Why NASA's Budget "Victory" Is Anything But 267
StartsWithABang (3485481) writes 'Earlier this week, attempts to cut NASA's budget were defeated, and it looks like the largest space agency in the world will actually be getting nearly a 2% budget increase overall. While common news outlets are touting this as a great budget victory, the reality is that this is shaping up to be just another year of pathetic funding levels, putting our greatest dreams of exploring and understanding the Universe on hold. A sobering read for anyone who hasn't realized what we could be doing.'
Government fails again (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe we shouldn't put our greatest dreams in the hands of government.
Re:Government fails again (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Government fails again (Score:5, Informative)
No, you are proving his point. It's people like you that are the reason for government being weakened so much that these corporations are allowed to influence it to such a great degree.
Back when patriotism was a thing just a few decades ago, companies didn't wield even a fraction of political power they have today.
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That's because there were not as many regulations then as there are now. It got to the point where instead of the government and businesses working together, it was a war. Business won it and "big business" gets a stronger foothold against small business every time the liberal anti-corp "do-gooders" create new regulation.
Re:Government fails again (Score:4, Insightful)
On the opposite, most of the regulation was repealed over last thirty years. Regulation against current risky investment banking? Repealed. Regulation against collusion of media and concentration of its ownership? Repealed. Regulation of monopolies? Severely weakened.
Yours is the argument that is spoon fed to you by an aggressive and long standing PR effort that doesn't stand even basic scrutiny once you look at the actual facts of the matter in the history. Certainly there's must bad regulation in place - regulation that is now being built by that business to keep them in power now that they got in, after the regulation that prevented them from getting powerful was repealed, thanks to people like you.
You're like the chukcha in the old russian joke, sitting on the branch happily sawing it off the tree and not understanding the warning that if you keep doing that, you'll fall and hurt yourself. And when you do fall, instead of understanding your actions led to it, you instead transplant blame on the person warning you about it.
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On the opposite, most of the regulation was repealed over last thirty years
So you are arguing against regulatory committees and rules created in the past 30 years ago and hoping we can get back to where we were during the Reagan years? I can support that.
The rest of your post is pretty much just a personal attack with no substance but at least it lengthened you post to look like you had content to provide.
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It was an attack on your message of "less regulation is good". We've already seen where that leads - huge monopolies and duopolies that have enough power to corrupt government to astonishing levels while unleashing massive PR campaigns that claim that even less regulation would fix it.
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That's because there were not as many regulations then as there are now. It got to the point where instead of the government and businesses working together, it was a war. Business won it and "big business" gets a stronger foothold against small business every time the liberal anti-corp "do-gooders" create new regulation.
They must have done some pretty good marketing for you to imagine that there was ever a "war".
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No, you are proving his point. It's people like you that are the reason for government being weakened so much that these corporations are allowed to influence it to such a great degree.
Back when patriotism was a thing just a few decades ago, companies didn't wield even a fraction of political power they have today.
Companies didn't need that kind of political power, because the federal government wasn't nearly as powerful. Many people still followed the Constitution, which was designed to constrain federal power.
The more powerful government becomes, the more effort companies will exert to influence policy. There is no way around it. And the more that concentration of power (corporate / government together), the less free the "little people" become. Concentration of power is bad, and it's government that has the m
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You're talking about militarization of the police, a fairly recent trend. At the same time you are completely forgetting the massive shrinking of power structures of the government agencies after Cold War ended among other things.
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You're talking about militarization of the police, a fairly recent trend. At the same time you are completely forgetting the massive shrinking of power structures of the government agencies after Cold War ended among other things.
And you're living in fantasy land. There has been nothing but growth in the "power structures" of the federal government, no matter how you define it. And it was massively accelerated after 911 with Homeland Security, TSA, Patriot Act, etc. Even the Department of Education has a paramilitary swat team now. And the SEC is bigger than ever, it's just staffed with folks from Goldman Sachs instead of JP Morgan.
