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Smithsonian Increases Goal For Spacesuit Crowdfunding Effort
An anonymous reader writes: The recently launched Kickstarter campaign by the Smithsonian to preserve Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit has surpassed its goal. As of Saturday, the campaign raised about $525,000, and now The National Air and Space Museum has increased its goal to $700,000 in order to save Alan Shepard's Mercury spacesuit.
Its allowing us to put our money where our mouths are
I dont expect taxes to pay for a lot, taxes should be for the basics needed. crowd funding is giving us a chance to do it different, back the things we want done without being forced to pay for the things we dont
the IRS should look into this
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Now, it became $851.5, and yes, they can afford it.
That's a lot of money. Are they hiring 1000 people to do the work?
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
I've read all the gripes about the cost of $500,000 to preserve Armstrong's suit, the $200,000 stretch to get Carpenter's suit, and Smithsonian's $851M budget. Let's get the whole picture into our heads before we judge.
First, go to ALL of the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall and at Udvar Hazy. Not just the aerospace related ones, all of them. Keeping relics in a closet for decades is easy; restoring and keeping these relics for public display and appreciation while avoiding deterioration is hard, tedious, laborious work, and it requires the efforts of passionate specialists who understand the original fabrication methods and know the means for slowing degradation. That means researchers who have to understand everything about the history of a particular item, possibly a one-of-a-kind item. Protecting these items often means careful climate control for individual artefacts, sometimes storage in inert gases, etc.. When you go to the Smithsonian and look at the exhibits, look carefully for the technology that surrounds and protects these artefacts. It is not cheap. Restoring and maintaining America's cultural and technological relics for $851M per year? I'm surprised it is not more. Yeah, they are tax dollars, but for all the crap that is done with our tax dollars, I'd say restoring and protecting the relics of America's cultural and technological achievements is money well spent.
Second, these space suits were worn by the first humans to set foot on another world and the first American into space. Armstrong's small step is arguably one of the greatest achievements of humankind, not just of America. $500,000 for restoration and arrangement of long term protection and display of this suit does not seem unreasonable at all. Another $200,000 for Carpenter's suit, leveraging the effort applied for Armstrong's suit, again seems sensible. If they are smart they'll keep tacking on reach goals of $100,000 for additional suits. And this is a Kickstarter campaign - if people really think this is an egregious waste of money, they simply don't contribute. People who want their kids to see these relics and understand what goes into preserving these things understand the size of these monetary goals and contribute.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
The Smithsonian budget for 2015 is $851 million. Surely they can afford this?
To repeat what I said the other day:
The Smithsonian preserves about 138 million artifacts.
$851 million divided by 138 million artifacts yields $6.17 per artifact for conservation, restoration, display, research, physical security, insurance, educational outreach, administration, and so on.
This is what they say on the Kickstarter page:
Isn't the Smithsonian federally funded? Good question! Federal appropriations provide the foundation of the Smithsonian's operating budget and support core functions, such as building operations and maintenance, research, and safeguarding the collections. Projects like Reboot the Suit aren't covered by our federal appropriations, which means we can only undertake them if we can fund them some other way. In other words, we won't be able to do this project without the participation of Kickstarter backers.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Why it is it so expensive?
No one knows what Columbus was wearing when he set foot in the New World, but on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong took his ''one giant leap'' onto the Moon, he was clad in this custom-made spacesuit, model A7L, serial number 056. Its cost, estimated at the time as $100,000 (more than $670,000 today), sounds high only if you think of it as couture. In reality, once helmet, gloves and an oxygen-supplying backpack were added, it was a wearable spacecraft. Cocooned within 21 layers of synthetics, neoprene rubber and metalized polyester films, Armstrong was protected from the airless Moon's extremes of heat and cold (plus 240 Fahrenheit degrees in sunlight to minus 280 in shadow), deadly solar ultraviolet radiation and even the potential hazard of micrometeorites hurtling through the void at 10 miles per second.
The Apollo suits were blends of cutting-edge technology and Old World craftsmanship. Each suit was hand-built by seamstresses who had to be extraordinarily precise; a stitching error as small as 1/32 inch could mean the difference between a space-worthy suit and a reject. While most of the suit's materials existed long before the Moon program, one was invented specifically for the job. After a spacecraft fire killed three Apollo astronauts during a ground test in 1967, NASA dictated the suits had to withstand temperatures of over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The solution was a state-of-the-art fabric called Beta cloth, made of Teflon-coated glass microfibers, used for the suit's outermost layer.
For the suit's creator, the International Latex Corporation in Dover, Delaware, the toughest challenge was to contain the pressure necessary to support life (about 3.75 pounds per square inch of pure oxygen), while maintaining enough flexibility to afford freedom of motion. A division of the company that manufactured Playtex bras and girdles, ILC had engineers who understood a thing or two about rubber garments. They invented a bellowslike joint called a convolute out of neoprene reinforced with nylon tricot that allowed an astronaut to bend at the shoulders, elbows, knees, hips and ankles with relatively little effort. Steel aircraft cables were used throughout the suit to absorb tension forces and help maintain its shape under pressure.
Neil Armstrong's Spacesuit Was Made by a Bra Manufacturer [Nov 2013]
having said that, WHY isnt there a breakdown, line item, for all costs that our government spends?
There is, but you're clearly too lazy to look for it and almost certainly too lazy to actually read through it.
http://www.si.edu/content/pdf/...
That took all of 5 seconds on Google. That's FY2013 but it's hard to imagine anything significant changed for FY2014.
Reports similar to this are available for just about every government agency. The budget omnibus that congress passes is a matter of public record as is the requests that each government agency submits (which the budget omnibus is based on).
Of course they aren't going to just mail these reports to you on a subscription basis - you actually have to get off your ass and find them or... god forbid... ask for them!
=Smidge=
Backers are simply enabling these people and not actually helping to cure their hoarding illness, 138 million items is really nothing to be proud of, they should be actively encouraged to de-clutter and to let go of these things, they will thank you for it in the long run.
http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...
Interesting enough, many of the states that suck really hard at the federal government tit are states that really really hate the federal guvmint and those socialist taxes that interestingly enough - provide them wit a lot of money.
It's really too bad they don't refuse all that money. They'd be able to build a self sufficient economy based on free market principles, and possibly no taxes at all. This would prove the failure of the liberal economic agenda - but those folks were always a bit hypocritical it might seem.
Like Oklahoma - They've done pretty well lately.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.