As NASA Seeks Next Mission, Russia Holds the Trump Card 250
Geoffrey.landis (926948) writes "After the space shuttle retired in 2011, Russia has hiked the price of a trip to the International Space Station, to $71 million per seat. Less well recognized is the disparity in station crews. Before the shuttle stopped flying, an equal number of American and Russian crew members lived on board. But afterwards the bear began squeezing. For every two NASA astronauts that have flown to the station, three Russians have gone. Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?"
Trump (Score:2)
Maybe we can persuade The Donald to invest in space exploration.
Then no Russians would be needed.
Re:Trump (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe we can persuade The Donald to invest in space exploration.
Then no Russians would be needed.
In dollars, Musk [google.com] is worth 5x Trump [google.com]. Musk has made more money this year than Donald Trump's entire portfolio is worth.
In value to society, it is incalculable.
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PLUS, one of the reasons Musk made so much money was because: how did it really come to this? It came to this because NASA and Presidents and Congress all made BAD decisions.
Against better advice, I might add.
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There's plenty like Gates, Buffet, Murdoch etc who didn't have to hide their money due to epic failures.
Space X, you're up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Russia being Russia is the best thing that can happen to Space X if they have what it takes.
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they were unaware they were characters in a book (Score:4, Funny)
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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/AqycnaOCIAEuM9l.jpg [twimg.com]
Monocoles are overrated.
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So many mistakes. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The ISS was a mistake in and of itself. The science its done wasn't worth the money. There were cheaper ways to attain the same knowledge. That money could have been better spent on other NASA projects.
2. Never trust the Russians. By all means do whatever in the name of diplomacy. But NEVER trust them. It goes back to the policy under Reagan... Trust but Verify... which really means we DO NOT trust them but we do business with them in a safe and sustainable way.
3. Allowing the US to lose its ability to go to space while the ISS remained active.
4. Not cultivating alternatives from spaceX etc that offered to fill the gap.
It goes without saying that the US is run badly these days. The politics being what they are about half the population will never admit it but such is the reality. As a people, we need to grow beyond our factionalism, find common ground, and hold our leaders to some reasonable standards. Otherwise, we'll just bounce between one faction's incompetents and the other's. Each side giving the profound incompetence of its own candidates a blind eye until they're out of political capital and then it shifts to the next guy. Back and forth.
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Re:So many mistakes. (Score:5, Interesting)
The point of the ISS wasn't really to do science in space, but rather to learn the problems and solutions of long term habitation.
Re:So many mistakes. (Score:5, Interesting)
The point of the ISS wasn't really to do science in space, but rather to learn the problems and solutions of long term habitation.
Right. And that is science!
I'm not disagreeing with you. The ISS is the only place to do that kind of science, which the parent you were responding to seems to think there is some cheaper way of doing.
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I would call it more engineering than science. Learning how to build large structures in space is the only really going to be accomplished by getting up there and doing it.
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And to learn to cooperate with other countries. Remember that most of the ISS wasn't built by the US. Why shouldn't Russia send as many cosmonauts there as it likes, if the US is unwilling to pay the price any more?
It seems like the US wasn't really all that serious about cooperation from the start. From petty squabbling over the name of the core module (which was built by Russia) to blocking China.
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The principle science was actually done by the russians long before the ISS was launched. Either way, there were better ways to accomplish the same thing.
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1. The ISS was a mistake in and of itself. The science its done wasn't worth the money.
The same can be said for any large, multi national project - science, engineering, 'sports'.
There were cheaper ways to attain the same knowledge.
Always. Especially in hindsight and especially before a project is started.
That money could have been better spent on other NASA projects.
See previous.
2. Never trust the Russians. By all means do whatever in the name of diplomacy. But NEVER trust them.
Don't trust ANYBODY. Including ourselves.
3. Allowing the US to lose its ability to go to space while the ISS remained active.
4. Not cultivating alternatives from spaceX etc that offered to fill the gap.
It goes without saying that the US is run badly these days.
Yep, Stupid. Stupid. Even for the US, it was stupid.
The politics being what they are about half the population will never admit it but such is the reality. As a people, we need to grow beyond our factionalism, find common ground, and hold our leaders to some reasonable standards. Otherwise, we'll just bounce between one faction's incompetents and the other's. Each side giving the profound incompetence of its own candidates a blind eye until they're out of political capital and then it shifts to the next guy. Back and forth.
While your goals are laudable, they are not likely achievable. Look back at the 10000 year history of 'modern' man and you s
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It goes without saying that the US is run badly these days.
