Smithsonian Using Kickstart Campaign To Save Armstrong's Moon Suit 231
qpgmr writes: The Smithsonian is appealing for assistance to raise enough money to preserve Neil Armstrong's moon suit. The "Reboot the Suit: Bring Back Neil Armstrong's Spacesuit" campaign launched Monday on Kickstarter, marking 46 years since Armstrong's moonwalk in 1969. Smithsonian reports: "....on the anniversary of that 'small step for a man,' the Smithsonian Institution announced a plan of action that is, in its own way, a giant leap for funding the job with what the Institution’s first federal Kickstarter campaign. With a goal of raising $500,000 in 30 days—by offering incentives such as exclusive updates to 3D printed facsimiles of the space suit gloves—museum officials hope to be able to unveil a restored spacesuit by the time of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing four years from now, in 2019."
$805M budget (Score:5, Insightful)
The Smithsonian has a $805,000,000 budget.... surely they could scrounge up 0.06% of their annual budget to pay for it themselves since preserving significant artifacts of USA history is pretty much exactly what taxpayers are paying them for.
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We spend about 834 billion a year on government healthcare subsidies.
We spend about 538 billion a year on non-defense discretionary spending.
We spend about 420 billion a year on "mandatory" spending.
We spend about 230 billion a year on interest payments to national debt.
Wee spend about 600 billion on the military.
Yet whenever anyone wants to raid a fund to pay for something... its the military budget.
Why is that?
And I should point out that the military is one of the few things the government does that it is
Re: $805M budget (Score:3, Funny)
To be fair, he just wants to reduce DoD paper clip usage...
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I'm responding to this because it wasn't a troll question... I also felt answering it would get people to think about an issue for more than the .5 seconds they normally do which invariably leads to no actual thinking ever happening in the first place:
To be fair, he's saying that the DoD "Over Spends" so much on paperclips that you could raid the DoD budget indiscriminately and pay for the suit restoration.
here you might say "well, why do you say over spend"... because otherwise you're saying that the gover
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Price Range Weekdays $68
Price Range Weekends $68
Seems like possibly it is supporting itself, while providing entertainment and a few jobs. Why would you cut that? Do you understand that military is on call 24/7? Would you prefer they went farther away from base to find the same entertainment?
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That goes right along with you never leaving your parent's basement right?
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Actually, plenty of people do want to cut that budget, but can't for ideological reasons.
The US spends just over 17% of GDP on health care, which is a figure only exceeded by Tuvalu [worldbank.org]. Most developed countries (e.g. most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan) the figure is around 9-10% of GDP. Even France spends less than 12%.
So, yes, you could cut that figure by a third simply by building a real public health system.
I don't know if Obama
Re:$805M budget (Score:5, Interesting)
Just like we cut education spending and improved quality with the public education system right?
Sorry... nationalizing stuff is not a panacea.
The thing lost in your statistics is that the US if you compare equal demographics to equal demographics compares very very well to other countries even the hyper socialized ones.
Where things fall apart is if you compare people and cultures that exist in the US but not somewhere else.
Compare white women between the ages of 22-35 with any country you like... the US does just fine. Compare it against sweden if you like... same thing... the numbers are about the same. Where things get bad... and very bad at that is when you start to compare inner city minority populations or simply average them into the total.
Those stats are HORRIBLE. They're a fucking nightmare. Crime stats, drug addiction, literacy, high school graduation, college graduation, average income, life expectancy, infant mortality, teenaged pregnancy... the stats there are BAD.
But if you exclude that segment of the US population and recalculate... the US stats are quite good actually.
Now here you're going to say "you can't exclude a portion of the system"... okay, but now we have to admit that the problem is CONCENTRATED in a specific segment. And rather than applying your solution to EVERYONE when the problem is not suffered by EVERYONE maybe you should instead focus on what the fuck is going on in those communities that makes ALL the stats so bad. I mean, can you blame the lack of socialized healthcare on the literacy and high school graduation rates? Kinda hard to do that isn't it?
So once you're doing that, you're going to have to focus on what went wrong in these communities because they actually used to be better than that. They've gotten WORSE over time... not better. And what you'll find is that they started to get bad when a lot of welfare programs were released that disincentivized work, disincentivized a stable household, undermined the quality of inner city public education, and a tediously long list of things that really hurt those people. And it was all government action. And it was all with good intentions.
And fucked everything up.
What public service in the US do you think your new healthcare system is going to resemble. Because I can tell you now, that it would very rapidly look just like the public education system unless you instituted systemic reform in government unions just as a start.
And absent that... your idea would endanger the health of my entire country for very little if any objective return.
Re:$805M budget (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry... nationalizing stuff is not a panacea.
Who said anything about nationalizing anything? A real healthcare system doesn't have to be nationalised.
Take the Canadian system, as a prime example. As it is not something enumerated in either the constitution, or the British North America act before it, by default healthcare is under the jurisdiction of the provinces. Each province runs its own single-payer insurance system, and sets standards for care and outcomes. In turn, each province is divided into regional health authorities, which for the most part own and operate the hospitals in their region, as well as handle things like health inspections of restaurants, initial investigation of disease outbreaks, and so forth. In turn, unless they are on the hospital payroll (rare), doctors in turn are free to operate their practice as they see fit (private business, partnership, chain etc...) the only proviso being that they either have to be in the public system, or completely out of it, no double-dipping.
The net effect is that hospitals, and doctors are operated locally and in the case of hospitals, in a non-profit manner. This results in a reasonably efficient system that costs far less than the US system, while delivering similar or better outcomes.
