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NASA's Manned Rocket Contract: $4.2 Billion To Boeing, $2.6 Billion To SpaceX
schwit1 writes NASA has chosen two companies to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and those companies are Boeing and SpaceX. This decision confirms that SpaceX is ready to go and gives the company the opportunity to finish the job, while also giving Boeing the chance to show that it can still compete. After NASA has certified that each company has successfully built its spacecraft, SpaceX and Boeing will each fly two to six missions. The certification process will be step-by-step, similar to the methods used in the cargo contracts, and will involve five milestones. The contracts will be paid incrementally as they meet these milestones. One milestone will be a manned flight to the ISS, with one NASA astronaut on board. Boeing will receive $4.2 billion, while SpaceX will get $2.6 billion. These awards were based on what the companies proposed and requested.
It was clarified later that both companies would fly six missions each (not counting the test mission).
I don't know if the director misspoke or was misunderstood, but she said later in the conference call they have the same requirements for the number of missions.
Unfortunately that cash can't magically feed and hydrate all the starving children in Africa or wherever your tears fall for.
If it could, you'd have a point. Unfortunately (for your point) it can't.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
SpaceX will make $2.6 Billion do way cooler stuff than $4.2 Billion to Boeing. SpaceX is a young, hungry company that is on the forefront of multiple industries. Boeing, while still a great company, is older an no doubt bogged down in more levels of bureaucracy.
Boeing - Giant Company - $4.2B for a space vehicle that is still in design.
SpaceX - Space Startup - $2.6B for a space vehicle that works and has been flying missions for two years.
Spend your money more wisely.
Not Boeing alone, and not SpaceX alone. This is the best possible outcome for NASA, not reliant on a single supplier like before.
The fact that to deliver the same development and certification process costs $1.6 billion less for SpaceX over Boeing is also interesting. Some are already saying that it is a bigger win for Boeing and that SpaceX is a backup plan, but since the amounts are what the two companies bid on the project, it shows how economical SpaceX believes they can be.
And that there are two companies still competing should reduce the risk of deliberate cost-overruns and delays. If one can get to full certification a year or more ahead of the other, it will be a huge blow to the second-place finisher's chances to win the final operational contract.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
This is a reasonable move, I'm not sure that Boeing deserves more cash than SpaceX though. I'm also bummed for Sierra Nevada, the Dreamchaser is awesome. To be fair, there have been rumors of troubles with their hybrid engine recently. Hopefully the ESA will pick them up for some flights.
Interesting.. have you considered the fact that civilization doesn't need to grind to a halt until your pet political projects are taken care of?
Did you wake up this morning and feed someone less fortunate? I bought a homeless guy a sandwich this weekend. Have you volunteered or done *anything* to help people in the third world?
No?
Oh, but you're mad that NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is exploring space, as stated in their damned name.
I feel guilty driving a newer model Honda Civic knowing that if I bought something cheaper I could maybe feed someone less fortunate.
So then do it. You are not going to feel better by diverting tax money.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Exactly. These Republicans that support space only do it to starve minority children. They hate us and want us to die. That is why they are flooding two companies ruled by old white men in order to keep the money from being spent on more reasonable things. It's the same reason they flood the military with our money and why we had the Apollo missions and later the space shuttle. They want to boost science in an attempt to kill children.
Does it mean that SpaceX was stupid not asking for 1 billion more ?
I did not think SpaceX even with its excellent track record would have convinced the bureaucrats to give them a solid chance instead of just give everything to Boeing as usual. And actually $2.6b is to SpaceX probably more than what $4.2b is to Boeing. And it might actually force Boeing to actually develop their solution efficiently for once, since I doubt they can count on huge cost overruns if the competing contract is on time & on budget.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
lol. y u mad, bro?
...but people are still dying of starvation and lack of water on THIS planet. =\
I know space exploration is very important, but shit, let's get real here. I feel guilty driving a newer model Honda Civic knowing that if I bought something cheaper I could maybe feed someone less fortunate.
