Space exploration (and science in general) is more political in the US than most other countries.
It's plenty political in other countries too. One of the reasons the ESA accomplishes so little/goes in circles is that (for political reasons) the ESA spends money in it's member nations in proportion to the contributions. In the same vein, that's why China has the slow motion program it does - just big enough to claim that they are A Real Spacefaring Nation and to fuel domestic propaganda.
Kennedy was planning to do the moon landings as a joint missing with the USSR. He had a good relationship with their leader. But then he was assassinated, and it became the space race.
That's a... somewhat distorted version of events. The Apollo lunar landing program started as a space race. Kennedy later considered seeking a partnership as a move to contain the ever spiraling cost estimates. He also considered scaling back the program or simply cancelling it outright. Dallas intervened before he could make a decision.
Because if there isn't such detail? If there isn't such unyielding logic employed?
Translation: It's been explained to me, repeatedly - but I choose not to believe the explanations so I'll feign outrage and raise the bar on the "explanations" required.
I almost typed "feign stupidity", but that part is real.
So explain it: explain why the vast majority of chains that existed 20 years ago still exist - sometimes rebranded, but almost all of them are still there. You're suggesting that the "middle class" has lost its purchasing power. That should, by rights, given the tight margins of all of retail, caused virtually every chain to be wiped out..
An assumption on your part (that virtually every chain should be wiped out) does not require an explanation on my part. The economic woes of the American middle class are well and widely documented.
But strangely, the only major chains that have been wiped out have been those you can easily point at and say "That wasn't a loss in business, that was mismanagement." Why do you think that is?
That you can "easily" repeat the most widely blamed cause, means you can easily repeat the most widely blamed cause. Nothing more, and nothing less. It doesn't mean that you're anywhere near the truth.
My local mall doesn't seem any less full of stores than it did 20 years ago. And that's surprising, because you'd expect individual retailers to become obsolete as fashions change and technologies to develop entirely new classes of things to buy.
Maybe your local mall doesn't seem so. But, and brace yourself because this is very hard to grasp, that doesn't mean the same conditions hold true everywhere. My local mall is virtually dead - but fifty miles away there's several that "seem" as lively as ever. But nationwide, the trend has been visible for nearly two decades - the malls are dying are the middle class the powered them dies. As to your second sentence, once again you're attempting to elevate an assumption on your part into a fact.
Or, to put it another way, you basically have no clue what you're talking about because lack the ability to discern the difference between assumption and fact.
The issue with Sears boils down exclusively to mismanagement. Lambert is an ideologue, and insisted on breaking it up into parts that, for no good reason, compete with one another.
The first warning signs were about a decade or so ago.
No, the first warning signs appeared back in the 80's as Sears began to slowly lose ground to big box retailers. Circuit City and Best Buy chipped away at it's home electronics and home appliances business. Lowes and Home Depot chipped away at it's tools and home appliances business. By the 90's, Target was eating away at pretty much all of Sears' traditional markets, and even Wal-Mart started to take it's share as the death of the middle class accelerated. And then there's Amazon...
There was also mismanagement problems as a great deal of power had devolved to the corporate buyers (who individually decided what Sears would and wouldn't carry) and the regional managers (who controlled where and when stores would be opened and closed).
Or, to put it another way - the problems at Sears go back a long way, and it's been quietly dying for decades. At worst, Lambert accelerated the process.
If B&M was obsolete EVERY CHAIN WOULD BE DYING RIGHT NOW. Malls would be deserted.
If you've been paying attention to American retail (as opposed to parroting crap you read somewhere but don't understand)... Chains are dying, and malls are becoming deserted. This isn't due to bricks and mortar being obsolete (though the net has played a role), but rather due to the loss of purchasing power among the American middle class.
Walmart, one of the lowest margin companies on Earth, would be a punchline, not an ever growing threat to the economy.
Walmart is an increasing threat to the economy not because bricks and mortar aren't obsolete... But because they sell stuff cheaply, and in real terms American's have ever less purchasing power.
Most college degrees have been worthless for 20 years, this is not news. Entering a trade right after high school and making money during your most productive years is MUCH better than spending that time going into six-figure debt for a worthless piece of paper.
Yeah, bias and stupid have definitely replaced reading the summary, let alone reading the article.
