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Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

bbc.co.uk

61–70 of 181 posts

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#61

Sat here in lockdown, I have just rewatched Matt Damon's The Martian and yes, we want to go up and out. I am so glad someone is still trying. I am also blown away by the American Federal budget - this is a classified military space program . How much does one of those cost ?!

This comes from the military budget; they can light Cuban cigars with hundred dollar bills as a rounding error. The US Navy has 11 large fleet aircraft carriers, 9 assault carriers, when the rest of the World considers two carriers to be a lot. Schools hold bake sales to buy supplies, the Pentagon/The Congress spends a Trillion USD on a new manned fighter we don't need just to shovel pork into as many Congressional d…

It’s hard to quantify because military supremacy and having the best weapons in the world is a huge part of why the dollar is THE global currency. And we can print dollars, hell we just printed 5 trillion in a couple weeks. This gives us insane leverage when it comes to foreign debts because most debts are in dollars. The dollars for military budget and the dollars raised by a school fundraiser are not even the same currency.

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#62

Sat here in lockdown, I have just rewatched Matt Damon's The Martian and yes, we want to go up and out. I am so glad someone is still trying. I am also blown away by the American Federal budget - this is a classified military space program . How much does one of those cost ?!

Enlighten a simpleton here please, why do "we" need to leave the planet. I am far from a space nerd but I do know that neither mars or any solar object other than other is known to contain climate that is better or would even come close to earth's climate even with no polar ice caps and extreme global warming.

Wouldn't it be cheaper (more humane as well) to "colonize" earth? For the next 100 years,even with full on warming , coastal areas and certain eco systems will be lost but you will still no matter have most parts of the big continents in tact. The land there exists now can support humanity even with 10x the population (if made arable). I mean things like beef and single story housing would certainly be rare.

How about building new cities by the rockies and great planes and build things like the hypertube (whatever it:s called) to make emmigration easier. Have friendly eco-immigration policies to avert a humanitarian and geopolitical crisis. Heck, even "colonize" the sahara,antarctica or ocean beds! Half your problem is solved on earth once you desalinate ,irrigate and build viable transport.

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#63

all the money on military, and not in investing in healthcare, improve public health responses, increasing financial reward for the front line workers that are sacrificing themselves for the greater society. In my opinion, this is sad. I would rather have this money being written as a check to every nurses and doctors served in COVID19.

If you want a more fair system for everyone, in fact you need to remove about $1.5 trillion (~42%; equivalent to two copies of the US military) from annual US healthcare spending. That just gets you down to matching what most Western European nations are spending per capita.

$3.6 trillion goes into US healthcare, providing healthcare workers - including doctors and nurses - with among the highest salaries and benefits vs their peers globally. You have to go to Switzerland to find comparable industry pay.

That is five times more than what is spent on the military. You can't slash enough spending out of the military to make a dent in that gigantic expense problem.

It's not the healthcare workers suffering in the US system, it's the patients that are suffering from paying the wildly inflated salaries in the field.

If you want a more fair system, you'll need to start by reducing incomes in the industry to levels you see in Britain, France or Germany. That means slashing doctor and nurse pay across the board. You have to shift the system toward the benefit of patients and away from the workers in healthcare. You'll also need to smash the US education system for healthcare simultaneously and remove the guild protection racket that makes becoming a doctor so expensive (you can't normalize US healthcare pay without normalizing the education costs).

You have to get spending down to near $2 trillion to create a system comparable to what you see in Western Europe, so you need to slash $1.5 trillion in spending. That means you need to fire massive numbers of doctors and nurses, squeeze resources (ration service as in all universal systems), and slash pay for every single worker in the industry.

A hazard bonus as part of one of the stimulus programs for front-line workers? Sure why not. None of it is going to be paid back anyway, it's all going to be perpetually monetized by the Fed. They deserve it in my opinion. That's very different from discussing the cost problem in military vs healthcare however. We need to remove maybe $150-$200 billion from the military to get down to a more reasonable spending level for what the US should be doing. You don't fix the biggest problem in healthcare - the extreme spending per capita - by adding more spending.