The US? Have you opened your eyes recently? Most european countries have their worst governments since... idk, mad kings of the dark ages or something. They are either corrupt, incompetent, puppets or all three.
Russia may well be the best-run western(*) country these days. If you think badly about Putin, talk to some russian people about how it was before him. I did, and it was quite a learning experience.
(*) yes, I count Russia as western, by culture and economy. "west/east" doesn't make sense anymore, the
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You should be old enough to remember when Greece was run by a fascist government. Then there's Spain, Romania was a horror story, and that's not even getting started on the bits of Yugoslavia when it first broke apart.
What are they doing up there? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe the reason more Russians are going up than Americans is because it costs $71Million to send an American.
NASA's 2014 budget is ~$17.5B, and they do a lot of really good stuff, the ISS is kinda low on that totem pole, if you ask me. There's a lot more to space exploration than sitting in the ISS, babysitting experiments, chatting with school kids and waiting for your ride
Re:What are they doing up there? (Score:5, Insightful)
17 bil? is that all? 17 measly billion dollars a year for all of NASA?
Shit guys, get your act together. You spend more money a year on air conditioning for the US Army ( ~$20bil )
Nice set of priorities you have there.
seriously, wtf!?
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Still, the FY 2015 request is 3.051 billion for the ISS.
Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this one's pretty friggin' obvious. We discontinued our man-rated means to low earth orbit before we had a working replacement. It's the exact same way we lost Skylab, except we were theoretically cooperating with Russia this time, while last time we weren't. Obviously our degree of cooperation was misunderstood, and they have chosen to exploit our weakness.
Mind you, our man-rated means to low earth orbit was ridiculously inefficient compared to what it was supposed to cost, and the turnaround on our pretty little space planes was orders of magnitude worse than the week-or-two expected between launches. It was so expensive that our politicians wouldn't push for a small, inexpensive (relatively speaking) method to reach space for when we didn't need a crew of ten and a payload of ten tons. Had we spent the money to either refine the Saturn-series to make them less expensive and more efficient or started on a new project after the Shuttle finally got going then we probably wouldn't be in this predicament now.
At least it'll be good for a relative up-and-comer in SpaceX and to a lesser extent to Orbital/ATK.
This hopefully will be a lesson for not discontinuing one's own abilities before being ready with a new program, but you'd think that Skylab falling from orbit and burning up would have taught us that lesson.
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We did. Over and over again, in fact. They all got killed off / restarted / killed off again due to politics and bureaucratic in-fighting.
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The X-37 program run by the Air Force has delivered a re-usable but unmanned stealth vehicle that has been undertaking military missions for almost 4 years now with little fanfare and the manned version is close to being ready for testing. I am surprised that Russia or China isn't raising a stink over this vehicle that renders damn near every satellite in orbit vulnerable to being destroyed.
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Come to think of it, there probably isn't even an advantage in making orbital bombing runs in the first place. If you want to get exotic, it would probably be far cheaper to float a rocket up to the edge of space with a balloon, then point it at the ground target and fire the engine.
And for capturing satellites, if the goal is to modify them in-place then humans might be better at it than an entirely robotic mission, but if
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use the x37 to do all sorts of interesting missions like [...] capturing satellites.
And the use of capturing satellites is...?
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I like the 2017 launch of the SLS. HA!
That said, I think Orion is interesting. Dragon is designed to deal with LEO whereas Orion is designed to deal with outside Earth orbit. This is the sort of thing that NASA should be working on. I think SLS is a waste--it sounds like Space-X will be able to do it faster and cheaper. But Orion is worthwhile.
Paypal (Score:2)
Why do we need Russia if we now successfully can use Paypal?
Errr... I mean SpaceX.
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We tried to but we kept getting a popup that tried to force us to sign up for "Launch me Later"
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
self-imposed sanctions (Score:3)
The Russians are imposing sanctions on themselves, to pre-empt the embarrassment of US doing it to them first.
"Oh, so you are thinking of ordering Lockheed to stop buying our RD-180 engine for hard currency? Nyet! We'll ban it first!"
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Three works, and it works because we're beholden as members of NATO to protect our allies.
Erm, no NATO countries have been threatened by Russia.
"We choose NOT to go to the Moon..." (Score:3)
JFK: We choose to go to the Moon [wikipedia.org]
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Somewhat more inspiring than Nixon's "You know what, this whole moon thing is overrated. Let's scrap it" speech.