The shortage isn't about the trades, but rather low-skill, low-wage, entry level positions. (The trades are generally skilled, higher wage positions.) This is about laborers, retails workers, fast workers, etc... The invisible folks who don't make enough money to live in those high cost of living counties.
Doesn't seem to be a lot of anime fans on/. nowadays...
The best anime I've seen this year are:
- A place Further than the Universe (A fantastic coming-of-age story.) - Laid Back Camp (Girls go camping, a show much better than a simple summary can express.) - Hinamatsuri (Well done satire/dark comedy/social commentary.)
- IRODUKU : The World in Colors may make the list if it sticks it's landing tomorrow.
As far as the 70's being an era of wonder... the only I can ask is "what planet did you grow up on?" I lived through the 70's, and like virtually all who did I remember it as the era of growing disillusionment, the energy crisis, rampant inflation, and disco.
The 70's was the decade of the microprocessor revolution and the first commercial video games, which was a direct result of the Apollo program (who was buying flip-flop ICs for $150 in the early 1960's besides NASA)? The 70's saw the intro of the 747 and the Concorde which was when mass travel became easily available to the masses, the opening of Disney World, the intro of Cable and HBO. MRI was invented in the 70's. I remember it as a decade of wonder.
That may be how you remember it, but you're in a minority who've willingly and knowingly stuck their head in the sand. That's not a badge of honor.
And to answer your question - who was buying flip-flop IC's for $150 in the early 1960's besides NASA? The DoD mainly, who bought about a hundred such for every one that NASA bought. (For example, for every Apollo CSM guidance system that flew - there were roughly four SSBN's, each with sixteen missiles, each with a more sophisticated guidance system and a more powerful IC based guidance computer.)
They had the concorde, we have an incremental update to the iPhone. Wow.
They has an aircraft available only to the elite that was a commercial flop. We have a phone that's used by the masses for any number of useful things and is a howling commercial success. Wow indeed.
Imagine the tech and innovation another space race for Mars could bring to the country.
Considering how little tech and innovation the Apollo program generated... I'd imagine not very much. Few people who haven't actually studied the Apollo program grasp that they didn't invent or develop anything that they absolutely didn't have to. They didn't have to time, so a great deal of Apollo's "tech and innovation" is smoke and mirrors - tech they borrowed from elsewhere and adapted for Apollo. (Those CSM and LEM guidance computers are a prime example - they're based on SLBM guidance computers.)
As for the "energy crisis", it was political maneuvering when the muslims threatened to cut off oil to any country that supported Israel. It didn't amount to anything but a lot of hot air and meaningless newspaper headlines.
Uh huh. And lots of lines at gas stations, and stations closed because they had no gas to sell. And gas prices that went soaring. (And as a result of transport prices going up, food prices shot up as well. Inflation was through the roof.)
So what energy crisis? Detroit wouldn't have been so successful selling those huge cars into the mid 80's if there was a real energy crisis.
Here on this planet, the energy crisis killed the muscle car and utterly altered the auto market forever. The compact emerged as a major segment, as did the Japanese imports. Those "huge cars" of the 80's got considerable more MPG than their counterparts of the 60's did.
Or, to put it another way, you're delusional and clueless.
Aside from the main reason of allowing the US to show of it's rocket and missile tech to the Russians without directly and obviously pushing the arms race
Showing off our tech was the only reason the Apollo Program existed.
it got the entire country behind NASA.
A proposition often put forward by space nuts - with exactly zero support.
At it's peak in the 60's, NASA was drawing about 10% of the country's entire GDP and the public was still happy with it.
The 60's and 70's were a generation of hope and wonder partly fueled by "space age" excitement.
Sure, the public was happy with it - until about 32 picoseconds after Apollo 11 splashed down. Then they were done and ready to move on to the next thing. There were massive complaints when the networks pre-empted TV shows and sportsball games for broadcasts from Apollo 12. For Apollo 13, they didn't even try - NASA just recorded them and provided the recordings to the networks to excerpt for the evening news. (This is all in the historical record, you can look it up.) As far as the 70's being an era of wonder... the only I can ask is "what planet did you grow up on?" I lived through the 70's, and like virtually all who did I remember it as the era of growing disillusionment, the energy crisis, rampant inflation, and disco.
If the works were in the public domain though, there would be a lot of people willing to invest the resources in archiving them.