That's a good point, and that's why we spent several trillions of dollars on welfare and foreign aid since the space program began.
The question you didn't ask, but should, is "What are our priorities in spending?"
You say welfare is more important than space exploration. It appears this is correct because we spend vastly more money on welfare.
Nasa takes about a half percent of the federal budget. What percent would you have it be?
Here's where all the money is really going. This kind of shows how relatively trivial is the amount we're spending on NASA.
http://mentalfloss.com/article...
Why the fuck does Boeing get $1.6 Billion extra for the same job?
> Unfortunately that cash can't magically feed and hydrate all the starving children in Africa or wherever your tears fall for.
Yes, but it can rent the required number of U-Haul's to move them OUT OF THE DESERT to where the FOOD AND WATER is.
Here's how the war on poverty is doing: http://dailycaller.com/2014/09...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
If you're not mad you're not paying attention.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Create humanoid robot that is compatible with oculus rift and develop ultra long range communications. Explore the universe with no loss of human life.
How do you connect to it over light years of distance? ping time measured in years would suck.
I feel guilty driving a newer model Honda Civic knowing that if I bought something cheaper I could maybe feed someone less fortunate.
Oh bullshit, if you were going to feed somebody, you would just do it. The price of a Honda isn't going to keep you from send $5.00 to the soap-kitchen or UNICEF.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Here's how the war on poverty is doing: http://dailycaller.com/2014/09...
Thanks for the link, it has some numbers that show how relatively little NASA costs.
From the article:
The government has spent some $22 trillion on means-tested welfare programs since the War on Poverty began (in constant 2012 dollars).
This does not include Social Security, Medicare, nor unemployment insurance.
All of NASA's spending since 1958 totals 790 billion (inflation adjusted).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
This provides some data on the direct benefits of the space program:
http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/eco...
Keep in mind that without the space program, there would be no DirectTV and we would be dependent upon Comcast.
After watching the Commercial Crew presser this afternoon, I was surprised at how lame the NASA people came off.
NASA director Charlie Bolden simply read verbatim from an email he sent earlier to NASA employees. He spent most of his time aggrandizing the Orion space capsule (Apollo-derived) and its launch vehicle SLS (space shuttle-derived) without devoting much time at all to the commercial crew effort.
Commercial Crew manager Kathy Leuders came off like an old Bob-and-Ray skit where she was armed with only three bits of information and that was all you're going to get out of her. Somebody asked her about the Boeing reliance on Russian rocket engines and her answer was not exactly convincing.
There was an astronaut there who waxed poetic about seeing the Milky Way from the space station. One other NASA guy had nothing significant to add.
Bottom line? Each company (Boeing and SpaceX) bid what they thought the job was worth; NASA awarded them what they asked for. Boeing got nearly twice the funding for a conservative, unimaginative Apollo capsule with a Russian-based launch vehicle. Most of the newsmen asking questions were suspicious about this, as am I.
But that is not how the government wants us to be. So entitlements and division are the carrot and stick they use to keep us on the path.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Wow - Java Computer game licensing ... 2.5 billion, the future of America's space dreams ... 2.6 billion.
Space "exploration", such as it is, is a hobby.
Space exploration may prove the only way for our species to survive an ELE.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
It's white guilt man. I'm not sure what we do about it, but I think the first step is recognizing what it is.
All that shit really ain't your fault. You want to pay for your existence? Give something to charity.
After that, try to have it all. Mostly love. But Civics are nice too. And rockets. :)
However, a mission to Mars would require research into food preservation which is one of the largest problems to getting food into remote areas of the world and maintaining nutritional value for the people who need to consume it. For ever argument you can throw at NASA being a waste of money, I can counter that argument with a reason why NASA improves life.
Place something witty here
Well, you have a plan? Because right now, taking over the bad countries and making them good countries that don't starve their citizens doesn't seem to work. I suppose we could create a dependent, exponentially growing dependent class of people who need our continued munificence to survive. But last I checked our resources weren't similarly exponentially growing over the rest of eternity.