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You simply do not understand the concept of morale. It's something that cost US wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan among other things.
If bureaucrats of the country (otherwise known as government) feel respected by citizens, their morale is high and they are very hard to corrupt. Cost of corruption becomes prohibitively expensive.
If bureaucrats of the country are not respected, and even derided by most citizens, as has happened in US after concentrated PR assault in the 80s and 90s, their morale collapses
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I'm referring to government as the system that provides you with countless services ranging from making sure that food and water are safe to allowing you to buy things with money you know will be accepted.
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So why is that AC's fault?
It wasn't, but it makes one hell of a cheap, faux come-back :/
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The existence, size and influence of the companies you mentioned is the direct result of government intervention in markets. Banking - FED, Communications - FCC, Air - TSA, Military - DOD/DOJ/CIA/NSA
You forgot all the food you eat and all the drugs you're allowed to buy - FDA.
Re:Government fails again (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe we shouldn't put our greatest dreams in the hands of government.
6:30 a.m. You are awakened by your clock radio. You know it is actually 6:30 because the National Institute of Standards and Technology keeps the official time. And you can listen to your favorite radio station only because the Federal Communications Commission brings organization and coherence to our vast telecommunications system. It ensures, for example, that radio stations do not overlap and that stations signals are not interfered with by the numerous other devices â" cell phones, satellite television, wireless computers, etc. â" whose signals crowd our nationâ(TM)s airwaves.
6:35 a.m. Like 17 million other Americans, you have asthma. But as you get out of bed you notice that you are breathing freely this morning. This is thanks in part to government clean air laws that reduce the air pollution that would otherwise greatly worsen your condition.
6:38 a.m. You go into the kitchen for breakfast. You pour some water into your coffeemaker. You simply take for granted that this water is safe to drink. But in fact you count on your city water department to constantly monitor the quality of your water and to immediately take measures to correct any potential problems with this vital resource.
6:39 a.m. You flip the switch on the coffee maker. There is no short in the outlet or in the electrical line and there is no resulting fire in your house. Why? Because when your house was being built, the electrical system had to be inspected to make sure it was properly installed â" a service provided by your local government. And it was installed by an electrician who was licensed by your state government to ensure his competence and your safety.
Your greatest dreams are in the hands of the government everyday.
And those are just the ones from the first 10 minutes after you wake up.
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If only we could apply that idea to internet access.
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In the US, the government (the National Science Foundation specifically) ran the Internet backbone through April 30, 1995. Then it got privatized... which was a mistake.
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6:30 a.m. You are awakened by your clock radio. You know it is actually 6:30 because the National Institute of Standards and Technology keeps the official time.
Because if it were actually 6:28 AM, the world would end. And also, because the government invented time and timekeeping.
6:35 a.m. Like 17 million other Americans, you have asthma.
Nope. Clean air is good though. Government, like any tool, is best used only when needed, and only when it's a good fit for the task. No need to use it always, for everything.
6:38 a.m. You go into the kitchen for breakfast. You pour some water into your coffeemaker. You simply take for granted that this water is safe to drink.
Partly because I filter it. But mostly because I wouldn't drink it if it weren't safe. I'd make it safe, then drink it.
And a large part of my water bill goes for pensions for people who don't do anything to kee
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Yes, but (Score:5, Funny)
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6:30 a.m. You are awakened by your clock radio. You know it is actually 6:30 because the National Institute of Standards and Technology keeps the official time.
But long before NIST, railroads kept uniform time.
And you can listen to your favorite radio station only because the Federal Communications Commission brings organization and coherence to our vast telecommunications system. It ensures, for example, that radio stations do not overlap and that stations signals are not interfered with by the numerous other devices â" cell phones, satellite television, wireless computers, etc. â" whose signals crowd our nationâ(TM)s airwaves.
And before the FCC, radio was finding it's way towards regulation through homesteading of radio frequencies.
6:35 a.m. Like 17 million other Americans, you have asthma. But as you get out of bed you notice that you are breathing freely this morning. This is thanks in part to government clean air laws that reduce the air pollution that would otherwise greatly worsen your condition.