Maybe, if they were obsessive fans of the thing. Or, to put it another way, just as with things that are in the public domain... only a tiny percentage will ever be archived.
I can easily acquire some very obscure books from Project Gutenberg. I once found some scans of obscure 1920's pulp adventure magazines. Similar works from the 1940's are much harder to get hold of.
As I said above (and in my previous message), for every obscure book published by Gutenberg, there's tens of thousands (or probably more) that will never be. You're flat out delusional if you thing Gutenberg has more than a microscopic fraction of what's available in the public domain.
This has nothing to do with whether or not they're in public domain and everything to do with whether or not there's something obsessively interested enough in the thing to do the work needed. No matter which end of the problem you look at it from (demand or willingness), it's a very (very) tiny minority.
With a 28 year term, people would certainly be putting their 1980's VHS tapes on youTube.
People are already putting their 1980's VHS tapes on YouTube. Given the special equipment required (on top of the factors already noted) - I doubt a 28 year term would significantly change things.
I'm the first one to shut down losery assholes when they disrespect others, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or any other immutable trait. Further, I absolutely get that women, in particular, face endless bullshit from loser guys who just can't behave.
But the political correctness thing in general (and this in particular) is like cancer. Once it starts, it spreads, until eventually it kills the host.
If you don't grasp that these two statements are mutually incompatible, then it proves your first claim to be utterly false - because this is exactly the kind of behavior you claim to be the "first to shut down", and it proves that you don't "get" what you claim to.
Most works from before 1990 are not still in print.
Except for one-in-a-million, that has nothing to do with the length of copyright... And everything to do with obsolesce, irrelevance, and obscurity of the content and/or authors. Even if they were in the public domain, they'd still be out of print because the demand for them is essentially zero. For every Robert Frost (to take the example quoted in TFA), there's ten thousand other long dead poets that nobody other than the odd descendant or obsessive student of English Lit ever cares about.
No military installation in the world of the size of the large university campus is secret.
This isn't really about installations the size of large university campuses. It's also about installations the size of a city block (sometimes even within urban areas). It's about installations that aren't really visible from the road, and which weren't (until now) easily identifiable from the air as to owner and function. Etc... etc...
Stop posting idiotic articles.
To me it makes more sense for the idiots to stop posting idiotic comments on articles they have no clue about.
Because of this, buildings in Japan lose value fast.
It's... just a wee bit more complicated than that. It's a cultural thing that goes back quite a ways. Japan values land more than buildings on that land.
And that would seem to be the point of the tax break, - to bring the cost of EVs closer to the cost of an equivalent gas engined vehicle. A 2018 Honda Civic lists from 20,000 to 25,000 depending on options. If you apply the $8,500 tax break to a Leaf or a Chevy Volt, that puts you right in that ball park.
Yes, the theory is that it makes EVs competitive. In practice, it doesn't quite work that way because of way the tax credit works. You still have to get a loan for the MSRP (and loans are based on income), then you can apply the credit towards your taxes. But there's a catch - the credit is $8,500 or the amount of income taxes due whichever is less. You don't actually get cash to apply to the cost of the car, and depending on your tax situation you may not get the full value of the credit.
EV's are not luxury vehicles for the wealthy, and haven't been for some time.
For example, the Nissan Leaf starts at $30K -- in a country where the average price for a new car is $33K.
That's the average - and it's pulled up by luxury sedans and big pickups. The Leaf is a compact, and comparing like-to-like the average cost of a new compact in the US is in the $20k range. Also, the last time I looked, the average income recommended to be able to afford a car in the $30-35k range (Leaf to low end Model S) puts you in the 70th percentile or above.
Or, to put it another way - the grandparent is much more correct than you are. The Leaf and low end Tesla's may not be a vehicle for the wealthy, but they're certainly not vehicles for the average American either.
So were the Bolivian bolivar, the Zimbabwe dollar, or the Yugoslavian dinar right up until they weren't. A fiat currency isn't a guarantee of safety either.
Which sure sounds impressively frightening. If you're uneducated, clueless, or a bitcoin zealot. (Yeah, I realize the last is kinda redundant.) Someone who is none of those things realizes two things - first, you're cherry picking. Second, that all of those currencies failed during periods of massive economic unrest... While bitcoin is failing for no apparent reason at all.
Fiat currencies may be no certain guarantee of safety, but their track record is a hell of a lot better than bitcoin's.