Or I suppose we could just kill the starving people. But that's not in the spirit of the thing.
Ultimately, it's going to be those starving people who have to help themselves. And they are, depending on location. The developing world is in a far better state than it was in 1950, which seems to be a low point for what was at the time, the Third World.
Which is to say that our species probably WON'T survive an ELE, because there's *nowhere else to fucking go.*
Any space station in orbit will be absolutely reliant on everything being shipped up from the planet below.
Any colony on a planet inside our solar system will be absolutely reliant on everybody remaining in a hermetically sealed bubble.
Any colony on a planet in another solar system is so far away by current means that it will never be colonized, even if it was the garden-of-fucking-eden, part deux.
You want to explore space? Great. But don't pretend that there's some sort of massive benefit for our survival as a species. Barring revolutionary breakthroughs in our understanding of fundamental physical laws, the best it's gonna do is make our life here, on earth, better by allowing us to discover new technologies that have terrestrial applications.
Create a worm hole and communicate through it.
Sheesh.. haven't you ever saw Stargate?
Seriously, I doubt we can even travel light years at present.
Have you ever thought that, perhaps, by feeding someone less fortunate, they stopped trying to help themselves , and ended up worse off then if you'd just stopped being a hand-wringing idiot and drove your civic that you earned?
What does it take to kill the eastern sea programs? Dead guys on India? All of the good exploration science has come from Vikings, which are starved of funding to pay for deadly joyrides. Thousands are being misspent to promote the route to India fantasies of children.
You are not paying attention to the latest exoplanet estimates. There are probably 20 sextillion habitable worlds in the observable universe. Apart from all the other significant negatives, this number makes the very idea of manned exploration ridiculous.
"the future of America's space dreams" is a little bit of an exaggeration. They bought 6 launches. In some ways, I'm thinking this price tag justifies paying almost as much for Mojang.
"Boeing was the only competitor to complete all of NASA’s design milestones on time." ... That sounds like what you call "bogged down in more levels of beureaucracy" really means "took a more mature, disciplined approach" and won about double the potential profit. (Fee is a percentage of contract award).
Have you ever thought that, perhaps, by feeding someone less fortunate, they stopped trying to help themselves , and ended up worse off then if you'd just stopped being a hand-wringing idiot and drove your civic that you earned?
No, he hasn't, and his kind won't stop until they take away your civic, too. Because, you know, you didn't earn that.
You are not paying attention to the latest exoplanet estimates. There are probably 20 sextillion habitable worlds in the observable universe. Apart from all the other significant negatives, this number makes the very idea of manned exploration ridiculous.
Exactly. Additionally, there are far too many things on earth to see in one lifetime; ergo, you should see *none* of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Somewhere, the Boeing sales team is getting chewed out because SpaceX ate $2.6 billion dollars of their lunch. Or maybe they count it as $4.2 billion worth? I wonder...
Home depot sells rockets? I must have missed that aisle....
There is an industry expression for this - "Monkey with a lighter", in that SpaceX is the monkey holding a flame under the incumbent's ass to get them motivated to perform.
Lol. The fucking moron who works for l-mart that steals 10s of billions each year from us taxpayers, is bitching about spacex.
You are priceless and very likely are Loren thomasen.
Hhow, slow down there.
He didn't say he felt THAT guilty.
Besides, he needed to brag about having 'a newer model Honda Civic'.
No brain, no pain.
But can someone please build a real space ship.
> I feel guilty driving a newer model Honda Civic knowing that if I bought something cheaper I could maybe feed someone less fortunate.
You can feed someone less fortunate. Even something as small as volunteering your time at a local food bank can be a huge help.
Remove the log from your own eye before you point out the splinter in another's.
You are not going to feel better by diverting tax money.
Sure he will.
His type will happily pillage from everyone else, in the name of, "I did something!"
You mean like the politician / environmental activist who wants government and industry to adopt Kyoto standards, while he flies around on a private jet promoting his view point?
nt
What value do you place on inspiring a generation of kids as they play in a lego-like sandbox?