'Course, if you happen to live near a government-operated power plant, you're out of luck. The states seem to exempt their plants for some reason.
6:38 a.m. You go into the kitchen for breakfast. You pour some water into your coffeemaker. You simply take for granted that this water is safe to drink. But in fact you count on your city water department to constantly monitor the quality of your water and to immediately take measures to correct any potential problems with this vital resource.
Actually, at home I depend upon my own monitoring of my private well. And woe be unto anyone who pollutes the groundwater as they will be providing me with water at their cost. At work, I depend upon a pri
Re:Government fails again (Score:5, Insightful)
Because without government we could never accomplish these things. I'm sure if this guy eventually gets dressed and drives to work you'd bring up the roads, too, another impossibility to do without our benevolent rulers. :)
yeah, we COULD accomplish these things. Problem is, we wouldn't. Except in that one country where there's no government and they have clean water and clean air and electricity, and yes, even roads that you can safely drive 70 mph on. Where is that again? RIght, in the figment of an AC's mind.
Re:Government fails again (Score:5, Insightful)
"You get in your car and check your sticker. Your local road was built by Freetrans, your state's #1 private road construction company. Fortunately your toll sticker is good for another two weeks before you need to pay another $300 for the monthly renewal. Sure, it's a steep price, but you only have one road to your driveway - so whatever Freetrans wants, you have to pay. There used to be a bus service, but Freetrans declined their license years ago - individual car tolls are just more lucrative."
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More to the point, whenever we've been given the chance, we haven't.
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Because without government we could never accomplish these things. I'm sure if this guy eventually gets dressed and drives to work you'd bring up the roads, too, another impossibility to do without our benevolent rulers. :)
yeah, we COULD accomplish these things. Problem is, we wouldn't. Except in that one country where there's no government and they have clean water and clean air and electricity, and yes, even roads that you can safely drive 70 mph on. Where is that again? RIght, in the figment of an AC's mind.
Right. Because a government with Constitutional constraints on its authority is exactly like NO government at all.
Re:Government fails again (Score:4, Informative)
Great. So go live in an ideal world without those people so that you can implement a society without rules, where people just play nicely with each other.
The fact is; on every street in every town in every country there is at least one arse who will take full advantage of their freedom to fuck you over. You have a lovely sea view? The arse will build a massive garage blocking your view. Or opposite, you have a lovely old three hundred year old oak tree in your garden... when you come home one day that tree is lying across your lawn because the arse wanted a better view. Lots and lots of people care about nothing but themselves and their own. The only reason it is even remotely possible for us to live together in cities in relative peace is government and laws describing the limits to our freedom to fuck people over for our own benefit. Try going to cities where government and law enforcement has broken down.
Re:Government fails again (Score:5, Insightful)
I present to you Somalia, the country without effective government. It lacks all those things.
Strange correlation if this isn't causation, wouldn't you think?
Re:Government fails again (Score:4, Insightful)
It takes a genuinely insane person to make such a claim.
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The roads where I live are in a terrible state of disrepair. The money gets spent on pensions instead. Pensions don't help anyone who needs a road. Nor do they keep the peace, nor do they teach children, nor do they fight fires.
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So does a "toll" you pay to a random armed group who sets up on a road in a failed state.
Being forced to buy peace and appeasement due to a threat of violence is never a good thing, the best you could really say is that taxes are applied more evenly, and some of the money goes to those in need.
Pensions in particular are a huge problem, a lot of these systems made the assumption that population growth and productivity would keep going up. This did not happen, and it would be more onerous to pay for this now
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Pension buys social peace and appeasement...
I can see a lot of peace when the future generations find themselves supporting pension systems that will not be able to support themselves when retirement time comes. Seriously, your claim is one hell of a slogan. And empty slogan, but a good slogan, nonetheless.
Re:Government fails again (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. The government has done more in my lifetime in the way of killing my dreams than any other single entity.