Go broke because your fares are low, or go broke because your planes aren't flying filled. Only a complete idiot would pretend that was an easy or obvious choice.
And with that, I'm done. You not only have no clue, you have no interest in correcting that flaw.
I'm sure most folks would drop an extra 50-100$ if the seats were comfortable and the people working for the airline didn't always seem on the brink of suicide.
In your dreams. In reality, people will see the increased cost on whatever booking site they use and move on the next airline.
Falcon Heavy can loft two third's as much into orbit as a Saturn V.
In a world in which we're hurling rovers around on Saturn V equivalents, that's relevant. We don't live in such a world.
We've not seen the results of these drastically lower costs and faster launch turnarounds in the market yet, but we will. Soon.
Still waiting on you to produce a mechanism by which this takes place. Not gonna hold my breath after noting how you dodged actually addressing the issues I raised in my first reply.
What this means is that we should be able to litter the surface of Mars with more capable rovers in the not too distant future.
In a future where rovers of any level of sophistication capable of surviving in a harsh environment are cheap... Sure. We aren't headed towards such a future.
Why? Because even with newer, cheaper, launchers - size, weight, and power are still everything. The cheaper launchers are just that, cheaper. They aren't noticeably more capable. It's still going to take years to decades to design, build, and qualify the instruments and it's still going to require a small army (who must be paid) to operate the rover and process the data.
Legacy launch costs were so high
In a world where launch costs were more than a fraction of the total budget of a mission - you'd have a point. We don't live in such a world. Sophisticated equipment meant to survive and operate in a harsh environment with no chance of repair is expensive, and lowered launch costs won't change that. (Hint: There's a reason why Toughbooks are so much more expensive than ordinary laptops.)
NASA should reallocate the billions of dollars which are being spent on a launch system which nobody expects to be useful or affordable
NASA doesn't have the budget authority to redirect Congressionally mandated spending. And that's something a lot of folks commenting don't seem to grasp - SLS is commonly known in the space community as the Senate Launch System... Because it was imposed on NASA by fiat by Congress.
NASA should be moving the ball forward, not reinventing the wheel for every mission.
NASA is a Federal Agency, not a private corporation. It's going to do what they law requires it to do, which in this case is spend billions on a pointless launcher.
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It's plenty political in other countries too. One of the reasons the ESA accomplishes so little/goes in circles is that (for political reasons) the ESA spends money in it's member nations in proportion to the contributions. In the same vein, that's why China has the slow motion program it does - just big enough to claim that they are A Real Spacefaring Nation and to fuel domestic propaganda.
That's a... somewhat distorted version of events. The Apollo lunar landing program started as a space race. Kennedy later considered seeking a partnership as a move to contain the ever spiraling cost estimates. He also considered scaling back the program or simply cancelling it outright. Dallas intervened before he could make a decision.
Here's a free clue for you - the FCC is part of the Executive branch.
Translation: It's been explained to me, repeatedly - but I choose not to believe the explanations so I'll feign outrage and raise the bar on the "explanations" required.
I almost typed "feign stupidity", but that part is real.
An assumption on your part (that virtually every chain should be wiped out) does not require an explanation on my part. The economic woes of the American middle class are well and widely documented.
That you can "easily" repeat the most widely blamed cause, means you can easily repeat the most widely blamed cause. Nothing more, and nothing less. It doesn't mean that you're anywhere near the truth.
Maybe your local mall doesn't seem so. But, and brace yourself because this is very hard to grasp, that doesn't mean the same conditions hold true everywhere. My local mall is virtually dead - but fifty miles away there's several that "seem" as lively as ever. But nationwide, the trend has been visible for nearly two decades - the malls are dying are the middle class the powered them dies. As to your second sentence, once again you're attempting to elevate an assumption on your part into a fact.
Or, to put it another way, you basically have no clue what you're talking about because lack the ability to discern the difference between assumption and fact.
No, the first warning signs appeared back in the 80's as Sears began to slowly lose ground to big box retailers. Circuit City and Best Buy chipped away at it's home electronics and home appliances business. Lowes and Home Depot chipped away at it's tools and home appliances business. By the 90's, Target was eating away at pretty much all of Sears' traditional markets, and even Wal-Mart started to take it's share as the death of the middle class accelerated. And then there's Amazon...
