform Party had almost nothing to do with what happened in that case. While the specific actions or kinds of people involved may be different, both were a reaction that something is fundamentally flawed with America and that it needs to be fixed in some fashion.

On the other hand, there were some basic principles involved with many in the Tea Party events. I don't mind if there are some basic objections to those principles and a disagreement with how they should be implemented, but I do object to people painting what happened as a sort of joke or spouting off flat out lies that are perpetuated by liberal publications by people who never even attended those events.

The most telling of what has happened occurred at the GOP National Convention last year, when several motions were presented before the convention and in spite of extremely loud "No" votes and motions asking for a poll (aka formally counting votes) of the delegates, the "chair" decided that the resolutions passed and completely ignored that the delegates even existed. They claimed to be using Robert's Rules of Order, but the whole convention was a farce. Certainly individual delegates were completely meaningless on any opinion they represented.... in stark contrast to political conventions done in the 20th Century were delegates really did matter. That wasn't being easily swayed by others, that is simply being out right ignored and sidelined.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Jane Q. Public]

This mainly reads like an incoherent rant to me.

"I thought the original tea party people were all about stealing a country away from the people they originally stole it for ie ultra super massive wealth redistribution a whole bloody countries worth."

The original modern Tea Party was all about smaller government. T.E.A. stood for "Taxed Enough ALREADY". And they were a group of mostly conservatives, but there was a relatively large sprinkle of liberals there as well.

"Realistically today's modern conservative can't see anything but their own ego, greed and selfishness."

I can say exactly the same about the modern political Left. And mean it seriously, and even provide examples.

"NASA is meaningless to them if they can't earn any money out of it, roads and footpaths on the other side of the block are meaningless because they are not in front of their house and that future generations choke on pollution out of control is meaningless as long as the tea baggers of today can profit on it today."

The only recent example I can think of where "conservatives" held any money back from NASA was in the recent funding vote, and that was to keep NASA funding in keeping with the sequester. And the sequester, you may recall, was signed off on by both parties. They stated publicly that if government spending is going to be sequestered, the NASA should feel the pinch too. That seems logical to me.

Don't misunderstand me: if it were up to me, I would multiply NASA's budget by several times at least. But given that all of government was cutting back, they said "so should NASA, in proportion". And that's what they did. Makes perfect sense to me.

On the other hand, Obama gutted most of our future space plans (which wasted a HUGE amount of money) and opted for a high-profile but ultimately low-value asteroid mission instead. So in my opinion, it is Obama, not "the conservatives", who has been dismantling NASA.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[rtb61]

I seem to remember the first batch of tea baggers (until they could laughingly exposed to the harsh realities of the name) pointing at the Boston Tea Party participants as being the 'original' Tea Partiers. It being launched on some lame arse financial program, with the whole billionaire funded PR scam by Freedom works (hence the marketing reference to the 'Founding Fathers') to push it in the public eye and it went all over the place as various individuals tried to gain control over for personal for profit private advantage ie they wanted to get closer to the billionaires funding for a piece of that cash and well as donations from the gullible victims of the Republicans.

Every public action a fluffed up PR set managed by the Fox not-News network on behalf of the Fox not-News Network major advertisers. The whole tea bagger party thing is a scam from start to finish, that any got voted in, just makes conservative Americans look even more stupid than the rest of the world currently perceives them as being.

Conservatives, hmm, only ever remember what they want to remember the way they want to remember it, well, at least that's what they always claim. Yes, I know, reality has a Liberal bias ;).

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Aighearach]

Well, those are their lines, anyways.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[TheRaven64]

You don't even need to cut the military that much. Cutting back 1/3 would cover the US debt interest payments.

For reference, cutting 1/3 of US military spending would move the US from second place (behind Saudi Arabia) to third (also behind Russia) in terms of defence spending as a percentage of GDP, and still leave them top in absolute terms (spending three times as much as the PRC, in second place) and top in per-capita spending.

It's not entirely clear, however, that reducing military spending would help the US economy. A lot of R&D is subsidised from the military budget, which helps drive US high tech exports, and you can bet that if you cur the military budget by a third then this would be the first place that congress would want reductions...

Re:Getting me started, man!

[jfengel]

I've been hearing this since practically the day the term "teabagger" was coined: they were co-opted so fast that they hardly had a moment to define themselves at all.