You are free to move to any of the great countries around the world that have a very small central government and whose reach barely extends past the capital. Wait, you're still here? It couldn't be because of the entirely predictable problems that those countries face, wouldn't it? No, I'm sure it's just because John Galt is still slaving away in some factory, held down by the man. It's just a matter of time - Galt's Gulch is just around the corner, I'm sure of it. And then you'll show us all poor sheeple just how awesome government-less life is, and how screwed we all are without you.
Go ahead, I'll wait. Just like I'm still waiting for the Communists to really do their thing.
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There is none...
Try moving to the Libertarian Paradise of the Congo. There's no nasty working central government to regulate your life and take away your freedoms.
And you are NOT free to move wherever you want.
As a corollory of that, they won't stop you emigrating there, or at any rate won't make any effort to deport you.
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And you can listen to your favorite radio station only because the Federal Communications Commission brings organization and coherence to our vast telecommunications system.
Time standards that were adequate to their day were around before NIST. NIST has done an awful lot of bad things, too. (Or tried to... remember the Clipper Chip?... oh, and there was that recent thing about encryption standards...)
AM and FM radio haven't been a significant part of our actual "telecommunication system" since maybe 1960
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Not saying it is the best way, but...
There are many non-profit (and some for profit) standards organizations which solve similar problems right now, probably the most similar being something like ARIN and the other regional IP registries.
Stopping someone from transmitting would be more difficult than stopping someone from advertising addresses belonging to someone else, but it could probably be done (I am envisioning a relationship with the power company, who shuts you off for breach of your terms of servic
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And by the way: the EPA was instrumental in getting Primatene Mist banned last year because it used CFCs as a propellant. There is, as yet, no adequate substitute on the market. There is something called "Asthmanefrin" which is a sorry substitute, and which uses an expensive electric atomizer that is rather prone to clogging when it is needed most.
Because Primatene Mist was the ONLY effective, portable, affordable over-the-counter medicine that could stop asthma in its tracks, the government has probably killed more asthmatics now than it has saved. It damned near killed ME. So pardon me if I don't buy your glowing recommendation here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
Despite its accessibility, many doctors say the medication wasn't a good option for patients.
Although the CFC ban is what eventually drove Primatene Mist from the market, Pulmonologist have argued for years that it was at the very least, not the best medication for asthma control, and at worst, dangerous. The active ingredient in Primatene Mist is Epinephrine (also known as adrenaline, adrenalin), which can cause a dangerous increase in heart rate.
"Primatene Mist does not t
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
Despite its accessibility, many doctors say the medication wasn't a good option for patients.
Although the CFC ban is what eventually drove Primatene Mist from the market, Pulmonologist have argued for years that it was at the very least, not the best medication for asthma control, and at worst, dangerous. The active ingredient in Primatene Mist is Epinephrine (also known as adrenaline, adrenalin), which can cause a dangerous increase in heart rate.
"Primatene Mist does not treat asthma -- it treats symptoms that can come from asthma," said Dr. Kyle Hogarth, an assistant professor of medicine and the medical director of the pulmonary rehabilitation program at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
The danger in treating only symptoms, he said, is that repeated asthma attacks can permanently damage the lungs. Poorly controlled asthma can progress to a point where, "in their 40s and 50s, [patients] have the lungs of someone who is 80 or 90 who has smoked."
For that reason, the goal of asthma care isn't to react just to attacks -- it's to prevent attacks in the first place. That's generally done with daily medications, such as inhaled corticosteroids, which keep the airways from becoming inflamed. Ideally, Hogarth said, rescue inhalers shouldn't be used more than twice a week, at most.
Sounds great, but one of the symptoms of asthma is not being able to BREATH. Primatene is good for dealing with that quickly and when you are having that issue you want to deal with it.
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You don't get to count the Clipper Chip as something bad the government did. It didn't happen because people didn't want it to happen, which is how government *is supposed to work*.