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Of course we absolve LBJ from any of this considering he had to curtail most of NASA's activities to pay for Vietnam the Great Society. [thespacereview.com] Even back in the mid 1960s Johnson's administration was looking for a way out and even contemplated doing joint missions with the Soviets. After the 1967 Outer Space treaty NASA's budget was cut, which was before old RMN was in office. Yeah, LBJ he fostered NASA for years in congress and nearly killed it in his own presidency.
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Which would have been far better than Nixon deciding to let Skylab fall when it was still new and the end of the era. It's a pity LBJ decided to fuck around with a French Colonial War to try to get a cheap victory and be remembered as a "War Hero President" instead of doing something like joint missions. If we'd got a moonbase out of it would it really have mattered if it had two flags on it? Rus
Stupid question (Score:2)
It came to this because American politicians are short-sighted assholes who cut budgets.
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So you advocate the only place of knowledge is in schools? Can't people study on their own and learn without beneficent overlords turning them into good shoppers and voters? If you lack the ambition to continue to learn, study and question the issues that affect you then you deserve to be sheep.
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Well then you're saying the sheep want to be sheep. If that's the case, let the sheep be the sheep. I prefer not to get distilled spin from the same morons who bring us Kim Kardashian, Honey Boo Boo, Sean Hannity or Bill Maher.
To $71million (Score:3)
From what?
If it was previously $70 million, so what. Sure that's a lot of money to use, but maybe it was justified.
On the other hand, if it was from something like $22 million, then some big flags should have been raised in the fraud dept.
Actually in 2006 is was $22 million, but if the article is going to use the new prices as a point, it needs to mention what the previous price was, otherwise it's just an unqualified statement. Speaking of which, why didn't anyone start yelling when they more than tripled the price?
Re:To $71million (Score:5, Informative)
From NASA's inspector general [nasa.gov]
After NASA retired the Space Shuttle in 2011, the Russian Soyuz became the only vehicle capable of transporting crew to the ISS. Between 2006 and 2008, NASA purchased one seat per year. Beginning in 2009, NASA started purchasing six seats per year. The price per seat has increased over the years from $22 million in 2006, to $25 million in 2010, to $28 million in the first half of 2011. During the second half of 2011, the price per seat jumped to $43 million.4 The price has continued to increase. For example, the price of purchased seats for launches in 2014 and 2015 are $55.6 million and $60 million, respectively. In April 2013, NASA signed another deal with Russia valued at $424 million for six additional seats to carry NASA astronauts to the Station during 2016 through June 2017, and the price per seat has increased to $71 million.
Why do they call it a Station (Score:2)
When it is not Stationary?
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But if you are in a train traveling at a constant velocity, where do you stop?
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When the Amtrak funding runs out?
Russian or American? (Score:2)
Rogozin stated:
"The Russian segment can exist independently from the American one,” Rogozin said. “The U.S. one cannot."
The Russian boosted segments-- Zarya, Zvezda, Poisk Pirs total about 45,000 kg
The US boosted segments--mostly trusses, laboratories, docking modules, etc total 240,000 kg...
Now, the US paid for Zarya (the very module that enables Rogozin to claim operational independence) and the Europeans and the Japanese and the Canadians paid for various components that were lifted by NASA's
It's a simple choice. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think you can do it cheaper USA, go for it. Otherwise don't complain about how much another country charges you.
In other news.... (Score:2)
Swallow a teaspoon of cement and HARDEN UP people!
You VERY SUCCESSFULLY engineered yourself into a situation where you have NO OTHER OPTION and you ONLY NOW wonder why it's so freakin expensive?
THE WORLD IS FULL OF IDIOTS, POLITICIANS DON'T UNDERSTAND CONSEQUENCES BEYOND THE NEXT ELECTION, TANSTAAFL, YMMV, Murphy Rules.
Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:5, Informative)
Nonsense! Dragon is beginnning its Man-Rating this year.
It should be qualified by the end of next year, unless NASA gets a big helping of "Not Invented Here" and decides to kill the man-rated Dragon in favour of its own design (which won't be ready this decade, if ever).
Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dragon is already reusable, and Falcon 9R first stage looks like it's gonna be reusable soon. (reusable 2nd stage seems more doubtful considering the enormous reentry speeds involved)
If or when they start doing regular launches with the reusable Dragon and F9R, how low do you think they can get the price per seat down to? Russians are charging $71m per seat, can SpaceX get it down to $1m per seat?
Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:4, Informative)
Reusable and Man-Rating are different concepts here.
However reusable will cut the costs down dramatically. The Falcon 9 booster itself is less than 60m a launch. ISS resupply missions on Dragon are around 100m (I believe, I couldn't find the number.) Obviously a man-rated Dragon is going to cost quite a bit more. This means they could literally throw away the dragon capsule every time it flies and be cheaper than Soyuz.
Also, keep in mind that Dragon seats 7, Soyuz seats 3.
Also I would say that any cost savings from SpaceX have more to do wtih how efficient they are compared to how horrifically inefficient NASA contractors are. [policymic.com]
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Reusable and Man-Rating are different concepts here.
However reusable will cut the costs down dramatically.
Quite true. Reusable, for non-manned launches, can set a lower threshold for system failure resulting in mission failure; or in plain language reusing a part and blowing up a rocket and it's non-human payload is more acceptable than killing a crew.
Of course, risking destroying an expensive satellite because to save a few bucks on launch costs may be unacceptable a swell. Personally, I wouldn't base my launch cost model on reusability but view any cost savings from reuse a bonus.
However reusable will cut the costs down dramatically. The Falcon 9 booster itself is less than 60m a launch. ISS resupply missions on Dragon are around 100m (I believe, I couldn't find the number.) Obviously a man-rated Dragon is going to cost quite a bit more. This means they could literally throw away the dragon capsule every time it flies and be cheaper than Soyuz.
Also, keep in mind that Dragon seats 7, Soyuz seats 3.
Right now, your choice is Soy
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Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:4, Informative)
"It's like a reusable bottle costs more to make than a disposable one." However, SpaceX's reusable launcher is their expendable launcher. It's the same hardware. Essentially, they are just looking at how many times they can reuse their "disposable bottle".
The Shuttle has poisoned the idea of reusability, but the Shuttle was never really suited to be reusable. Every system pushed the state-of-the-art to its limit - engines, heat-shield, tank, boosters - rather than taking what was then known (Saturn II, Saturn V, etc) and saying, "Can we save money by recovering/reusing a first-stage/capsule?" and then spending a decade gradually working outwards from that.
"You have to take the whole thing apart and rebuild everything". The system has been designed for the engines to be quickly removed and swapped out. (For example, they've removed engines, fixed valves, restored everything and re-prepped for launch within a day. IIRC, they've swapped out an engine on a vehicle at the Cape in 5 hours.)
Once they regularly recover stages, the recovered engines will all go into an engine-pool, where they will be tested individually; nine working engines will be fitted to a first stage and test fired together. Then the full rocket is assembled, raised onto the launch-pad and test fired again the day before launch. But the thing is...
"and you have to make everything stronger to take repeated use." But the thing is... they do the same thing with new engines anyway! Every engine is test fired at least three times between manufacture and launch. It's how they are designed. So it's not an extra "reusability" procedure, an extra cost, it's what they already do; and, according to Musk, it's not only a small part of SpaceX's launch cost, it's one of the reasons their costs are so low. So if you have already designed them for multiple-uses, it's pretty unlikely they'll work exactly four times and then suddenly stop. (Apparently they've test fired the engines dozens of times. So the only issue is whether there's additional wear/damage during actual flight that shortens the life. And recovering a few first stages would be a great way to have a look, yes?)
Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:4, Insightful)
I dont think the issue is how much money it costs sending US astronauts on Russian rockets, the issue is that the Russian rockets are the only option right now.
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Russians are charging $71m per seat, can SpaceX get it down to $1m per seat?
Why would they do that? They will charge $69,999,999.95 and throw in a few airmiles. Seriously, do you really think price is determined by cost + margin, or "what the market will stand"?
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And yet they're charging considerably less than their nearest competitor for unmanned launches. It's not really all that hard to find out how much SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are charging for CRS missions.
Hint: Orbital Sciences is being paid rather more for eight launches ($1.9B) than SpaceX is for twelve launches ($1.6B).
Even though a Dragon can loft ~50% more payload than a Cygnus can.
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Nothing else can return cargo in volume. Technically Soyuz can bring stuff back, but only a few hundred pounds.
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When you're trying to move into a new market, you set your prices as low as possible, even running at below profitable. Once you get the market sown up, you raise prices to whatever the market will bear, being careful not to raise them enough to motivate competition entering the market.
Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:4, Informative)
Hmm, Dragon seats seven in manned-mode. $133M per launch (which is what NASA is paying SpaceX now for flights to ISS. Double that for no other reason than that we can...