Being opposed to "money wasting" and "wealth redistribution" is easy. Deciding what programs you want to keep and which ones are actually harmful or insufficiently beneficial is far, far harder. Nobody likes wasting money, and opposing "wealth redistribution" frequently means "opposing the programs that distribute money away from me while supporting the ones that distribute it to me".

The Tea Party demographic is old enough that many get Social Security and Medicare, and I've seen very few people (none, really) declare "Please take away my Medicare so that we can balance the budget". Instead, they talk about how that program is beneficial and it's funded differently, so it's really the other programs (i.e. the programs they're not using) that are wasting all that money. The closest I've ever heard anybody talk about is "means testing", though I suspect that you'll find most of those want to set a bar that (coincidentally) sets the limit just above their present income.

I don't mean to claim that the outrage isn't real, only that it was poorly thought out even by the supposed "true" Tea Party. And whatever that was, it disappeared so fast that only the fake, coopted Tea Party is all I've ever really noticed.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Sockatume]

No true TeaPartier would...

Re:Getting me started, man!

[argStyopa]

You haven't apparently been listening.

It's a foundational point of politics that Conservatives have opposed Social Security forever.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[drinkypoo]

These congressmen are largely stateists who really do want their their own special interests (aka campaign contributors) to get government money instead of the special interests of the other guys.

On the contrary, if they're using the federal government to get money for their state they're still federalists, and they're enjoying abusing the system.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[khallow]

...never mind that, measured by the tax burden as a percentage of GDP, that "big government" was the smallest it had been in a long time. Teabagger protests were about Obamacare and taxes, about which their complaints were factually wrong, not about civil liberties.

That's not actually true. You have to include mandatory spending.

What got the "Tea Party" started was a toxic brew of ignorance, racism, and astroturf.

When I hear people say that, I have to wonder what rock they've been hiding under for the past fifty years. Bad and ineffective government spending doesn't just affect the old, angry, white guys. It affects everyone who depends on government spending.

Similarly, how do you feel about that NSA spying? Or some Republican getting into office and using the same bullshit excuses that Obama currently does for ignoring laws and doing their own thing?

As I see it, most people has some degree of common cause with the Tea Parties, but most are too stupid to realize it yet.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Aqualung812]

It's not entirely clear, however, that reducing military spending would help the US economy.

If this is a reason to keep spending so much on the military, then we just need to accept that capitalism has failed & that a federally-managed economy is what we're doing.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[mcgrew]

It's not really fair to describe Social Security as transferring "wealth to the old". By this point in time, almost everyone collecting SS paid into it their entire working life.

Indeed, my uncle died at age 60 after paying in for 40 years and didn't collect a penny. Another uncle collected for 20 after paying in for 40 so probably broke even. This is NOT funded from the general revenue; it's a tax you pay in all your life specifically for SS. Medicare shouldn't be part of the budget, either, since it's also paid for by a separate tax on working people. God damn it, kids, I fucking paid for my retirement. It won't go bankrupt; it might have to borrow to get through my generation but it will be fine.

Because SS is regressive, you could call it "transferring wealth to the wealthy", as the wealthy are more likely to also collect more than they pay in (due to longevity).

How is it regressive? Steve Jobs didn't live long, now did he? However, I posit that it should be progressive -- keep the limits on how much you can collect but end the limit on how much you can pay.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[mcgrew]

It is not spending on the "wrong kind of people", it is an attitude that the government is just too damn big for its own good and infringing upon our rights and ignoring the U.S. Constitution as if it didn't even exist in the first place.

So why then didn't they rise up early in the Bush administration when he reversed course and ran up the biggest deficit we had ever seen? The tea party didn't happen until Obama was elected, but before he'd had any impact.

I suppose you happen to like having the NSA snoop into everything you've ever done, and want to see the TSA come in and search every car traveling on Interstate Highways since they obviously aren't molesting enough grandmothers and toddlers?

Well, the tea party was around before the Snowden revelations, and again, Bush started the TSA and DHS and pulled for the PATRIOT act. Where was the tea party then?

It tends to have a very strong Libertarian bent

Then why haven't they been advocating the legalization of marijuana? That would increase liberty and reduce the toll on the taxpayers; we have more prisoners per capita than any other country, and half are there for drugs.

The tea party certainly doesn't look to this outsider as you portray it. I see it as a "I have lots of stock and environmental and safety regulations cost me money, get rid of the damned government... Oh, and I don't want to pay tax, either."