Boeing has no experience in manned spaceflight. Period.
McDonnell built Mercury and Gemini Spacecraft.
North American Aviation built the Apollo Command and Service modules, Grumman built the Apollo Lunar Module
North American Rockwell (a merger of NAA and Rockwell) built the space shuttle (much of the original groundwork was laid by a Grumman study)
Yes, Boeing eventually bought McDonnell, and then the "North American" division from Rockwell, but the old teams of guys who did those earlier programs decades ago are long gone. Saying that today's Boeing has experience devloping manned spacecraft is like claiming the Electric Boat division has experience in building "tall ships"
It's not even clear to me that having those old teams would be the right criteria - sometimes it's a good thing to have a new young team design using the new techniques and materials... they key is to have the young teams prove they have learned the proper lessons from the earlier efforts; we do not want the old guys who invented the "horseless carriage" designing our cars in 2014 - but we want the 2014 teams to remember that turn signals and parking breaks are a good idea.
Boeing was an appalling political choice. This SHOULD have been SpaceX and Sierra Nevada who both were doing innovation and "commercial" spaceflight - Boeing had already announced they would cancel their project if they could not live off the money from the government teet (they had no actual "commercial" business case).
Welp, they sure split that baby.
(No seriously. Remember, the point of Solomon's judgement was to use a decision that's bad for both sides to determine who the real winner should be in the end. Same here. I'm betting we'll see Boeing whine, delay, and run over budget while SpaceX gets down and builds some rockets, but either way, in a few years we'll see who the manned spacecraft baby really belongs to.)
So why are people of the world still dying of starvation? Maybe instead of throwing money at the problem we can research what works.
Human history shows millennia of improved food production and distribution, and the result is a temporary boon followed by a population increase that consumes all the increased production. Want to fix things, break that cycle. Don't naively think more money or food will end hunger. You have to change and modernize the culture of the populations subject to famine.
That was my point, STOP spending on things like space until the problem is fixed, ...
We can do more than one thing at a time. Go off to Africa and be an emissary of cultural change, that won't cost much money. NASA can continue with impacting your efforts.
And with respect to the space program, it has paid for itself financially and in terms of the quality of life.
Plus space research and activities can potentially save billions of lives. Big rocks will fall from the sky. They will kill many depending on size and where they land. Look at the small impact that occurred at Meteor crater. That was a very small rock, 60 ft ?, and it killed everything for several miles, killed have of everything out to about 10 miles. OK, that was tens of thousands of years ago. Tunguska occurred about 100 years ago, fortunately that occurred in a wilderness area. It was equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshima bombs. Last year a meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia. Fortunately at high altitude. It was equivalent to about 20 Hiroshima bombs.
Seriously. Did you know someone has made a working CPU. FFS it is HUGE.
According to a National Academy of Science Review, NASA and its current contractors will not be able to field a manned space mission to the Moon or Mars for another 50 plus years.
Why?
The persons how will be the astronauts for such a mission have not been born !
Moreover, the educational, science and technology institutions needed to accomplish a Moon or Mars mission do not exits and will not exits for another 50 years!
So for NASA to GIVE AWAY +4 billion U.S. Dollars is the height of the pinnacle of buffoonery !
Boing and Space X are destined to FAIL ! Failure is in their Genes ! and for another 30 years at least so no investment is the best investment.
Ha ha
I'm confused, What does this mean for SLS. Does this mean SLS goes away (if only we could be so lucky).
If we are to continue consuming in the way we do, then i think the space program is vital to the continuance of human. The mining of space rock will reduce planetary pollution which ought significantly help our circumstance. As will the moving of heavy industry into near space.
Is NASA researching how to get food past corrupt warlords and government officials now?
You know that Third World (especially in the 50s) is meant the same as third party, i.e. not allied to either the U.S.A or the U.S.S.R.
Third world is not meant as a ranking how bad the living situation is.