There was also mismanagement problems as a great deal of power had devolved to the corporate buyers (who individually decided what Sears would and wouldn't carry) and the regional managers (who controlled where and when stores would be opened and closed).
Or, to put it another way - the problems at Sears go back a long way, and it's been quietly dying for decades. At worst, Lambert accelerated the process.
If you've been paying attention to American retail (as opposed to parroting crap you read somewhere but don't understand)... Chains are dying, and malls are becoming deserted. This isn't due to bricks and mortar being obsolete (though the net has played a role), but rather due to the loss of purchasing power among the American middle class.
Walmart is an increasing threat to the economy not because bricks and mortar aren't obsolete... But because they sell stuff cheaply, and in real terms American's have ever less purchasing power.
Honestly, the 2nd season of 3-gatsu no Lion doesn't belong on any top list... It IS a top list, all by itself.
I didn't list it though as it's not really accessible if you haven't seen the 1st season.
Yeah, bias and stupid have definitely replaced reading the summary, let alone reading the article.
The shortage isn't about the trades, but rather low-skill, low-wage, entry level positions. (The trades are generally skilled, higher wage positions.) This is about laborers, retails workers, fast workers, etc... The invisible folks who don't make enough money to live in those high cost of living counties.
Doesn't seem to be a lot of anime fans on /. nowadays...
The best anime I've seen this year are:
- A place Further than the Universe (A fantastic coming-of-age story.)
- Laid Back Camp (Girls go camping, a show much better than a simple summary can express.)
- Hinamatsuri (Well done satire/dark comedy/social commentary.)
- IRODUKU : The World in Colors may make the list if it sticks it's landing tomorrow.
That may be how you remember it, but you're in a minority who've willingly and knowingly stuck their head in the sand. That's not a badge of honor.
And to answer your question - who was buying flip-flop IC's for $150 in the early 1960's besides NASA? The DoD mainly, who bought about a hundred such for every one that NASA bought. (For example, for every Apollo CSM guidance system that flew - there were roughly four SSBN's, each with sixteen missiles, each with a more sophisticated guidance system and a more powerful IC based guidance computer.)
They has an aircraft available only to the elite that was a commercial flop. We have a phone that's used by the masses for any number of useful things and is a howling commercial success. Wow indeed.
Considering how little tech and innovation the Apollo program generated... I'd imagine not very much. Few people who haven't actually studied the Apollo program grasp that they didn't invent or develop anything that they absolutely didn't have to. They didn't have to time, so a great deal of Apollo's "tech and innovation" is smoke and mirrors - tech they borrowed from elsewhere and adapted for Apollo. (Those CSM and LEM guidance computers are a prime example - they're based on SLBM guidance computers.)
Uh huh. And lots of lines at gas stations, and stations closed because they had no gas to sell. And gas prices that went soaring. (And as a result of transport prices going up, food prices shot up as well. Inflation was through the roof.)
Here on this planet, the energy crisis killed the muscle car and utterly altered the auto market forever. The compact emerged as a major segment, as did the Japanese imports. Those "huge cars" of the 80's got considerable more MPG than their counterparts of the 60's did.
Or, to put it another way, you're delusional and clueless.
Showing off our tech was the only reason the Apollo Program existed.
A proposition often put forward by space nuts - with exactly zero support.
Sure, the public was happy with it - until about 32 picoseconds after Apollo 11 splashed down. Then they were done and ready to move on to the next thing. There were massive complaints when the networks pre-empted TV shows and sportsball games for broadcasts from Apollo 12. For Apollo 13, they didn't even try - NASA just recorded them and provided the recordings to the networks to excerpt for the evening news. (This is all in the historical record, you can look it up.) As far as the 70's being an era of wonder... the only I can ask is "what planet did you grow up on?" I lived through the 70's, and like virtually all who did I remember it as the era of growing disillusionment, the energy crisis, rampant inflation, and disco.
Maybe, if they were obsessive fans of the thing. Or, to put it another way, just as with things that are in the public domain... only a tiny percentage will ever be archived.
As I said above (and in my previous message), for every obscure book published by Gutenberg, there's tens of thousands (or probably more) that will never be. You're flat out delusional if you thing Gutenberg has more than a microscopic fraction of what's available in the public domain.