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Jane Q. Public]

I seem to remember the first batch of tea baggers (until they could laughingly exposed to the harsh realities of the name) pointing at the Boston Tea Party participants as being the 'original' Tea Partiers.

I wrote "modern" Tea Partiers, specifically not the ones in the 1700s.

But the rest of the comment is such a jumbled collection of weird distortions, I'm not even going to try responding to it. I don't know where to start. Except to say again that you appear to be referring to the Rupublicans who usurped the Tea Party banner, not the original, modern Tea Party.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Darinbob]

What's wrong with being third place?

Re:Getting me started, man!

[rtb61]

Ahh, that conservative selective memory, you corrected with 'modern' in bold, you most certainly did not write 'modern', originally, interesting how you comment proves my rebuttal. To keep in with the spirit of your comment, liar, liar, pants on fire.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Jane Q. Public]

"Ahh, that conservative selective memory, you corrected with 'modern' in bold, you most certainly did not write 'modern', originally, interesting how you comment proves my rebuttal. To keep in with the spirit of your comment, liar, liar, pants on fire."

Stop being such a large-bore asshole. What I meant in my original comment was quite clear, and now you're just trolling.

Hint: that doesn't earn you any brownie points.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[kermidge]

The OASDI "piggybank" was raided during the Nixon era by a Congress that refused to raise taxes and rein in spending. Among other things, bills for Vietnam were coming due so they basically floated a bond against the insurance fund and, IIRC, also skimmed some of the premiums, counting both towards general revenue. Congress, to my knowledge, has never acknowledged that debt nor paid it down. The oldest "baby boomers" were in their mid-twenties at the time; I don't know as a majority of them were Republicans.

Medicare is a separate program. Although it could serve most of the functions of a single-payer health system that's not allowed to happen by present circumstance. It's generally more efficient and cost-effective than any commercial health care.

(For those to whom it applies, please do take notice of the correct use of "rein", "were", and "their.")

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Teancum]

So why then didn't they rise up early in the Bush administration when he reversed course and ran up the biggest deficit we had ever seen?

Who said "they" didn't? Do you really think that most Republicans were enamored with George Bush and thought he was the savior of America? Why do you think it won both elections in 2000 and 2004 with such utterly slim margins that people are still calling him the "illegitimate president"?

This was because even Republicans didn't like him. Oh, he was a good campaigner and knew the internal structure of the Republican Party well enough to know what people to impress in terms of getting the nomination... thus getting on the ballot as a major candidate in the general election. Still, I know for a fact that there were many dissatisfied Republicans who hated Bush and thought he (and especially "his men" inside of the party) were pretty awful. At best the reason why many Republicans and those who complain about "big government" even stuck with Bush at all is because they considered him to be a lesser evil compared to alternatives being presented, not because Bush was necessarily any decent.

If you are going to be critical of Bush and specific things like this, at least note what other alternatives were presented at the time. Also note it wasn't just the Obama budget plans that were the source of criticism, but also what the Republicans were doing with the TARP program (which was something passed in the final days of the Bush administration). Also note that the consequences of having these "tea party activists" involved has been a near total disruption of several state GOP organizations and a major reshuffling of the internals of the Republican Party.

Besides, it takes time. I should also ask the question: why didn't Democrats and their supporters object to this massive spending increase as well? Where were people like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry (not to mention Barack Obama himself on the few votes he bothered to actually show up to cast when he was a senator) make much of a stink about these things too?

I'll note that the PATRIOT Act is one of the things that I have seen as a major complaint at these tea party rallies too, and it justifiably is an embarrassment to the Republican Party... as it should be.

As for the legalization of marijuana.... you might be surprised too. At least have you ever gone to a tea party gathering and asked some of the major activists what they thought on that issue? If anything, the whole issue is likely sidelined as being relatively unimportant in the larger scheme of things and sort of a question of if that is something that they want to blow all of their political capital on or wait until a better opportunity comes along?

All I'm saying is don't believe all of the hyped up rhetoric that you might see in the news media about these rallies, at least not until you've actually talked with many of those who were there and involved afterward too.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[mcgrew]

That was a thought-provocative comment, thank you for writing it. As to pot, don't they have a problem with voting for a man who wants some of their friends and families in prison? I'd say that's pretty important.

Re:Getting me started, man!