Hmm, $40M per person sound reasonable.
Of course, if Dragon and Falcon 9R are each good for, say, five flights, we can reduce the cost per flight by half easily (F9R first stage is 70% of the cost of the Falcon all by itself). Which could leave you at $20M per seat.
By and by, Falcon 9R's second stage will also be reusable. If they can get five launches out of that, we're talking an 80% reduction in cost of a Falcon/Dragon combo, which might let you put a man up for $4M per seat....
And that's assuming five launches per bird. Ten reduces cost by half again.
Yes, prices above (except for the base $133M that NASA is paying SpaceX now) are highly speculative. Point is that SpaceX can probably boost men for considerably less than Russia charges without even finishing up the "Reusable" part of Falcon-9, much less after they get Falcon 9R fully reusable.
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Will SpaceX reuse manned launchers? At least in the immediate future. The worst that could happen to SpaceX is a disastrous failure on one of its early manned flights and they'd be smart to spend money to avoid that. Of course they could reuse for unmanned launches and still save money.
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Only in your imagination maybe. NASA and NOAA have been doing global warming/climate change research long before Obama was even a senator. But don't let facts get in your way.
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regardless if it was the last 5 years or the last 14 years, its fairly obvious that they are a shadow of what they used to be.
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Which has nothing to do with climate research. I can't think of organisations in a better position to do atmospheric research than NASA and NOAA.
Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:5, Insightful)
And that little fact is almost entirely due to Congress' inability to think past pork and the next re election cycle. Yes, NASA has some internal issues (as does every human endevour with more than one person involved) but yo-yo funding and put-it-here thinking have really trashed the agency.
You reap what you sow. /grump
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So much of the budget is off-limits (social security and medicare) that the only areas left vulnerable to cutting are things like NASA.
The USA has locked itself into forced spending in some areas and it's squeezing other areas.
Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's an idea, lets gt rid of the F-35 program, a plane we don't need, is behind schedule, is massively over budget, and still can barely get off the ground. The cost projection for that one useless pork program, if given straight to NASA, would double their budget for the next 80 years.... of course, that's ignoring any MORE cost overruns that the F-35 will have in the future. It's odd, i don't find the phrase "create and maintain a global military hegemony" anywhere in the Constitution.
The answer to the question put forth, though, is pretty simple: congress has been inundated with complete fucking idiots who couldn't think their way out of a wet paper bag even if they had instructions. The complete idiots who are anti-science, anti-education, anti-intelligence... these people who rail against progress, all the while using and abusing their positions for their own political power. That's why we're in this situation. Every time you see someone on these boards who complain NASA isn't needed, or hasn't done anything useful.... those people exemplify is the reason why we're at this point: pure, unadulterated, stupidity.
Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:5, Informative)
that tax brought in a SURPLUS every year.
Only by a very limited definition of surplus, used by what is called pay-as-you-go accounting. Under accrual accounting ("generally accepted accounting principles"), which the government does not have to follow, SS and Medicare did not run surpluses. The difference is this: under pay as you go, as long as the cash that you pay to beneficiaries during the year is less than the cash taken in by the taxes taken in during the year, you are balanced. However, under accrual accounting, the things that must be balanced are not the cash flows, but rather, the promised benefits and the promised taxes.
As an example, If you get a $1000 paycheck at the end of the week, and you spend $900, then you have $100 at the end of the week, and under any definition you had a surplus. But if you get a $1000 paycheck, and you spend $1050, you did not run a surplus (and probably depleted some of your bank account). Lastly, if you get a $1000 paycheck, then you spend $1050, and you borrow $150 from a friend, you have $100 cash left over at the end of the week. But because you have promised $150 to your friend, which is more than the $100 cash you have left over, you have not run a surplus. That is the situation SS and Medicare have found themselves in - sound from a pay as you go basis, but not promising to tax enough/promising too many benefits to be sound on an accrual basis
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Oh, for a mod point.
Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:4, Informative)
And lets be sure to make people perfectly aware of the situation. Your statement "Under accrual accounting ("generally accepted accounting principles"), which the government does not have to follow, SS and Medicare did not run surpluses" tries to insinuate that somehow government has exempted themselves from using proper accounting methods. They have not. Both accounting methods are equally valid, and both are generally accepted. Because you would prefer them to use something other than what they use does not diminish the validity of what they are using.