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Nationalizing the insurance system is still nationalizing.
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I hope you caught that the word "simply" in my post was flippant.
My point is a simple one: compared to other countries, the US health care system does not get anywhere near the value for money that other countries do. It spends far more and gets far less in return.
You could think up many possibilities as to why this is, and I'm sure that a lot of it is waste due to medical businesses (e.g. insurers) being run for-profit. But I think it's pretty clear to all sane people that you don't just cut funding and ho
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The issue is very complicated. I think a more productive way of looking at it would be to break down the numbers into what is spent on various things and that would help us isolate where the costs are.
It is possible they're general. But I've never found an issue where that was the case. Typically what happens is that you have something in the stats that is HUGELY out of whack and when averaged into the total it distorts the statistics.
For example, lets look at what doctors make in the US:
Okay, wages for doc
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Source: My father who just retired as an NHS GP and private Dermatologist.
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Well this is one of the charts I found with salaries and they all sort of agree with each other on pay scales:
http://www.empire-locums.co.uk... [empire-locums.co.uk]
What is more, you're saying doctors go private. Why do people use private doctors in the UK if the public ones are provided at no additional cost. I mean if you go private you're basically paying twice. You paid once in your taxes and now you're paying again upfront.
Why do that?
Is it is quality? Are the private doctors better?
Is it availability? The public doctors ar
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Doctor's don't 'go private', they do private work as well as working for the NHS.
In the UK if you see a private doctor you still need a referral from your NHS GP, everything has an involvement with the NHS somewhere along the way.
Some private doctors may be better and more specialised in their fields but they'll be working from the NHS too mostly on consultant referrals.
One of the b
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Why do people go to private doctors in the UK?
I find it amusing that you are so sure that the US system is better than the UK version, despite the US version being more expensive and not having patient metrics supporting any real difference in quality.
But the answer to your question is:
"choice is allowed."
It doesn't need to be more than that. If you give someone the choice, they are free to take it. If their opinion is that NHS sucks, they are free to go elsewhere, even if their opinion is unfounded and factually false.
Some don't want to wait for
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fellow said all the doctors go into private practice once they cut their teeth in the business. That implies a private sector medical business that as roughly the same size as the public one.
I asked why people go to the private doctors.
As to assumptions... you're the one assuming. I didn't say the english doctors were worse. You simply didn't know what to say to arguments and so tried to strawman me into an argument you feel you can fight. Why would I help you do that? Dishonest fucks can fuck themselves...
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So why don't you ask me why I said something I actually said, ehm chump?
I didn't ask you why you said anything. That you imply I did makes you a liar. Quit lying, you lying liar.
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"I find it amusing that you are so sure that the US system"
This was your strawman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Re:$805M budget (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is the best model I can find for what you'd get in the US.
The VA hospital system. This is a medical system set up for US soldiers in the US. It is entirely operated by the US federal government and it is widely regarded to be some mixture of corrupt and incompetent. There have been quite a few scandals with it recently.
Mostly stuff about putting people on wait lists forever. A lot of soldiers die waiting for treatment in the system.
When I hear "lets socialize the US healthcare system"... I think of the VA hospitals.
I've studied the VA system, and they're getting a bad rap.
First, you have to judge them by their main purpose: When a soldier comes back from Iraq with a brain injury, their job is to keep him alive and get him functioning as well as possible. They do the best job in the world. There is no place in the world that can treat head wounds as well as the U.S. military. Nobody. Same with the guys who have a foot blown off by a land mine.
If some 60-year-old vet comes in with trouble urinating because of an enlarged prostate, they're going to take care of him, yes. But he may have to wait for somebody with a more urgent problem. Like a coronary bypass or stroke.
Second, Congress wanted to cut taxes. But they wanted first-class service from government agencies. They wanted everything but they didn't want to pay for it. So they ordered the VA to cut their waiting times. But they didn't give them the money to hire more doctors to do it. So what do managers do when you tell them they have to do the impossible or they'll be fired? As any MBA will tell you, they cheat. They fudged their appointment records, just as any private business manager in the same situation would do. (Hello Enron?)
Third, the VA system does some of the best medical research in the world. When they do a treatment hundreds of thousands of times a year, they do a study to find out which treatment works better, which hospital gets better results, and which doctors get better results. (No, they don't fire the doctors with worse results, they retrain them.) They do that for heart disease, stroke, cancer, eye disease, amputations, everything. I went to a lot of medical conferences, and they're always talking about "the VA study" in their field, which is usually the best study available.
For example, I just read a study about how the VA was trying to figure out how to give pain-killing drugs to vets in severe pain. If you don't give them enough drugs, they're in pain. If you give them too much, and if you give them opioids, they can die from an overdose. The VA doctors figured out how to optimize it.
So yes, if I had a heart attack outside a VA medical center, I'd feel comfortable that I was getting the best care in the world. I'd trust them to make a tough diagnosis, and to treat a serious, life-threatening disease. If you were crippled, I'd trust them to get you walking again, if anybody could do it.
Don't whine to me because you can't get an appointment this month. Tell Congress to give them enough money to hire more doctors.
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1. I don't believe that it is impossible to find equal or superior care for those sorts of injuries outside the VA.
2. All you're saying here is that the military budget got cut and there were consequences people didn't anticipate. I agree. What is more, why don't you think the same thing would happen if we nationalized healthcare. Government cuts spending... and boom.
3. As to medical research, it would be more accurate to say that funding for research through the universities is appropriated through the VA
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1. I don't believe that it is impossible to find equal or superior care for those sorts of injuries outside the VA.