$5.00 to the soap-kitchen
Soap-kitchen? Sounds like something Fox News would promote.
I would like to point out this story: How the Critics of the Apollo Program Were Proven Wrong Of course this is limited to the economic impact in the US, but the I subscribe to the general gist.
Currently starvation and access to drinking water is almost exclusively an economic problem. Although I am not basically opposed to welfare and foreign aid programs, it turns out that getting people to work and letting them pay for their needs more effective in the long run.
So yes, we should build more rockets!
Which is to say that our species probably WON'T survive an ELE, because there's *nowhere else to fucking go.*
Any barge off the coast will be absolutely reliant on everything being shipped up from the mainland.
Any ship at sea will be absolutely reliant on everybody remaining in the ship.
Any colony on an other continent is so far away by the mans of the stone age that it would have never been colonized, even if it was the garden-of-fucking-eden, part deux.
You want to explore the oceans? Great. But don't pretend that there's some sort of massive benefit for our survival as a species. Barring revolutionary breakthroughs in our understanding of fundamental physical laws, the best it's gonna do is make our life here, on earth, better by allowing us to discover new technologies that have terrestrial applications.
I am quite sure that the people that built the first canoe like boats did not think about out massive cargo ships. I can't predict future technology, maybe we will make breakthrough in FTL, or maybe we won't. Maybe living in a self contained space station around Saturn is not so bad in 300 years time.
In addition as you point out the technological advances of a space program sort of pay for themselves. If you can figure out a way to build a self contained space station, feeding people in the Sahara becomes a piece of cake in comparison. Finally we may actually avert an ELE not be leaving the planet, but by employing the technology developed through the space program.
The biggest problem getting food into remote areas and is making sure it reaches the people who need it. We could feed the whole world today, but there are people with vested interests in making sure that we don't.
Kill yourself and feed your carcass to starving kids or die in a fire.
This is how KSP contracts should work, and not some silly "test the parachute while landed on the Mun"!
Yes, but it can rent the required number of U-Haul's to move them OUT OF THE DESERT to where the FOOD AND WATER is.
Over Republicans' dead bodies!
...hey, maybe that's not such a bad idea you have there!
You are assuming that $5B will result in improvements.
Remember VentureStar? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VentureStar
Where are the improvements from that boon-dongle?
yes, take your civc, but not for the reason you imply. for the reason that you are a complete imbecile.
People don't generally starve to death outside of conflict areas. If you want to end world hunger, you need to solve regional politics.
I think he probably knew that, considering he said,
The developing world is in a far better state than it was in 1950, which seems to be a low point for what was at the time, the Third World.
Then again, I could be wrong.
yeah... dont be that guy, that guy sucks
al gore?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Besides, he needed to brag about having 'a newer model Honda Civic'.
not sure thats something Id be proud of...
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Also, when that big asteroid is spotted heading for Earth, seemingly ever more likely, it'd be kind of nice if we have some experience with spaceships and such so as to maybe do something about it. Asteroids are kind of inconsiderate about where they land.
For ever argument you can throw at NASA being a waste of money, I can counter that argument with a reason why NASA improves life.
But the "Feed the poor!" doesn't (shouldn't) even enter into that conversation.
Because it won't happen. Curing world poverty will not happen.
Curing world poverty is a liberal version of "the free market" or "trickle down economics". Ideas that simply don't work.
We could eliminate every science and technical program in the entire world, and put all of the money "saved" into feeding the poor. We would just end up with more poor that need fed. And stagnant technology.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
...but people are still dying of starvation and lack of water on THIS planet. =\
I know space exploration is very important, but shit, let's get real here. I feel guilty driving a newer model Honda Civic knowing that if I bought something cheaper I could maybe feed someone less fortunate.