[Teancum]

That was a thought-provocative comment, thank you for writing it. As to pot, don't they have a problem with voting for a man who wants some of their friends and families in prison? I'd say that's pretty important.

The day that the folks who participated with Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party groups get together, finding they have far more in common with each other than the respective political parties they are working under is the day that the Republicrats finally realize that they are screwed. Unfortunately the major political powers that be would rather keep all of the infighting going on rather than having that happen.

I happen to agree with you about the absurdity of putting people into prison for distributing and using something that just a half century earlier there were federal funds being used to subsidize the cultivation and distribution of that very same substance (the USDA even printed up a pamphlet telling farmers how to grow the stuff and even distributed seeds through county ag agents). I don't know about others, but I think it is idiotic to enforce those drug laws. It is interesting how large companies still are able to get around those laws as well (Coca-Cola still imports coca leaves on a legal basis... try to get one of those licenses yourself if you would even dare). There are more absurdities with federal law than I care to count.

Again, what are the alternatives? Vote for one guy who keeps these kind of laws on the books or vote for the other guy who will do the same thing or even support legislation to make it worse?

Re:Getting me started, man!

[mcgrew]

OWS probably does have a lot of stoners, but their agenda is lessening the historically huge difference between the 1% and everyone else.

The Tea Party, OTOH, is for smaller government and lower taxes and paying off the national debt. We have far more prisoners per capita than any other country, and half of them are nonviolent drug crimes. Imagine the cost of investigating, arresting, trying, and incarcerating all those people? Legalization should be right up the tea party's alley.

The alternatives are the Green Party and the Libertarian party, both of whom are for legalization. Both were on enough ballots to win the Presidency last election if the corporate media hadn't convinced everyone that a vote for a loser was a wasted vote. If that were true, a vote for Romney was wasted.

Re:Defund NASA.

[0123456]

There's probably a 75% higher probability that someone will die in the process.

For decades, NASA was quite happy with a launch vehicle that killed the crew one time in sixty. That's shouldn't be a hard record to beat.

Re:Defund NASA.

[0123456]

Show a specific example of that happening.

SLS.

Unless you count building a rocket that's expected to cost billions of dollars to launch every few years, if any payloads are ever funded, as 'achieving something'.

Re:Defund NASA.

[Nutria]

There's probably a 75% higher probability that someone will die in the process.

Explorers have been dying since man started exploring.

Re:Defund NASA.

[Carnivore]

Sadly, today's NASA can take any amount of money you give them and blow it on pork without achieving anything.

Spirit. Opportunity. Curiosity.

Re:Defund NASA.

[Nutria]

I'm willing to bet $5 that Elon Musk lands humans on Mars well before NASA do, and for 1% of the cost of a NASA mission.

And do what when they get there? Mars is the Atacama Desert without the thick atmosphere, high moisture content, normal gravity and nearness to civilization.

Re:Defund NASA.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Explorers have been dying since man started exploring.

Not on live TV. It's one thing to be somehow mildly aware that something happens and being a participant to that. Ditto for murders, animal slaughtering etc.

Re:Defund NASA.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And do what when they get there?

Film a better remake of Total Recall than the last one?

Re:Defund NASA.

[Nutria]

A society that watches waaaay too much reality TV, Cops and America's Funniest Home Videos, and thinks that Jackass is great shouldn't be too upset by the occasional boom.

Re:Defund NASA.

[matfud]

Don't blame NASA for the way your politicians wheel and deal to direct spending to thier own constituency. NASA budget and goals can not be approved without politicians grabbing thier bit of pork.

Re:Defund NASA.

[fahrbot-bot]

Sadly, today's NASA can take any amount of money you give them and blow it on pork without achieving anything.

NASA spends things at the direction of Congress, so blame them. I believe that most of that "pork" is because of Congress-critters wanting a piece of the hog for their districts...

A real problem with perception

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem lies with information about funding. And the main source for this information is the media. And the media seems to have it in for NASA. Every time a space mission is mentioned in the news its price tag is mentioned with it. Which gives the perception that the space craft or mission is very expensive. When was the last time your heard the price tag of the Seal raids in Somalia or Lybia or on Bin Laden's compound? How much did the NSA's PRISM program cost? If the mass media told everyone the price of all the other government activities as they were reporting them then, by comparison the NASA prices wouldn't seem like much at all.