I'd like to know where. All the major research is published by people from the VA (and they collaborate with the best people around the world). I read the studies and I really am impressed by the work of the VA.
Can J Surg. 2015 Jun;58(3):S104-7.
Cervical spine injury in dismounted improvised explosive device trauma.
Taddeo J1, Devine M2, McAlister VC3.
Author information
1The Maine Veterans' Affairs Medical Center, Augusta, Maine.
2The Canadian Armed Forc
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2. VA gets their own budget and he was referencing an unfunded mandate.
3. bullshit
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Davey Davey Davey... what is up with all these unqualified posts here? You know when you do that it is impossible to prove you wrong... and also impossible for you to right... right?
You say these things... no basis... logically aduittable argument... no basis of information... just... insults.
one would think you were afraid of me, Davey? Think you'll get eaten alive so you'll just make non-falsifiable arguments that can't actually be disproven?
Davey... come on... You can be better than that. Don't post like
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Something I've noticed in the UK is they have a lot of imported doctors. People that grew up in India, went to medical school in india, and then immigrate to the UK to practice. I've been to a few UK hospitals and they're largely foreign born. Which implies the salaries being offered are below market rates for the UK.
That suggests that even if the US is over paying for doctors, the UK is likely underpaying.
I don't follow. That there are more "dark" doctors than white means that UK is underpaying? If they were underpaying, and the US is overpaying, why aren't there more "dark" doctors in the US, moving there for the increased pay? There has to be something else at work. Such as the AMA's stranglehold on doctors, trying to artificially limit the number of US doctors to prevent competition. If the doctors in the UK are underpaid, then those moving to the UK should have instead moved to Australia or elsewher
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Actually, a lot of it IS dealing with insurers.
In a single-payer system like in Canada, you bill the government for every patient. In out, easy. It's estimated the paper handling costs for this are around $20K or so per year for doctor's off
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If you knew what you where talking about could have a point, but as it stands you sound like a shotgun polishing hill billy.
The primary problem with healthcare in general is that it is an inelastic market for individuals. That is if you need a treatment to save your life, it does nto mater if it costs $7 or $7000, you will find the money to pay for it; even if you have to beg on Facebook. The primary problem that insurances have in the US is that they are almost all small and have little bargaining power. T
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DURRRR...
Please explain the following:
How can it be that the exact same hip replacement in the US costs 10x the cost than in Spain? It is cheaper to fly to Spain, stay a month in a hotel, get your hip replaced, run with the bulls, get injured, get your hip replaced again and still have spending money.
Just to ensure there is no confusion, it is the same operation with the same materials (even same brand) and a similarly qualified doctor. Also, yes your insurance will not cover the travel to Spain.
No system i
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As to the spanish option... I think most people don't realize it is an option. If they did, they'd do that. You already have people crossing the border a lot for medical care. Both ways. Houston of all places has a massive medical center that is largely that size because there are a lot of medical tourists that fly to the US from south america for medical treatment. Not hte poor south americans... the ones that can pay cash. They also get a lot of middle easterners there as well. They'll fly from saudi arab
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First, the hospitals do not bid rates generally. They only tell the insurance companies what their price lists are and that is the only place those prices are really negotiated.
Virtually all insurance companies negotiate with all hospitals. http://www.npr.org/sections/he... [npr.org] (You can also look up Steven Brill's articles about the Chargemaster.) That's the way the free market works. If I buy ketchup from Heinz, they'll charge me $5 a bottle. If McDonald's buys ketchup from Heinz, they'll negotiate.
If I needed a certain type of treatment... not right now... but in a week or two... I'd have time to shop around. And the medical system could offer rates just like anything else is offered with rates. The fact that they're not is one of the reasons the market has a hard time controlling costs. Lets say a hospital 400 miles away is willing to do an operation that would cost me 50k where I am for only 25k? Now assuming quality is comparable, I then do a cost benefit analysis...
I've talked to doctors and economists about this. I've read their articles (and written a few myself).
Here's the flaw in your reasoning: "Now assuming quality is comparable"...
You can't po
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as to insurance companies negociating with hospitals... first that is not a general release of pricing is it?
And second, the big problem with the insurance system is that it is no one's money.
The insurance companies don't really care what they pay the hospitals so long as all the other insurance companies have to pay a very similar amount. it isn't their money.
It's YOUR money. if the hospitals raise prices then the insurance companies raise premiums so they don't have to actually pay more because it isn't t
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And what you'll find is that they started to get bad when a lot of welfare programs were released that disincentivized work, disincentivized a stable household, undermined the quality of inner city public education, and a tediously long list of things that really hurt those people. And it was all government action. And it was all with good intentions.
Are you saying that the the center city neighborhoods throughout the country were filled with happy, hard-working black people until Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program came along in the 1960s and gave them government money?
You don't know too much about segregation in the U.S. Black people couldn't even vote in most parts of the formerly Confederate states until the Voting Rights Act of 1964, and even then they were often killed when they tried to register to vote. Black schools were far worse than white
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As to segregation... Was New York city or Detroit segregated?
Yes you have a point or no you don't have a point?
As to slaves... Chinese immigrants to the US didn't start off as much better than slaves and yet they never had these problems.
I'm sorry, your narrative is reductive. You need to be more deductive.
Solve the mystery. Don't just think like creationists, start with your conclusion, and then look for evidence to support your preconcieved ideas of things. Stop and actually look at what happened.
As to sl
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And in some cases they're not even included in your statistics. Some countries don't count their slums at all. No stats even attempted. Murder rate, literacy rate, infant mortality... not recorded.