Good question!
join me in a crusade to save one country of the planet which was mistreated by nature and politics. It's a mountain country, covered in snow most of the winter. arable land in valleys is scarce, and one of the staple products is cheese. there are no mineral resources to speak of, and the country was so well known for the war like nature of the inhabitants that it was specifically forbidden to send its men to serve abroad, which was a major source of money remittances at the time. What else? oh yeah, there are four languages formally spoken, so it's a natural candidate for a bloody break up. it is moreover, landlocked: there's no way out for any local products unless through another country for further export or resale. It is formally hated by its neighbours, which went so far to flout any established principles to actually pay spies to damage it.
so do a well meant action today. pay one Euro for Switzerland.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
you are not getting flamebait for wanting people to be fed, thats being dishonest. You are being flamebaited for not understanding that humans have the ability to do more than 1 thing at a time
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Well, you have a plan? Because right now, taking over the bad countries and making them good countries that don't starve their citizens doesn't seem to work.
And never will. This is because humans are mean nasty evil motherfuckers who love to kill or starve each other. As we are about to learn again in Iraq, if we want anything resembling out own governance, we will have to be in a never ending war state in the middle east.
Because the second we pull out, they'll start lopping each others heads off again. And a sizable subset will work to make sure we're involved again, because in a region of the world fueled by hate, you want as many people to hate as possible. And a powerful invading army makes a great hate target for them.
Feed the poor? In many areas of the world, they want to exterminate them.
I suppose we could create a dependent, exponentially growing dependent class of people who need our continued munificence to survive. But last I checked our resources weren't similarly exponentially growing over the rest of eternity.
That would be Iraq, or Israel.
This is not anti-either in the middle east. It's just that the whole area is hell bent on each other's destruction, and will not change, no matter how much money we throw at it. Quite similar to the conditions that fuel poverty.
Humans like to kill each other, humans like to starve each other.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The real brainwashed dopes are the Libertarians and Republicans suckers. I know, I used to be part of that group--then I grew up.
It's for all those foul-mouthed homeless people that curse at you when you walk by...
The biggest problem getting food into remote areas is that those people can't supply their own food. How about we give them enough food to keep them alive while they're evacuated.
If everyone stopped buying cars, how exactly would that help the poor people of the world? We would just have a lot of autoworkers getting laid off. In a macroeconomic sense ALL of the money we spend ends up in the hands of other people, helping someone. Like nearly everything else we spend money on, space exploration is part of the "wealthy economy" in that most of those billions will end up in the hands of first-world people (SpaceX employees, various subcontractors' employees, etc.).
...but people are still dying of starvation and lack of water on THIS planet. =\
I know space exploration is very important, but shit, let's get real here. I feel guilty driving a newer model Honda Civic knowing that if I bought something cheaper I could maybe feed someone less fortunate.
Your post has little to do with compassion, and a lot to do with a base need to show to the world that you *care* and drop a tear for it. #dramaqueen
SpaceX has promise, but Boeing has shown it can deliver.
...eventually, and only after the requisite pork has been spread across a multitude of states and subcontractors to keep the requisite congress-critters happy. :(
Not to knock Boeing's technical prowess, but damn - they do know how to play the game (which explains why they're getting a piece of the contract most likely...)
As a very apt comparison, go back to the days when the F-16 first came out: relatively cheap, by some upstart company (General Dynamics), a revolutionary design, the first 9-G capable fighter, and was an all-around workhorse that could do (within reason) damned near anything you demanded of it. It's still in production today (albeit as a division of Lockheed-Martin), with a design that stands to be around for decades to come. Compare and contrast this with, oh, the F-35/6/whatever that's been nothing but a massive money-sink to date.
Did you just called GD an "upstart" (relative to the time the F-16 was built)? #youarenuts
GD is a century old tech mega-ass conglomerate (think GE of defense) that builds from armored vehicles to fighters to satellites to naval warships to communication systems to artillery, you name it, with branches all over the world.
If GD was an upstart at the time the F16 was being build, I'm batman!
You can't unwind the tentacles of the military-industrial complex all at once. You also can't ignore SpaceX and how well they have been doing.