Oh, and as someone who lived in the 1960s, I can attest that AM and FM radio didn't stop being a vital part of our communication system in 1960. It was irreplaceable up until around 1995 or so, and still vital up until a few years ago. And what has replaced AM and FM radio? The Internet.
I started using the Internet back when it
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And when citizens tried to step in and help on their own
Also known as "government".
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If Company B ever had a problem with water quality or quantity, people would switch over to Company A or Company C, and since there is competition, the companies evaluate each others water because they need to prove that they are better, worse, or the same.
Right. So OK, some executive decides to chase after quarterly profits to hike the share price before cashing in options and leaving. So the water quality goes to shit and you die. Well, what chance do you have to swicth now: you're dead.
sure, "the market"
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I'm only going to address one of your points because the other works similarly. Why not read the Philosophy and debate after that? I really can't type out days of lecture on the subject or cover that much material in writing in a Slashdot post. The Philosopher is named, as the work, so you can read or listen to the work at your leisure.
Oh great, so all yoor stuff got trashed and you and your family literally risked death, but hey the market corrected it everyone ELSE is OK. I'd rather have a more expensive house that doesn't destroy all my stuff, turn my life upside down and possibly kill me, thanks.
False dilemma. This could happen today if a person has no insurance just as easily as without any government regulation. Regulation is not what saves people here, it's i
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It's over-simplistic thinking to say "gov't always bad, corporation always good". I've worked for some really stupid and sleazy corporations: assholery is not limited to gov't. Both types of orgs each have their role with various trade-offs.
Re:Government fails again (Score:4, Insightful)
Government is always good when choice is bad.
Corporations are always good when choice is good.
Some may try to argue that choice is always good, but it isn't. Five competing roads with 20 different owners that I have to use to get to work would not be a good thing. A single government planned road is not the best but it is better than the alternative. Many things can compare to this, usually where it requires stepping on property rights, such as running power/water/gas lines, building roads, and similar. Otherwise keep the government out of it.
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You forgot to mention the building of internet infrastructure.
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Not anymore. The pirates have been running the ship since Nixon.
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Not anymore. The pirates have been running the ship since Nixon.
It's far past time we turned that around.
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Are you kidding? Space is open for exploration by private companies. No (or few) restrictions there.
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Maybe we should stop electing people who are hellbent in demonstrating how bad government can be and actually elect people who demonstrate good governance.
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Maybe our greatest dreams shouldn't need fulfillment so far from home?
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And making the post office pay for the retirement of people who aren't even born yet, and then claiming that the US post office is inefficient and needs to be dismantled.
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Perhaps you need a new dream.
Whose kind of liberal progressist are to DARE tell him what his dreams should be ?
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One of those far-away dead frozen rocks is headed this way. It may hit next week, it may hit ten million years from now, but it is coming. This is inevitable. It's already out their, silently spinning as the tug of interacting gravity wells gently nudges it towards ours.
We really need to get off of this planet before it hits. We could survive something like the KT impact with just a tad under seven billion deaths and five hundred years or so to rebuild in the hellish wasteland, but there are bigger rocks th
down spiral (Score:2)
Two Percent? (Score:2, Insightful)
On odd-numbered days of the month (Score:2)
The Media is supposed to publish stories about NASA's plans for humans reaching Mars in 10 years. On even-numbered days of the month The Media is supposed to publish stories about NASA being underfunded and cutting programs to send small robots to it. Jeez, Slashdot, get with the program.
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Pittance (Score:4, Insightful)
A scrap of funding for such a vital tool for human survival. Is it that our technology could never allow us to escape the confines of Earth, or is it that the government would rather lock horns with rivals on a pebble in a sea of pebbles? KUNG KUNG KUNG...
Re:Pittance (Score:5, Insightful)
You're argument seems to be "it's okay to have all your eggs in one basket as it's a really big basket. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to the size of the earth, listen...".
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This is a terrifically respectful response to a troll and I have to admit I always love it when I see this kind of thing on Slashdot. Definitely friending you because of this.