I don't know if anyone in europe does that but it is quite common in south america to not count problem areas at all.
Regardless... you have to concede that the problem is not general but is a result of averaging highly concentrated problem areas into general statistics.
Conflating those stats with the whole country
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As to no one wanting to fix the areas in the concentrated areas, that's not true. I do. Lots of other people do as well.
One of the first things you'd have to admit though is that business as usual ain't working. You can't just blame the political opposition either. Most of these places have had the party bigger and bigger subsidies and welfare programs for a generation.
That riot in Phili... Hard to blame the political opposition or some evil alien race. It was all in house and the tired old victim narrative
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Your reasons for doubt are little more than your own belief that you KNOW me through a few internet posts. Forgive me if your opinions as to my nature are... dubious at best.
As to old welfare programs dating back to FDR... yes... most acknowledge old FDR make the depression deeper and longer.
Did you know we had an economic crash before the great crash... and that crash was just as bad but wasn't followed by a depression?
Do you know what the solution of the sitting president of the day was? I'll have you loo
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The US poor have been pitted against each other and had suspicion bred into their bones.
This is on a different topic, but you should read it to better understand some of the issues:
http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
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I mean, can you blame the lack of socialized healthcare on the literacy and high school graduation rates?
Well, yes, obviously you can. Healthcare is a major factor in making people poor and unable to afford to get a good education. If people are ill and can't get proper treatment they can't earn as much money, or any at all. The medical bills drain their money. Then they pay less tax, so the public education system has less money, and can't afford extras to help their kids study at home or go on school trips or participate in sports.
It's a cycle. If you are poor you will probably need more healthcare. Manual l
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"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action."
Frank Herbert
your agenda is showing... you'll need to work harder to make that less obvious. Just fyi, paaal. :D
A socialist saying the solution to all problems is more socialism. Fucking shocking.
Solution to a problem with a general break down in inner city minority ghettos?... National healthcare for everyone.
Of course.
You're a clown. And an evil one at that because your agenda uses the suffering and mis
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Nonsense. It's pathetic, baseless ass-delving like that which will ensure the US will hemorrhage money on its healthcare for generations to come. The US is not doing fine with regards to healthcare. It spends far too much and achieves far too little. You can argue about inner-city demographics skewing things, but that doesn't make as much of a difference as you seem to think it does. Of course anything called "socialist" is bad to you (except the socialised programs you happen to approve of - cognitive
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I agree we spend too much and get too little. But unlike you, Davey my boy, I don't just take the average figure and lower it to some arbitrary goal like a complete and TOTAL fucktard. Instead, I want to go through the components of that cost and figure out WHY it costs more.
So apparently we pay our doctors TWICE what they're paid in England. I found that fairly easily.
I also talked about how there isn't cost transparency at hospitals or really any quality rankings of them.
how can a market operate if you do
Re:$805M budget (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, plenty of people do want to cut that budget, but can't for ideological reasons.
The US spends just over 17% of GDP on health care, which is a figure only exceeded by Tuvalu [worldbank.org]. Most developed countries (e.g. most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan) the figure is around 9-10% of GDP. Even France spends less than 12%.
So, yes, you could cut that figure by a third simply by building a real public health system.
For every dollar in premiums you pay your insurance company, they spend 15-20 cents in administrative costs and profits. (You can see that if you read an insurance company annual report on their web site. The "loss ratio," usually 80-85%, is the money they pass on to the doctor or hospital.)
Then your doctor gets 80 cents. He has to spend another 20 cents in administrative costs to deal with the insurance company. (Compared to less than 5 cents on Medicare.)
So if you just cut out the insurance companies, you'd save 35% right there. Other big expenses here are the cost of drugs, hospital services, and doctor services.
I don't know if Obamacare has helped or will help in any significant way. Given that the AMA supported it, probably not.
There was a good story in the Washington Post, based on a Netroots Nation meeting, which gave a reasonably good brief explanation of how Obamacare got here and why it will fail.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/... [washingtonpost.com]
Liberal activists see Bernie Sanders as champion for causes failed by Obama
By David Weigel
July 20, 2015
Basically, Obama and the advisers he picked decided that the only way to pass a health care bill was to give the Republicans and the corporations everything they wanted. They struck a deal with the insurance companies, the drug companies, the hospitals, the doctors' organizations, etc. to give them everything they wanted. So you have to buy your Obamacare through a private insurer, instead of having the choice of a public option.
The problem with Obamacare is that the premiums and copayments are enormous. A single person making $27,000 a year would have to pay one month's income a year for the premiums. Then (depending on the plan) the insurance wouldn't kick in until she spent $2,000 or $3,000. Then she might have to pay 20% or 40% of the costs, until she reached the maximum, which is $8,000. It benefits somebody who has more than $8,000 a year of medical expenses.
In other words, you wind up paying twice as much as they do in Canada. And in this country, the burden falls most heavily on the lower middle class. It's a regressive tax.
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Riiiight. Which is why every single Republican Senator [senate.gov] and Congressman [govtrack.us] voted against it.
What really happened was the exact opposite of what you say. Obama and his advisors crafted a heath care bill which was so liberal, not only did it lose all the Republicans, it was in danger of losing a good chunk of the moderate-center Democrats as
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Riiiight. Which is why every single Republican Senator [senate.gov] and Congressman [govtrack.us] voted against it.