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#65

Did this mission not transfer to the new Space Force? If not, what kind of things are they doing?

The Space Force is now responsible for all DOD launches. However I believe that the payload itself still belongs to the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. Most of the people operating it may be "on loan" to the Space Force, but aren't actually members yet (I think there's only ~100 people so far in the Space Force)

> I think there's only ~100 people so far in the Space Force

It has to be more than that, now - I'm pretty sure more than a hundred just went straight there after graduating from USAFA a few weeks back

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#66
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best news choice I made, as an American, was to get my primary news through foreign outlets. Because generally, they don't really care enough to implement systemic bias about another country.

That's quite a broad brush to paint with. There's plenty of bias in media around the world, and more than a few examples are even more systematic than what we see in the US.

Bias is unavoidable but if you read a variety of reputable news sources from around the world you will at least know when they disagree.

Then, if you care enough you can investigate the issue yourself and come to your own conclusions. In not, then at least you know that it's controversial.

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#67
post #62

Sat here in lockdown, I have just rewatched Matt Damon's The Martian and yes, we want to go up and out. I am so glad someone is still trying. I am also blown away by the American Federal budget - this is a classified military space program . How much does one of those cost ?!

Enlighten a simpleton here please, why do "we" need to leave the planet. I am far from a space nerd but I do know that neither mars or any solar object other than other is known to contain climate that is better or would even come close to earth's climate even with no polar ice caps and extreme global warming. Wouldn't it be cheaper (more humane as well) to "colonize" earth? For the next 100 years,even with full on w…

Mostly because it’s not a zero sum game.

Yes it’s more achievable to build a pod on the antarctic (we’ve done that) or the ocean floor, but we should also see what we can do outside of our bubble.

I personally think Venus cloud stations are a better target, but why not try them all?

We learn great things and enable wonderful tech like the internet and GPS when we do huge projects like this, so why not?

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#68
post #62

Sat here in lockdown, I have just rewatched Matt Damon's The Martian and yes, we want to go up and out. I am so glad someone is still trying. I am also blown away by the American Federal budget - this is a classified military space program . How much does one of those cost ?!

Enlighten a simpleton here please, why do "we" need to leave the planet. I am far from a space nerd but I do know that neither mars or any solar object other than other is known to contain climate that is better or would even come close to earth's climate even with no polar ice caps and extreme global warming. Wouldn't it be cheaper (more humane as well) to "colonize" earth? For the next 100 years,even with full on w…

I just want an off-site backup for humanity. Sure, it's high latency and the restoration process takes forever - but it's something!

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#69
post #55

all the money on military, and not in investing in healthcare, improve public health responses, increasing financial reward for the front line workers that are sacrificing themselves for the greater society. In my opinion, this is sad. I would rather have this money being written as a check to every nurses and doctors served in COVID19.

I dont disagree that we spend too much on defense but the idea that we should stop all spending on science to help out some nurses is super strange. Its akin to saying we should stop funding nasa be ause who needs space travel. Also please stop glorifying a set profession as some kind of ulturistic calling. Theyre in it for the money and prestige, and frankly, wouldnt be there otherwise. If you want to thank someone,…

The "science" of Hegemony and Control and Power?

Re: Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

#70

all the money on military, and not in investing in healthcare, improve public health responses, increasing financial reward for the front line workers that are sacrificing themselves for the greater society. In my opinion, this is sad. I would rather have this money being written as a check to every nurses and doctors served in COVID19.

If you want a more fair system for everyone, in fact you need to remove about $1.5 trillion (~42%; equivalent to two copies of the US military) from annual US healthcare spending. That just gets you down to matching what most Western European nations are spending per capita. $3.6 trillion goes into US healthcare, providing healthcare workers - including doctors and nurses - with among the highest salaries and benefit…

>you need to remove about $1.5 trillion (~42%; equivalent to two copies of the US military) from annual US healthcare spending

You're conflating 'spending' with Value, Efficacy, Cost, Profit and Greed.

Its a far more complex subject when it comes to all 'spending' within the Government budget than just Cash Burn Rate/Volume.

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