This award is simply acknowledging reality. Boeing has to get some pork to keep the lobbyists happy, SpaceX has to get some money to keep them in the running. It will be a slow shift over time as SpaceX continues to deliver for less money.
SpaceX is playing the game... why do you think they are opening a spaceport in Texas? Gotta spread those jobs around to keep Congress happy.
The funny thing is, you can play that government game and get rich while still delivering an excellent product (SpaceX). It takes several generations of bloated military contracts to teach people to stop working so hard (e.g. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc).
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
This shouldn't be couched in terms of who wins, Boeing or SpaceX.
This is a big win not only for both companies, but for space in general. Also, remember that there are several thousand people working on this now.
Not like it was in the 1960-1970's but at least something.
Liken it to cars say back in the 1910's, lets say there were only two companies: Ford and Chevrolet
What would be better that both Ford and Chevy were winners? Or just Ford, for instance.
BOTH is the answer. Great success to both Boeing and SpaceX!
This is what the Government IMHO, SHOULD be doing. Not just giving money away on welfare (not that there isn't some of that necessary). But making training available to everyone who wants it, and funding research efforts, and making jobs and jumpstarting new industries to put those people to work. Help fund BOTH companies, let them hire people, and lets get going on making the economy better for it.
What was that expression?? oh yeah, "It isn't rocket science" which is used to convey that everything is relatively easy compared to rocket science.
It's not an iPhone... even the iPhone is an example of the pinnacle of human manufacturing (note the use of "an" not "the.) A mass produced wireless super computer that fits in a pocket and understands the spoken word better than a congressman.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Boeing had already announced they would cancel their project if they could not live off the money from the government teet (they had no actual "commercial" business case).
I agree with this statement in spite of it not being entirely accurate. Boeing's business case relied on Bigelow being a customer. If you look at Bigelow's web site you will see that the CST-100 is $10M more per seat than the Dragon. So they kind of do have commercial business, but not really.
you are not getting flamebait for wanting people to be fed, thats being dishonest. You are being flamebaited for not understanding that humans have the ability to do more than 1 thing at a time
Best answer!
The cycle of expansion to consume available food seems to break down when people get into a modern society and have access to birth control. The ideal way to control overpopulation would be to get the entire planet to first-world government and economic standards. If there's an actual famine, sending food does help, provided the food can get to hungry people. Otherwise, money is better invested in raising the overall standard of living.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
We will almost certainly survive an extinction-level event, provided it doesn't simply wipe out all life on the planet (and that hasn't happened in hundreds of millions of years). If we're talking about the planet being eaten by a giant mutant space goat, on the other hand, we've got a very, very large task. We would have to establish an off-world presence that can not only support itself forever in environments far more hostile than any on Earth's surface but grow. Barring miracles, that's going to take a long, long time.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Giant cargo ships are not self-sustaining. They also function in environments with a breathable atmosphere and ready access to liquid water. Not comparable. As far as colonization goes, historically colonization has been done in jumps of less than a year. Barring a big breakthrough in physics, we're not getting to another star in under four, and even that is going to be practically impossible. (Have you looked at the energy requirements to get anything significant to relativistic velocities?)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It was about 50m across, around three times the diameter you were thinking. That makes it a bit less common.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Corruption as part of the culture is an enormous part of it, especially in Africa and Asia and to a lesser extent in South America. That's a problem that you can't really throw money at because it tends to just add to the issue.
There are economic complications, too. Simply delivering food and water outside of a disaster situation undermines the local food economies: why buy food from the local farm if someone else is giving it away for free? Farms go under, leaving more people reliant on handouts.
War is another major issue. We hear about a million refugees in Gaza, but they're largely just a few kilometers from their homes, so delivery isn't that difficult. There are other cases where refugees in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan end up hundreds of kilometers from home, and these present bigger challenges. But in Africa, there are millions of people who have been moving over thousands of kilometers through war zones that have been akin to the areas controlled by the Islamic State for decades. No one really notices because no one reports on it. Even the Rwandan Genocide took weeks for most people in the West to notice despite on-scene reporters providing detailed reports.