This has nothing to do with whether or not they're in public domain and everything to do with whether or not there's something obsessively interested enough in the thing to do the work needed. No matter which end of the problem you look at it from (demand or willingness), it's a very (very) tiny minority.
People are already putting their 1980's VHS tapes on YouTube. Given the special equipment required (on top of the factors already noted) - I doubt a 28 year term would significantly change things.
If you don't grasp that these two statements are mutually incompatible, then it proves your first claim to be utterly false - because this is exactly the kind of behavior you claim to be the "first to shut down", and it proves that you don't "get" what you claim to.
Except for one-in-a-million, that has nothing to do with the length of copyright... And everything to do with obsolesce, irrelevance, and obscurity of the content and/or authors. Even if they were in the public domain, they'd still be out of print because the demand for them is essentially zero. For every Robert Frost (to take the example quoted in TFA), there's ten thousand other long dead poets that nobody other than the odd descendant or obsessive student of English Lit ever cares about.
This isn't really about installations the size of large university campuses. It's also about installations the size of a city block (sometimes even within urban areas). It's about installations that aren't really visible from the road, and which weren't (until now) easily identifiable from the air as to owner and function. Etc... etc...
To me it makes more sense for the idiots to stop posting idiotic comments on articles they have no clue about.
It's... just a wee bit more complicated than that. It's a cultural thing that goes back quite a ways. Japan values land more than buildings on that land.
Yes, the theory is that it makes EVs competitive. In practice, it doesn't quite work that way because of way the tax credit works. You still have to get a loan for the MSRP (and loans are based on income), then you can apply the credit towards your taxes. But there's a catch - the credit is $8,500 or the amount of income taxes due whichever is less. You don't actually get cash to apply to the cost of the car, and depending on your tax situation you may not get the full value of the credit.
That's the average - and it's pulled up by luxury sedans and big pickups. The Leaf is a compact, and comparing like-to-like the average cost of a new compact in the US is in the $20k range. Also, the last time I looked, the average income recommended to be able to afford a car in the $30-35k range (Leaf to low end Model S) puts you in the 70th percentile or above.
Or, to put it another way - the grandparent is much more correct than you are. The Leaf and low end Tesla's may not be a vehicle for the wealthy, but they're certainly not vehicles for the average American either.
Which sure sounds impressively frightening. If you're uneducated, clueless, or a bitcoin zealot. (Yeah, I realize the last is kinda redundant.) Someone who is none of those things realizes two things - first, you're cherry picking. Second, that all of those currencies failed during periods of massive economic unrest... While bitcoin is failing for no apparent reason at all.
Fiat currencies may be no certain guarantee of safety, but their track record is a hell of a lot better than bitcoin's.
Go broke because your fares are low, or go broke because your planes aren't flying filled. Only a complete idiot would pretend that was an easy or obvious choice.
And with that, I'm done. You not only have no clue, you have no interest in correcting that flaw.
There's a reason why airlines are reducing service and fares... it isn't because customers care about comfort and customer service.
In your dreams. In reality, people will see the increased cost on whatever booking site they use and move on the next airline.
In a world in which we're hurling rovers around on Saturn V equivalents, that's relevant. We don't live in such a world.
Still waiting on you to produce a mechanism by which this takes place. Not gonna hold my breath after noting how you dodged actually addressing the issues I raised in my first reply.
In a future where rovers of any level of sophistication capable of surviving in a harsh environment are cheap... Sure. We aren't headed towards such a future.
Why? Because even with newer, cheaper, launchers - size, weight, and power are still everything. The cheaper launchers are just that, cheaper. They aren't noticeably more capable. It's still going to take years to decades to design, build, and qualify the instruments and it's still going to require a small army (who must be paid) to operate the rover and process the data.
In a world where launch costs were more than a fraction of the total budget of a mission - you'd have a point. We don't live in such a world. Sophisticated equipment meant to survive and operate in a harsh environment with no chance of repair is expensive, and lowered launch costs won't change that. (Hint: There's a reason why Toughbooks are so much more expensive than ordinary laptops .)
NASA doesn't have the budget authority to redirect Congressionally mandated spending. And that's something a lot of folks commenting don't seem to grasp - SLS is commonly known in the space community as the Senate Launch System... Because it was imposed on NASA by fiat by Congress.
NASA is a Federal Agency, not a private corporation. It's going to do what they law requires it to do, which in this case is spend billions on a pointless launcher.