If you read that Washington Post article I linked above, you will see that the complaint of the progressives is that Obama gave the Republicans everything they said they wanted, but they still opposed it. The progressives thought that Obama was making a stupid, unnecessary compromise that wouldn't even work, and they turned out to be right. Even when Obama gave away the store, the Republicans still opposed him in every way they could.
I don't know where you get your idea of "far-left wing." I went to City College of New York at a time when I could sit at one lunchroom table with the Communists, another table with the Trotskyites, and another table with the Socialist Workers Party. Those were the people who were supporting Fidel Castro, fighting against the Vietnam war, and sitting in with Martin Luther King (and getting arrested in the process). So maybe you could call them far-left.
The left wing of the Democratic Party in Congress is probably represented by the Progressive Caucus, which includes Bernie Sanders and John Conyers. I don't know why you call them "far" left, unless it just makes you feel good to throw out inflammatory adjectives.
The Progressive Caucus supports a single-payer, Canadian-style system, where the government replaces the insurance companies, and negotiates with drug companies. That's not Obamacare. The Progressive Caucus members weren't even allowed into Obama's White House Health Care Summit in 2009, until they complained. Obama first promised them a single payer option, and then took it back when Karen Ignani, head of the insurance industry lobbying organization, threatened to pull another "Harry and Louise." Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, was always hostile to the Democratic left and in one famous incident called them "fucking retarded." (Which you can look up on Google.)
Obamacare was modeled on a Heritage Foundation plan. I can blame it on the conservatives, Democrat and Republican:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Busin... [csmonitor.com]
The irony of Republican disapproval of Obamacare
The Democrat's version of health insurance would have been cheaper, simpler and more popular. But we enacted the Republican version. So why are they so upset? Because it an achievement for the Obama administration.
By Robert Reich October 28, 2013
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the... [msnbc.com]
The Heritage Foundation disowns its ba
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Last direct attack against the US by a enemy force, might that be Pearl Harbour? (To be honest, US history isn't my strong point, but attacks by a couple of people and the threat of attack doesn't count)
Number of stupidly pointless wars the US has created since WWII............
Yeah I wonder why defence is first on the chopping block.
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No patrolling sea lanes? No maintaining an international military logistics network? No investing in air superiority? No protecting Japan? No protecting South Korea? No protecting Israel? No protecting Europe? No protecting Eastern Europe? No defense agreements in South America to defend country X if attacked by country Y?
Because if the US wasn't doing that the world would fall apart? Typical American jesus complex. What would the real impact be of not doing all that all the time?
And why, pray tell, is it on the American tax payer to fund it, exactly? And why *just* the American tax payers? Nobody else pays as much per capita as the USA does... why does the USA do it?
In a word: money. Big profits reaped by corporations both by having the force projection we have, and reaped by corporations actually providing and maintaining
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What did the world look like before the British Empire? Because that was what it was like before you had a great sea power patrolling the sea lanes and making it clear that anyone that fucked with shipping was going to get shelled.
As to why we have to fund it... basically because we agreed to and because no one else wants to do it.
A better question would be why don't we collect tribute.
Historically powers like the US do that. You provide protection or some other service and the powers that use it have to pa
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What did the world look like before the British Empire? Because that was what it was like before you had a great sea power patrolling the sea lanes and making it clear that anyone that fucked with shipping was going to get shelled.
I think there's been more than enough change in the world since then that we can't assume its going to look anything like that ever again. And again, safe shipping lanes in east asia... benefit american citizens in ways that are difficult to quantify. Yes, imports/exports... but access to cheap offshored manufacturing goods at the loss of local manufacturing and local manufacturing jobs. Market efficiency realized to be sure, but the benefit of that market efficiency is largely privatized while the tax paye
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As to the world being different. Yes... it is different because it was changed. You're welcome.
Okay, as to why the US doesn't charge for the protection, the reasons were very much nested in the post WW2 world. We had just fought the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese. And then after the war, we were dealing with the Soviets that tried to exploit Europe being in ruins to basically make a huge land grab. And not only did Stalin do that but he tried to claim all sorts of stuff that he wasn't even close to and bas
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Really there was nothing that could stop the soviets from expanding except the US.
Stopped reading there, because it's so absurd. The thing that stopped the Soviets from expanding was, of all things, THE SOVIETS. They had enough trouble holding onto a restive Eastern Europe, very, very few people in the Kremlin had the slightest illusion that they were going to be expanding much beyond that (they never even made a serious attempt at controlling the Dardanelles to protect their underbelly). The only place
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No protecting South Korea? No protecting Israel? No protecting Europe? No protecting Eastern Europe? No defense agreements in South America to defend country X if attacked by country Y?
You've got some good suggestions there. If South Korea's oligarchs actually had to fund a military adequate to go up against the North they might actually be able to come up with a functional peace. Who are we protecting Europe from by the way? Morocco? Finland? Germany? As far as the Organization of American States mu
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USA! USA! USA!
We're number #1!
The world would actually prefer it if most of the above was not the case.
And there would be a massive saving to the US tax payer as well.
You are under no obligation to do any of that.
(I'm an Aussie)
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Why is that?
Maybe because the USA spend 10 times the amount of money on it's military than the combined total of the following 9 nations on the list sorted by spend, and many those other 9 are allies of the USA anyway.
I would be for cutting military spending and instead providing better healthcare. Where would I cut the military budget? Start with the over expensive and useless planes, the incredibly fat contracts given to useless parties, or why not actually try not waging war against someone for once in history?
I als
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And if they US didn't those countries would have to spend more. So what is your point?
A country that is getting US strategic protection basically for free doesn't need to spend that money themselves.
Cite the percentage GDP spending of relevant non-first world powers.