We do have all our eggs in one basket and meaningless acts like climbing a mountain won't save the human race from global warming, meteors, and the greed of our fellow human beings. Scuba diving and sailing and leisure activities in our global water supply are part in parcel of aquatic pollution as we litter huge continents of filth in
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I think most people are more concerned about day-to-day survival than what is going to happen after their lifetime (which is entirely understandable). It falls to those of us who are far-sighted to figure out whether our behaviour is sustainable or not and what we can do about it.
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and the greed of our fellow human beings.
I fully expect that if the human race gets wiped out, it'll most likely be because some bureaucrat decides that the nanobots don't need to be tested any more or some official cuts nuclear safety budgets to save money, something with that amount of black humor.
Or, yes, an asteroid or something gets us while we're all bickering about funding space programs and we'd need six months to build the necessary equipment to intercept it only it's just two weeks away by the time we spot it. Although Russia could proba
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Ultimately, we have a binary choice - go extinct or populate other planets/solar systems. You seem to want extinction, but I think it'd be cool to escape our birth-planet.
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We can't afford it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously think about it. How can we pay for the NSA to spy on everyone, our Military to bomb anyone, our CIA to fund terrorist groups in the Middle East (and everywhere else for that matter), pay for Welfare instead of actually doing something to fix the economy, continue to let the top .01% live tax free lives of luxury (and allow them to offshore most of their money), provide strike force military equipment to local police and sheriff departments so that they can enforce "Free Speech Zones", pay for expansions in DHS and TSA so that they can frisk little children and search colostomy bags for explosives, have the Federal Reserve give hundreds of billions of dollars to whatever country they feel like propping up today, and give your tax money to countries like the Ukraine so that they can revolt and join NATO if we are spending money on bettering mankind?
I really and truly wish that something in my list was a joke, but sadly it's actually a very short list of how the US is being mismanaged by corrupted people holding offices.
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Mostly true, except for the false claims regarding Clinton. I think you need to look at what was really done economically under that administration. NAFTA for example has been devastating since Clinton signed the law. Some of the biggest deregulation to banks happened under his watch as well, as were extensions to Reagan and Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy.
Part of the problem with evaluating impact is that economics law rarely has large immediate impact. Laws like NAFTA take years to have a measurable
NASA vs SpaceX (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:NASA vs SpaceX (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh. It's not NASA vs SpaceX. It's NASA and SpaceX/Bigelow/etc, versus NASA and LM/ATK/etc.
It's a crew capsule built for NASA for around a billion dollars total, versus a crew capsule built for NASA for around a billion dollars per year.
It's a launcher that will cost NASA less than $100m per launch for 50 tonnes to LEO, versus a launcher that costs NASA $2 billion per year every year for one launch of 70 tonnes to LEO once every year or two.
It's commercial space stations that cost $100-150m/yr each for NASA to lease, versus a space station that costs NASA $3 billion/yr to operate and is dependent on Russian modules and Russian crew capsules (costing an extra $75m per seat.)
It's about the most cost effective way for US taxpayers to achieve the things they apparently want to do, versus repeating the same costly mistakes over and over.
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But very simply, why doesn't NASA ditch the rest and just stick with SpaceX instead of throwing money down the drain?
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But very simply, why doesn't NASA ditch the rest and just stick with SpaceX instead of throwing money down the drain?
Because Congress says they must build the Pork Launcher.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson says a 1% increase for mars? (Score:3, Interesting)
Tyson has lectured, screamed, went before congress and actively lobby's that if we increased NASA's budget by a penny on the dollar just 1% would get man to mars.