Re:A real problem with perception

[Traf-O-Data-Hater]

Excellent, insightful comment. I whish I had mod points.

Re:Defund NASA.

[NikeHerc]

So NASA is a reasonable expense, if you have the money.

I like NASA's achievements, but we don't have the money. We are about $17,000,000,000,000 in the hole, the debt is getting larger every day, and there is no plan to get out of the hole. About 43 cents of every Federal dollar spent goes to pay off the interest on this debt. The USA is doomed if we continue on this path.

Re:Defund NASA.

[Teancum]

It should be of note that even within NASA, programs like those you have mentioned are being cut in favor of SLS & the James Webb telescope. Like all government funding, those projects which go under budget and are efficient tend to get even less funding, while wasteful projects tend to get an ever larger share of the funding. Robotic missions have been cut so severely over the last couple of budget cycles that it is simply amazing that any of the researchers are even bothering to stick around.

Re:Nonsense.

[0123456]

Elon Musk would depend on all of NASA's past work, and the NSF, and DARPA, and, etc. etc.

So would NASA. And it would still cost them a hundred times as much, because the program would be designed to funnel money to ex-Shuttle contractors and other troughers, not to put astronauts on Mars.

It's a simple mix-up

[Arancaytar]

20%? They're probably confusing it with the NSA.

Re:It's a simple mix-up

[FatLittleMonkey]

NSA's budget is $10b. Less than NASA's $17b.

Supposedly, the unpublished "black budget", for NSA/CIA/etc combined, is around $50b. But that's still only 1.5% of the Federal budget.

Re:What?

[Teancum]

That is Zero point five percent or a half of a percent, not five percent. It was only that high (about 4%-5%) during the Apollo program with the race to the Moon, and hasn't even been close to that funding level for decades.

Re:Defund NASA.

[matfud]

I'm not from the US so I don't have influence over any of it. But to say "NASA's budget" and then complain about them wasting money on pork is a bit odd as the only reason they have a budget is due to the many strings attached wrt to where and how the money is spent.

The majority of the hardware expenditures are via private companies and have been for a very long time. NASA neither has the means or ability to build much of the hardware or lauch facilities. Has NASA ever built a rocket? Instruments sometimes are but more often in collaberation with international colleages and still with lots of private companies.

Re:Defund NASA.

[similar_name]

Yeah, but it's a little like being $1 million in debt and focusing on how much you order pizza rather than your house/car/yacht bill. Sure, you can't really afford to order pizza if you're $1 million in debt but it's not going to make any difference either. You've really got to look at that house/car/yacht.

Easy solution: measure budgets in Iraq War Days

[CTachyon]

A repost of a Google+ post I wrote a year and some change ago:

---

From today forward, all federal government expenditures will be priced in "Iraq War Days" (IWD) or "Iraq War Years" (IWY). For quick reference:

• - MSL mission w/ Curiosity rover: 3.5 IWD
• - Cost of giving $10 to all 312M US citizens: 4.33 IWD
• - 2012 "General Science, Space and Technology" budget: 43.04 IWD
• - Cost of giving $100 to all 312M US citizens: 43.3 IWD
• - 2012 Welfare budget: 210.3 IWD (0.6 IWY)
  • ~ Computed as 26% of the 2012 "Income Security" budget
  • ~ Includes TANF (22%) welfare, SNAP (70%) and WIC (8%) food stamps
  • ~ All ratios from 3rd party analysis of 2010 data; see "How much do we REALLY spend on Welfare?"
• - 2012 "Medicare" budget: 672.9 IWD (1.8 IWY)
• - Cost of giving $2250 to all 312M US citizens: 975 IWD (2.7 IWY)
• - 2012 "National Defense" budget: 994.9 IWD (2.7 IWY)
• - 2012 "Social Security" budget: 1081 IWD (3.0 IWY)
• - 2012 Total budget: 4986 IWD (13 IWY)

Source: "United States Federal budget, 2012" and "Mars Science Laboratory" pages on Wikipedia for budgets, google.com/publicdata for US population, National Priorities Project via "Cost of War" Wikipedia page for IWD exchange rate.

---

Something I didn't note in my original post that's probably worth mentioning in passing: Social Security is huge, "bigger than the National Defense budget" huge, but it's basically self-funding because it's a retirement investment paid for by payroll taxes (modulo population bumps, e.g. the post-WW2 "baby boom"). Person A pays in, person A cashes out, theoretical net cost to taxpayers $0.