First world is in the original context... aka US allies. Second world would be soviet allies and third world would be anyone else. That is what that term means.
So... cite non-US allies that have a relevant military force and cite the percentage
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And if they US didn't those countries would have to spend more. So what is your point?
Erm that is entirely my point. The USA outspends all of it's allied forces, and the allied forces together outspend everyone else. The USA could easily spend a quarter of the money, still be the dominant force, and with all it's allies still get to act as the world police. I'm not pointing out that others save their budgets, I'm pointing out that that due to scales of military the USA could too and it wouldn't make a lick of difference in the world, just back home where they could potentially have some extr
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Maybe I've said too much...
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... no. Break down the budget. We can talk about what each thing we do costs and then you can tell me what you want me to cut.
Who gets fucked? Do we fuck Europe? Fuck Eastern Europe? Fuck Israel or Saudi Arabia? Fuck South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, or Australia? Who do we fuck?
You don't just take the full budget and sight unseen cut it.
You have to go into the projects and programs and tasks and tell me what you don't want us to do anymore.
I can give you one that I think we could probably scrap... the J
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So why are you raiding the military budget?
Because it is far too big, and incredibly wasteful. So much is just political pork. I'm not just talking about the mythical $6000 hammer, but whole programs that should be scrapped, like the JSF.
US military spending is equal to the next nine countries combined. [wikipedia.org]
Be careful. With such a bloated military, you run the risk of launching wars of aggression against distant countries that are no threat to the US, killing countless people, destabilising regions, and giving rise to devastating fundamentalist armies
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The joint strike fighter was actually an attempt to save money. Did you know that?
As to the next nine countries:
percentage GDP is what is relevant actually... and by those figures you can see the US isn't exceptional.
What is more, our military is effectively NATO, the military of Japan, the military of South Korea, the military of Australia, and also the military of Saudi Arabia and Israel which is kind of a fun combination.
Point is that you can't compare the US against non-hegemonic powers. And even if you
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As to the next nine countries: percentage GDP is what is relevant actually... and by those figures you can see the US isn't exceptional.
Okay, let's do that. The US is at 3.3%. Let's look at the rest. Here are the ones from the top 10 that are spending more as a percentage of the GDP than the USA:
Now let's look at the ones that are spending less than half as much as the USA:
Notice how this list is longer than the first one? Okay, how about ones are spending 2/3 of what the US is spending per capita?
That
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First this is a better ranking:
https://www.cia.gov/library/pu... [cia.gov]
As you can see, the US is rated number 9 in the world. Not even in the top five. What you should know is that countries ranked highly on this list all have to take care of themselves. With no relevant exceptions, if the shit hits the fan... no one is coming to save any of these countries... they're on their own. And their spending reflects that.
You can't include first world countries in that ranking either except for the US because the US has t
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Because it is defense budget, not offense budget, but all you do is to attack countries left and right because you apparently enjoy killing people.
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Actually there is no such thing as a defense budget in the 21st century. You defend yourself with offensive power. The US doesn't build armor around the US and neither does any other credible military power. You defend yourself by having forces that can engage enemy forces near your territory... and ideally preempt them and strike them in their own lands.
As to attacking countries left and right... no we don't. We're pretty selective about it and there tends to reasons for it that seem good to us at the time
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You of all people call others uneducated and not realising how stupid they are? Oh the irony - many people, me included, have pointed out the utter wrongness in your answers often enough. Being that dense is quite an achievement.
Merkins like you invent yourself an enemy and then go bomb them because your culture is generally very violent, not because of some noble reasons. And don't shift the blame to others. In the past 50 years USA has started more wars than anyone else by a huge margin and also has kille
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And I should point out that the military is one of the few things the government does that it is supposed to do and it is one of the few things the world... especially our allies need us to be competent in.
No thanks. In fact, please stop. We don't need Team America World Police, that's something you use to justify intervention in your own interests.
Maybe sunset its guarantee to protect Japan? We could let Israel get genocided. Maybe let the Russians run wild in Eastern Europe. Possibly allow the North Koreans to invade and enslave the south koreans?
Israel can take care of itself. It has nukes and a powerful military. If anything, the US is primarily there to prevent Israel getting carried away.
I don't recall US troops doing anything in Ukraine to prevent the Russians annexing parts of it. South Korea can take care of itself too, it has an advanced military. The US is only there because it's as close to China
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Where did we use it recently to intervene for our own interests? Tell me more... I'd love to hear your ignorant babble on the issue. :)
As to Israel's powerful military... that relates to the weapons we both give, sell, and sell at a deep discount to them.
As to Ukraine, the only thing holding Russia back at this point is the US. Putin goes far enough to get something but no so far that the US will send troops.
Remove the US from the equation and the amount he can take before he gets a response increases to wh
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maybe you'd like them to not have the latest high tech stuff so when we go to war more of our people die
Yep. Get rid of the Joint Strike Fighter, first. Pretty much all of Lockheed's Skunk Works projects at this point. Most of the alphabet soup of intel agencies. The entirely illegal bio-weapons and chemical weapons programs. Ninety percent of the nukes, including **all** of the tactical ones. The Osprey and the Paladin. The very illegal domestic propaganda operations. The free weapons and ammuniti
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As to the JSF, yeah... that was actually an attempt to save money. back fired horribly.
As to the rest of the skunkworks... no... they do good work when they're not asked to build stupid shit. It isn't really their fault. I don't know how the project got so screwed up... it was sort of like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
As to the intel agencies... sure... so long as no one else spies or lies we don't need to have spy agencies.