And he's against private manned space missions, course he says low earth orbit/satellites/iss could be private but only a government can take on the budget and risk of manned exploration of space
Neil deGrasse Tyson On NASA & Federal Budget (MUâ¦: http://youtu.be/jcdDb-cbadw [youtu.be]
Neil deGrasse Tyson at UB: What NASA Means to Ameâ¦: http://youtu.be/RQhNZENMG1o [youtu.be]
Neil deGrasse Tyson on Apollo missions and NASA funding: http://youtu.be/LWqNYiCAbsY [youtu.be]
Neil DeGrasse Tyson: "Elon Musk's SpaceX Won't Get Us To Mars: http://youtu.be/gW74vsCNQtc [youtu.be]
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For perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Qatar is investing enough money to host the football world cup - a tournament that lasts one month - to fund NASA for ten years.
http://keepingscore.blogs.time... [slashdot.org]>/
What a world.
Inflation is Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't need to know anything complicated about the situation to realize this is bad. ALL you need to know, is that INFLATION in the US stays around 3% year over year.
So, a 2% budget increase, is really a 1% cut.
Keep this in mind at work, when you're getting your annual performance reviews. If you aren't getting at least 3% each and every year, you're getting your pay CUT.
Companies with a policy that pay increases can't be more than 3% (or less), absolutely infuriate me. Those smart enough to intelligently object, usually get the problem worked-around. However, it's still a company policy that says, in no uncertain terms, that every employee who has performed superbly, must get penalized, year over year, as a punishment for remaining employed by that company. They're encouraging you to jump ship and get a higher salary elsewhere. Then, you could possibly come back, getting signed-on at a much higher starting salary than they were willing to give you while you stayed with the company.
Institutional knowledge is valuable, and companies go out of their way to destroy it. </rant>
Closer Look (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't waste money on manned pork missions (Score:3)
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And skip the asteroid capture stunt (Score:2)
Ridiculous summary (Score:2)
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Re:our greatest hopes (Score:4, Interesting)
I always cringe at comments like this.
Space exploration can be an end to itself, but it has also proven to be a massive driver for improvements in life in general.
The spinoffs alone are huge, let alone the jobs created, the money moving around the economy.
https://www.sac.edu/AcademicProgs/ScienceMathHealth/Planetarium/Pages/Benefits-of-the-NASA-Space-Program.aspx
$18 Billion is what, $70 a year per person in the US? (rough guess there).
If you want money to help you live a better life, have a look at the defense budget. For the Joint Strike Fighter in the development phase, $14 billion was spent on 35-40 prototypes over 3 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II#Procurement_costs
How much does a nuclear missile cost? The NSA?
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Right, because satellite communications, GPS, Teflon, water purification systems... none of these have improved our lives at all.
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You want a driver for the 20th century? WWII.
Umm...nearly half the 20th century was past by the time WWII ended.
Space welfare. Just redistribute the wealth without the shenanigans and we could have the leisure society that was speculated about.
Wow. Give a man a fish...
Re:our greatest hopes (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no "safe place to sleep" on a planet unprotected from large asteroids, any more than there's a safe place to sleep in the caldera of an active volcano. There's merely hoping the statistically inevitable won't happen in your lifetime. Space can't wait.
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While I can sympathize with that viewpoint, if we waited to work on new things until we solved all our current problems, we would still be stuck in the middle ages.
The answer is to work on both at the same time. And you can't just funnel all the spare money into poverty relief...throwing more money at it doesn't help after a certain point. How about we halve the military budget, divert 3/4 of that to your programs, and 1/4 to space and energy stuff. Everybody'd be swimming in money.
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The game is rigged. You are another sucker assuming there won't be another stock crash to redistribute your "earnings" to those who don't share your dream.
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The same mass as a WWII aircraft carrier.
That's wasteful. All we need to launch is a WWII Japanese battleship.
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It's a matter of incentive - Joe Six-pack is scared stiff that some "foreign-type" will come and terrorise him and so is happy to be investigated (he's got nothing to hide and it makes everyone more secure) whereas space is far away and not very scary.
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I know you really want it to, but USA-ians is not going to take off. Fetch has a better chance.
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Reign in our ridiculous military budget. Boom: No tax increase necessary.*
* let me know how I'm oversimplifying
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They'll just print it, silly. Taxing and balancing a budget is just so 20th century.