NASA appears no longer to be shooting for the stars
1–10 of 33 posts
Re: NASA appears no longer to be shooting for the stars
#2I like the fact that we don't have money for $9 million a day to go to the moon, but we have about $800 million a day to screw up Afghanistan even more than it already is, and $1.9 billion to soak into the sands of Iraq, also for nothing obvious.
Fiscal scolds drive me crazy when they overlook mere elephants in the room - this is like a whole pod of blue whales.
(Note: figures from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933935.html)
Re: NASA appears no longer to be shooting for the stars
#3Can anyone comment on what role the obsessive safety culture mentioned in the article may have played in NASA's current declining trajectory?
It's interesting to see that they have ramped up testing; IIRC, all the problems they've had were tied to manufacturing mistakes, not design flaws. This makes me think safety would be best served by more rigorous Q&A to prevent flaws, rather than testing runs to find them.
Re: NASA appears no longer to be shooting for the stars
#4I like the fact that we don't have money for $9 million a day to go to the moon, but we have about $800 million a day to screw up Afghanistan even more than it already is, and $1.9 billion to soak into the sands of Iraq, also for nothing obvious. Fiscal scolds drive me crazy when they overlook mere elephants in the room - this is like a whole pod of blue whales. (Note: figures from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933…
Not sure why you are being downvoted. Our financial priorities as a country are a wreck. You would really be downvoted if you had pointed out how morally and intellectually bankrupt we are as well.
Re: NASA appears no longer to be shooting for the stars
#5I like the fact that we don't have money for $9 million a day to go to the moon, but we have about $800 million a day to screw up Afghanistan even more than it already is, and $1.9 billion to soak into the sands of Iraq, also for nothing obvious. Fiscal scolds drive me crazy when they overlook mere elephants in the room - this is like a whole pod of blue whales. (Note: figures from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933…
I downvoted you, but I feel like I owe you an explanation.
Here's the problem with what you said.
The use of lethal force in the national interest is either justified or it is not. I mean, you can't half-kill somebody.
If it is justified, then whatever the cost, we have to pay it. It is a matter of survival and critical national interest. Compared to this, any other program doesn't make sense. We're doing what we have to do. It trumps everything else.
If it's not justified, then by definition we're wasting money doing something that involves killing people. Any other program would be better than than this. Everything else trumps it.
But we haven't gotten anywhere at all. It's either obvious and non-optional, or optional and totally unworthy compared to anything else. Neither of these two conditions tells us anything about the space program. It's just a way of commenting on the war -- a way that you can insert into any policy discussion about anything, without moving the discussion forward any. It's off-topic.
You want to talk funding, pick something everybody can agree is somewhat optional and discretionary -- keeping lots of military bases open, foreign aid, public financing of campaigns, entitlements, whatever. But picking something where we're actively trying to kill folks just takes the conversation to a place where logic and reason can't go. Whether the war is a good idea is probably a crazy-good topic of conversation somewhere, but it has fuck-all to do with NASA or funding.
Re: NASA appears no longer to be shooting for the stars
#6I like the fact that we don't have money for $9 million a day to go to the moon, but we have about $800 million a day to screw up Afghanistan even more than it already is, and $1.9 billion to soak into the sands of Iraq, also for nothing obvious. Fiscal scolds drive me crazy when they overlook mere elephants in the room - this is like a whole pod of blue whales. (Note: figures from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933…
I downvoted you, but I feel like I owe you an explanation. Here's the problem with what you said. The use of lethal force in the national interest is either justified or it is not. I mean, you can't half-kill somebody. If it is justified, then whatever the cost, we have to pay it. It is a matter of survival and critical national interest. Compared to this, any other program doesn't make sense. We're doing what we hav…
You're making it far too simple.
The military industrial complex causes us to spend more money on the military than we should.
It's definitely possible to support a military effort but at the same time not overspend on it. I'm not saying that we're spending too much on Iraq/Afghanistan, just disagreeing with the principle.
On the other hand, not so sure about those fighter jets. :(
Re: NASA appears no longer to be shooting for the stars
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
I downvoted you, but I feel like I owe you an explanation. Here's the problem with what you said. The use of lethal force in the national interest is either justified or it is not. I mean, you can't half-kill somebody. If it is justified, then whatever the cost, we have to pay it. It is a matter of survival and critical national interest. Compared to this, any other program doesn't make sense. We're doing what we hav…
You're making it far too simple. The military industrial complex causes us to spend more money on the military than we should. It's definitely possible to support a military effort but at the same time not overspend on it. I'm not saying that we're spending too much on Iraq/Afghanistan, just disagreeing with the principle. On the other hand, not so sure about those fighter jets. :(
Hang on here, I'm not the one throwing up Afghanistan as compared to NASA. That would be the parent poster. I met those comments at the same level of abstraction as they were presented.
EDIT: You guys read my comments and think I'm some kind of shill for the military-industrial complex. But that's not my point at all. What I'm trying to tell you is that comparing the high-level goals of national defense to the space program doesn't work. And if the high-level goals don't compare, it's not like you can pop down to some lower level and compare. You'll always get trumped at the higher level. This is a categorization and logic error -- nothing to do with politics. One B-2 bomber may be much less valuable to the nation than a new space system, but you can't compare bombers to rockets. Bombers always win.
Charuru is heading in the right direction. Instead of picking a war -- arguably the one thing that has to be "on" or "off", pick the entire national defense system. Does the X dollars spent on national defense compare favorably against the Y dollars on NASA? That's the high-level question. If you argue at this level, and then somebody tries to pull you down lower "Yeah but it's not like we can just stop fighting in Afghanistan" then _you_ get to pull the trump card: "we're not talking about using lethal force in the national interest. We're talking about total expenditures and how they match up against the national interest."
Re: NASA appears no longer to be shooting for the stars
#8I like the fact that we don't have money for $9 million a day to go to the moon, but we have about $800 million a day to screw up Afghanistan even more than it already is, and $1.9 billion to soak into the sands of Iraq, also for nothing obvious. Fiscal scolds drive me crazy when they overlook mere elephants in the room - this is like a whole pod of blue whales. (Note: figures from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933…
Not sure why you are being downvoted. Our financial priorities as a country are a wreck. You would really be downvoted if you had pointed out how morally and intellectually bankrupt we are as well.
I downvoted because it was an off-topic attempt to digress into talking about the war, a topic which is always guaranteed to start a very dull argument pretty much anywhere. Let's talk about NASA.
Re: NASA appears no longer to be shooting for the stars
#9The Space program may be best served by moving to the private sector. I believe the private sector will be able to do it faster, cheaper, and just as safe as Nasa. The only thing that worries me is once control is conceded from Nasa to the private sector, the government will regulate the new industry harshly.
It is sad to see the American Dream squashed because of politics but I think a new chapter is around the corner written by the citizens and not bureaucrats.
Re: NASA appears no longer to be shooting for the stars
#10I like the fact that we don't have money for $9 million a day to go to the moon, but we have about $800 million a day to screw up Afghanistan even more than it already is, and $1.9 billion to soak into the sands of Iraq, also for nothing obvious. Fiscal scolds drive me crazy when they overlook mere elephants in the room - this is like a whole pod of blue whales. (Note: figures from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933…
I downvoted you, but I feel like I owe you an explanation. Here's the problem with what you said. The use of lethal force in the national interest is either justified or it is not. I mean, you can't half-kill somebody. If it is justified, then whatever the cost, we have to pay it. It is a matter of survival and critical national interest. Compared to this, any other program doesn't make sense. We're doing what we hav…
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