Tell me when you've verified that and we'll terminate them.
what's your prob
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"Where would you like to cut the US military budget? Maybe cut their medical care? That's a popular one."
Popular? Among who? Who exactly has argued that military medical care should be cut?
"Or maybe you'd like them to not have the latest high tech stuff s
Ludicrous levels of military spending (Score:2)
Yet whenever anyone wants to raid a fund to pay for something... its the military budget. Why is that?
Because that is where the money is and we spend ludicrously more on our military than is sensible or necessary. We apparently spend more on our military than the next 7 or so largest military spenders COMBINED [firstlook.org]. There is no reasonable justification for that. That is just rampant paranoia.
And I should point out that the military is one of the few things the government does that it is supposed to do and it is one of the few things the world... especially our allies need us to be competent in.
Remind me again why we have to be the ones to defend other countries that are perfectly capable of paying to defend themselves? Europe should not need the US to defend them and yet their largest military spender (France)
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Most of the mandatory spending in that category is going to education subsidies.
So you want to cut those are did you accidentally blow your leg off by stepping on another rhetorical land mine?
Its a rhetorical question of course... you have no legs now. Adorable.
While there is pork spending in EVERY budget category it is important to remember that every segment of the budget is an umbrella of a lot of things. And just indiscriminately cutting anything is going to involve drownding a lot of kittens. Anyone th
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Probably impractical, but imagine if more things in government were funded at-will. Then the projects the people truly care about would receive funding. People could point to the things they helped accomplish rather than feeling like they're pissing their money away into pork projects and padding the wallets of the well connected puppet masters. A space suit today, maybe Mars tomorrow.
Re:$805M budget (Score:4, Informative)
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This comment is modded Insightful? It is more like clueless.
The purpose of this campaign is right on the Kickstarter page (and it isn't to raise money that would otherwise not be in their budget):
Kickstarter gives a wide audience the chance to be a part of this project. We're inviting you to go behind the scenes and be a part of the process – from fundraising through conservation to display.
Lots of people want the opportunity to be involved with stuff like this.
137 Million Objects (Score:3)
The Smithsonian has a $805,000,000 budget.... surely they could scrounge up 0.06% of their annual budget to pay for it themselves since preserving significant artifacts of USA history is pretty much exactly what taxpayers are paying them for.
The Smithsonian owns 137 million artifacts.
That translates to a budget of $5.88/yr per artifact for research. conservation, storage and display, security, outreach and all other purposes and expenses.
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From the article:
"The Smithsonian’s federal funds—about 70 percent of its resources—are restricted to safeguarding collections, research and the costs associated with operating and maintaining the museums. But exhibitions, public programs and the recent digitization of the collection have largely been privately funded."
In that context, online crowdfunding is completely in line with the Smithsonian's standard operations. Furthermore, people donating know exactly what their donations are goi
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Of course they could. But they also want another half million dollars. So they put up a high priority project that should have strong public support.
Even notice that when NASA budget is threatened they say shit like "There goes the Hubble Telescope" or "There goes the Mars Rovers"?
It is the same kind of crap.
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The Smithsonian has a $805,000,000 budget.... surely they could scrounge up 0.06% of their annual budget to pay for it themselves since preserving significant artifacts of USA history is pretty much exactly what taxpayers are paying them for.
Well, the Smithsonian has a gift shop, probably does fundraisers, has publicity programs, and does collection of data of supporters. Like it or not, Kickstarter is a tool that does all those things. Go look at the Kickstarter. This is not so much as a plea for money but a publicity event to sell merchandise that will raise that money while also offering a chance to collect a list of people interested in their endeavors. Very early on, Kickstarter ceased to really be a way to kick in money to a desired goal
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Your math is off a bit. That's 711M for Salaries AND EXPENSES. Actual salaries is ~300M based on their request for a 1% raise of 3M.
So they make roughly 50k/yr on average.
keep the stains (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't want the stains removed. They're part of history. They're badges earned by actually making the trip. Preserve it: sure. Clean it: no way.
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That's an assumption, not a fact. Fortunately, the Smithsonian knows the difference and plans to research the history of and determine the source of the stain and how it relates to the history and use of the suit before making any decisions. It could just as easily be a manufacturing flaw that didn't manifest for decades, or a handling error at NASA postflight, or a consequence of storage at the Sm
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Generated when Neil first beheld the set in the basement of Universal Studios. "You want me to WHAT?"
Re: keep the stains (Score:3)
Perhaps it should be allowed to decay untouched. As a piece of history. A one time achievement. Like our space ambitions.
I'm a little troubled... (Score:5, Interesting)
That they don't have the money to pay for this out of petty cash. I also question why it is costing half a million dollars.
It sounds like they're mostly taking pictures of it and then putting a website up with historical information they can pull out of records and the pictures.
Why does that cost half a million dollars? I'd feel better about this if they put that out to an open bid. I'm quite certain that you could get a very reputable outfit to do it for a fraction of this amount of money.
This is probably a bad example but I think this gets to something I'm talking about here:
http://www.cleanoilpainting.co... [cleanoilpainting.com]
Okay, that's what it costs for the restoration of an oil painting. And that is finer fiddlier work than the space suit.
Lets take their high number of 2500 USD and say that is what it would cost to restore 80 square inches of space suit. This is a huge inflation of the art restoration costs because they're saying this would cost 500 dollars for 80 square inches. But we'll go with the high number just to make a point.