Because we're talking about the US government, the big reasons a PAYG basis is not looked on favorably for businesses are moot. Cash flow changes are mostly immaterial, and the lack of security is moot; the worlds financial reserves are in dollars.... that alone is a form of security no other entity can hope to achieve. As for tax considerations, well, that's entirely moot to this specific discussion. So you're left with a valid accepted accounting practice.
So until the US government switches to an accrual basis, which will be never, what you've said is moot. In addition to that, it's not entirely a PAYG basis, as it does accumulate funds and is not limited in payouts purely on the revenues of a given year. The Social Security fund is in the black for 20+ years.
But lets go back to that F-35 program. Under your accrual method, that would be 1.4 trillion dollars taken out of the functioning budget of the US, and more every year as they reevaluate the cost of the program... and that program has ballooned in cost incredibly fast.
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what i don't get is .. if these congress critters are so stupid and incompetent, how are they fucking up the country so quickly and effectively? Savant-ism? :(
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It is much easier to destroy than to build.
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So much of the budget is off-limits (social security and medicare) that the only areas left vulnerable to cutting are things like NASA.
The USA has locked itself into forced spending in some areas and it's squeezing other areas.
We could double NASA's budget and pay for it with a 3% cut to the military.
Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because for the second time in my life the US has retired a working manned system long before the replacement was ready.
Can you imagine the Have retiring all the nuclear subs in service before the next generation was in service? We did it with Apollo and we did it with STS.
It just shows that manned space flight and space flight in general are not priorities which IMHO SUCKS!!!!!!!
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They will run them until a replacement is ready. They have already started on the design for the replacement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And they will not retire the first Ohio until the replacement is in service
Re: Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:5, Insightful)
[...] send robots out to explore other planets, and let real science move on.
What's sad is that you figure that the robots are doing "real science."
Remember that "real science" is pretty boring to most people. The conclusions are interesting but the actual study, hypotheses, testing--y'know, that whole "scientific method" stuff--is pretty damn dull unless it's something you're specifically interested and knowledgeable about. There is plenty of "real science" happening on ISS but since most of us don't understand it, we poo-poo it. Heck, just look at the information returned on the last Dragon capsule [nasa.gov]. Boring shit, right?
The robots, as you imply, are doing exploration, which is a bit more exciting. "What's over the next hill?" is a far more exciting question than "Why is that hill there?" The first one is exploration. The second one is "real science."
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Translation: I hare science that makes me feel bad.
Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:5, Funny)
Translation: I hare science that makes me feel bad.
You wascawy wabbit!
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NASA's Earth Observing System [nasa.gov] produces a lot of data. NASA's landsat program began in the early 1970s, so the notion of launching satellites to observe the earth's surface is not especially new.
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NASA's Earth Observing System [nasa.gov] produces a lot of data. NASA's landsat program began in the early 1970s, so the notion of launching satellites to observe the earth's surface is not especially new.
Nope, what's new is ignoring all the observations to further a political agenda.
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Access to space has always been a pissing contest. You would even be in space if it wasn't.
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You may as well claim all spheres look like breasts.
They do if you squint hard enough.
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Does the definition of the word "resemble" escape you?
And since female breasts are sometimes referred to as "melons", "mosquito bites", "scoops of vanilla ice cream", and so on, the literal comparison between a penis and a rocket is quite stupid.
Re:NASA jobs program (Score:4, Informative)
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I worked as a NASA contractor for a while, and there was not any getting rich on the green badge side of things I can assure you.
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More likely that its construction wasn't spread across enough (or the right) Congressional districts.
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Scientific journals frown on fraud. Of course, manned missions tend to produce less important data than unmanned ones
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I would also include the politicians changing the direction that NASA is supposed to take every two to four years. They just get started on their priorities and their masters in Washington change bringing new orders that makes all of their previous work obsolete. It also doesn't help when NASA is also trying to be used as a jobs program so politicians try to create/keep positions in their ridings.
Re:How did it come to this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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You may have been modded flamebait, but I think insightfully funny would be more apropos.
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Curse you! The mere suggestion brings a tear to my remaining eye.
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horseshit. There was the X-33 [wikipedia.org] which died because of costs and projected technical issues. [lubbockonline.com]
Then there was the Constellation Program [wikipedia.org] which was proposed by Dubya after the Columbia disaster and proposed to re-use technologies learned from Apollo and the Shuttle. It was actually going quite well but budget concerns crept in and it was de-funded in the 2011 Federal Budget and with that we now have the situation where the Shuttles were retired, we have no manned capability and we were expected to spend $6Billion