Re:Defund NASA.

[thrich81]

Curiosity, listed as a "success" was way over budget by the time it launched. From wikipedia, "Eventually the costs for developing the rover did reach $2.47 billion, that for a rover that initially had been classified as a medium-cost mission with a maximum budget of $650 million, yet NASA still had to ask for an additional $82 million to meet the planned November launch." That percentage overrun is in exactly the same ball park as James Webb and SLS.

Does this work in reverse?

[hibji]

If people knew the budget for the military, would they support it less?

Re:Defund NASA.

[FatLittleMonkey]

Not on live TV.

Don't worry, a Mars mission will be on a 3 to 20 minute delay.

Re:TFA

[Aighearach]

It actually seems like a small amount of movement considering how far off they were. And that is an ideal situation where the mistake is pointed out clearly. You would need more than just a few percent changing their view of "too much/not enough" to make it into a political issue where the funding would actually change.

Try open source

[greggman]

I'd really like to see someone start OSSEA, the Open Source Space Exploration Association. Get Neil Degrasse Tyson as the spokesperson and a few other space and science luminaries and use kickstarter or similar to find each project. Accept volunteers. Put all data collected online.

No idea if it would work but I use would be neat to see them try. I'd donate money and possibly donate time as well being open source

Re:Defund NASA.

[bobbied]

In the grand scheme of things and what caused the federal debt, I'd say NASA is like ordering the pizza....

Why have NASA at all?

[ohmiccurmudgeon]

Remember NASA was originally created through the cannibalization of military programs such as the X-15. Also recall that NASA actively discouraged the development of commercial space launchers to drum up business for its space shuttle. It purposely delayed permits for the commercial sales of Atlas and Titan rockets. I personally worked on reusable launchers and cheap satellites only to be told on multiple occasions to cease work or my company would never receive another NASA contract. If you're a space company, NASA was the only game in town. TRW created a million pound thrust engine for $40K (it had limited re-use -- they fired it 3 times on the San Juan Capistrano test stand). It went nowhere because of NASA.

Now also note that NASA's management and culture is incompatible with space exploration. We lost two space shuttles through wishful thinking and shortcuts. In this case it is hard to distinguish treason from incompetence.

Given NASA's history of actually impeding the development of space, their demonstrated incompetence, and our national debt, we're past due selling NASA off. We need to beef up other means of funding space research. Think of the Ansari X prize. NASA exists to perpetuate itself without regard to benefits to the nation.

Re:Why have NASA at all?

[kermidge]

There is a type of bureaucratic mindset pervading the national scene based on zero-sum-game rice bowls. It's mostly mid-level but greatly aggravated and abetted by every agency head who's been an empire builder, as you observe viz. NASA from the Apollo days. I've long had to keep separate in my mind the management-NASA and what I consider the real NASA where the work gets done. It's unfortunate for all concerned that the former tends to overshadow the latter, in the public's eye and in reality.

Bureaucracy from its Chinese and Turkish roots has been a great way to screen for capable people to administer to the concerns of the commonweal; given human nature and ways of gaming the system (that originally were structurally mitigated) it's also been a haven for small-minded weasels to wield power far in excess of their talents.

I rather like the idea of crowd-funded, subscribed (thus, invested) commercial efforts for specific projects.

Re:Defund NASA.

[kermidge]

They weren't happy about it. They grudgingly accepted it as a limit on know-how. For engineers and crew, loss is never "acceptable" but acknowledged as a consequence of the trials involved in continually pushing the bounds of capability. Those involved know we are not infallible creatures, nor our works, and carry on despite the inevitability of loss.

Re:Defund NASA.

[kermidge]

Excellent exposition and summation, kudos.

I'd add only that a significant portion of the eventual cost is to be laid directly at the feet of Congress due to the stop-and-re-start costs - it's costing a lot of time, money, and effort to get everything back up to speed and proper condition; further, the dollar cost is higher due inflation since '96.

Re:One-page answer to question: Why spend on space

[kermidge]

Bullshit.

Follow links, dig, think. All that you command is out there and for the most part easily found.

The burden is not upon the site's maker to do your bidding. Rather, it is upon you, to get your mind off its couch and do something to help - and you know you could, if you wanted to. It's up to you, to carp from the sidelines or to put your efforts to something.

You may have reason to know that it's easy to sneer and harder to build.