There's a great deal of research going into what works. Solving economic issues is a big start. Reducing infant and childhood mortality rates by directly (i.e., not through the local government) fighting malaria with sterile releases and mosquito bed nets has helped dramatically in some locations. Teaching farmers how to more efficiently tend their crops, and opening them up to international markets has also helped.
The space program helped, too, mapping climate changes that provide hints on where to help, when to change to different crops, and how to handle desertification.
There will be no time that all earthly problems are solved so that we can concentrate on space. Trying to divert all of the money spent on it would be devastating to industry anyway, and no other nation will join in because, like it or not, we now all rely on space.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
It's not first-world government and economic standards. It's simply educating and empowering women and giving them access to birth control. Turns out that most women don't want to be pregnant and chained to the kitchen stove but would rather have a life.
The obvious example was the USSR (along with most of the communist states), by definition a second-world government, which educated their women and had a falling population growth rate. Currently Russia really has a falling population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Another nice name for one of the ships FYP (of course, Fuck You Putin)
-- 29A the number of the Beast
> Unfortunately that cash can't magically feed and hydrate all the starving children in Africa or wherever your tears fall for.
Yes, but it can rent the required number of U-Haul's to move them OUT OF THE DESERT to where the FOOD AND WATER is.
And if I may inquire: Where exactly is this magical place? And what exactly are you going to do with the population that is in the places were the food and water is?
-- 29A the number of the Beast
The cash invested in space exploration is used to find places to settle, find these starving people if there are such, find alternatives and solutions to their problems... think climate science, mapping resources, telecommunications, geological surveys, plague control, environmental hazards control...
And that's exactly were it goes to :)
In 2014 bitching against space exploration is nothing more than an exercise in stupidity
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Firstly, where do you plan to evacuate a significant percentage of the world's population to ? Secondly, how are you going to decide who is worthy of evacuation and who has just put his gun down and is hiding with the locals to make sure he can carry on the abuse and oppression in their new location ? Finally, how are you going to get this food to them ?
Food nutrition or availability isn't the problem - the problem is identifying valid recipients and then getting it past every government agent, checkpoint thug and warlord into the region.
I've worked in strange places in Africa and I've seen a lot of this first hand. The only fix is for people to organise and setup governments that are fair and have their people's interests at heart. That won't happen without massive amounts of education and people believing they can change things, and vested external interests stepping aside so that this can happen. I doubt very much that this will happen in my lifetime, short of a massively powerful nation deciding it is in their best interests.
Watching China's march into Africa is very interesting to me for these reasons.
It appears you are missing the point I am trying to make. The current technology will not get us very far, I am unfortunately very aware of this. Also the best chance, under our current understanding of the universe is the Alcubierre drive and that would use up something along the lines converting Jupiter's mass to energy.
To get back to my analogy, we two are living in the bronze age. I say traveling the sea will be the future and you say that on our current technology (canoes) we will never be able to cross the ocean.
There is no reason why we can not get a closed loop system to sustain itself. Also there are potential improvements in current rocket technology or rather propellant. Sure we will probably not leave our solar system withing this millennia, but there is no reason why we can not go out into our solar system.
Finally, if you take Project Orion, technology from the 1950s, you get a trip time of 133 years to Alpha Centauri. Although it exceeds a lifetime of a human, it is not completely outside of your reach. It has a few other issues, such the radiation and life support for such a trip, but it is not fully outside of the reach of what we can do.
I like how the dailycaller article admits that the vast majority of poor have a greatly increased standard of living than they did 50 years ago while still declaring the war on poverty a failure....
The daily beast article points something out that I think is very important: the war on poverty was only fully waged for about a decade.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/06/marco-rubio-is-wrong-the-war-on-poverty-worked.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/50th_anniversary_cea_report_-_final_post_embargo.pdf
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/how-the-war-on-poverty-succeeded-in-four-charts
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/report/2014/01/07/81702/50-years-after-lbjs-war-on-poverty/