Okay human body has about 2790 square inches of surface area... we'll double that for inside and outside and just treat the suit for this example like its skin. Then we'll divide that by 80 square inches and then multiply that by 2500 USD... and we get:
174,375 dollars. And that still sounds really high to me. But its a tiny fraction of the money they're asking.
But they also promised to take high res photos. So lets look at what that costs.
I did some digging as to what it would cost to do a full 3d high res photo shoot for the entire space suit... whole thing... inside, outside, helmet, gloves, etc. And I'm having a hard time getting numbers even in 5 figures. This is looking like maybe 8 grand. But lets say its 80 grand because its the government and you can reliabily get them to pay 10 times what something is worth without them batting an eye.
That's still 173 + 80 grand. So... What's left here? Making a website? Who here thinks that explains the gap in costs?
So yeah... I don't understand the 500 grand bill on this. It seems wildly inflated.
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Well I know nothing about conservation but the kick starter project is fairly clear:
1/ they have no idea on how to restore a spacesuit because nobody has done that before. Clearly whoever (probably more than one person) that will have the expertise of developing the technique will not come cheap. And developing the technique will probably take multiple trial on not-armstrong's space suit, space suits are expensive.
2/ Then as you mentioned, the restoration itself, once how to do that is probably a 6 figure c
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1. They were made by this company:
http://www.ilcdover.com/ [ilcdover.com]
They still make space suits. Do you know who knows how to build a space suit? These people. And knowing how something was made in the first place is kind of a prerequisite for restoration in most cases. If you don't know how the oil painting was painted you're probably going to fuck up the restoration. Any restoration project that doesn't include the company that made them and likely has a lot of records and specifications on it is dubious from the g
Re:I'm a little troubled... (Score:5, Informative)
Just because you don't like to cost doesn't mean it's not accurate.
It is almost always more expensive to restore an old [anything] than it would be to build a lookalike from scratch. Materials fail and have to be very carefully repaired. Have you ever tried to repair fabric in a historically accurate way?
I happen to deal in buildings, and most people don't realize how complex it is to restore an old building while keeping as much of the historic content as possible. It means you spend $10000 to internally repair and strengthen a damaged beam that might cost $200 in steel and $350 in fabrication to replace. That trim work that's very similar - but not exactly the same profile - as the $1.10/LF chair rail at Home Depot will cost you $400 for a custom knife, $3/ft for the lumber, and $75/hr to have it milled, plus shipping and markup - and you're probably only going to be 20-30LF to patch in places where the old lumber could not be saved or where it was cut out (say for a door) and you're putting back the wall.
As for ilcdover - how many workers currently employed by them worked on the Apollo era suits and still remember all the techniques used for assembly? I'm going to guess the number is right around zero. How many of the materials used in modern suits they do have experience with match the condition of the materials used in Armstrong's suit? How many workers have used that material after it's been laying around for 50 years? How much are you willing to save to risk damaging the suit forever?
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Just because you're gullible, it doesn't mean the price isn't extortionate.
As to restoration, I cited the cost of restoring an oil painting with the same surface area as that suit... and then multiplied that number by 5. Explain why restoring the LOOK of an old space suit is more expensive than that when you have original company that built the suit and that still builds space suits helping you?
I mean, are they saying they're going to restore it so it can take pressure again? Get real. they're just making i
Re:I'm a little troubled... (Score:4, Informative)
It does seem high, but comparing it to oil painting restoration isn't really fair. Oil paintings are well understood and repair is somewhat routine. We know what techniques to use, how materials will react etc. Plus, for that money you won't be getting fully insured work on a priceless bit of art.
For an Apollo era space suit a lot of the documentation has been lost, or at least needs to be found. Samples of the material need to be found to test processes on before using them on the real suit. Not just testing for discolouration and stuff like that, but testing for accelerated deterioration that might affect it in 10 or 20 years time. It's a new process on a unique artefact.
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You are showing your ignorance again. You are assuming it costs the same to restore a space suit as it does an oil painting, then running on from there. No wonder you come to such fucked-up conclusions when you confuse "something you pulled out of your ass" with "reality". It explains so much of the drivel you've shat on this thread. Wow.
Hint: People have been restoring oil paintings for hundreds of years, the mechanics and materials involved are well known, and art restoration is a thriving industry, w
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No, I assume it costs about as much to make a space suit LOOK new.
Are you replacing all the things in the suit that have undergone chemical changes over the years that will ensure that hte suit is not safe to take pressure again?
No you're not.
So when you say "restore" you mean you're making it look good. You're cleaning it, you're filling in the cracks in the dried rubber, and you're blowing some new car smell into it.
What else could you possibly do? First off, large portions of the suit are chemically stab
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I did some digging as to what it would cost to do a full 3d high res photo shoot for the entire space suit... whole thing... inside, outside, helmet, gloves, etc. And I'm having a hard time getting numbers even in 5 figures. This is looking like maybe 8 grand.
That's probably because you've never had to hire a trained professional with professional equipment before. Eight grand wouldn't be unheard of for a single day of a wedding photographer. Of course that single day includes prep time, equipment costs, an assistant, and a week of post production work at a contractor's rate, but you're just one of those people who wonders why they can' just have their cousin take photos with their point and shoot for free instead. five figures is easy to reach if you have to hi
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... did you ignore the bit where I took that number... inflated it by a factor of 10... and it still didn't add up?
Are you saying the photos will cost 80 grand? because even at eighty grand we're barely to half the money being asked for here. And that was with me inflating the cost of the suit restoration by a factor of five assuming it was as hard to make LOOK good as an oil painting. If it were an oil painting... the entire surface area of the suit... inside and out cost about of fifth of the 173 thousand