I have massive respect for Armstrong and Cernan but disagree with their positions. I think they're both wrong on this issue, they're distorting the actual state of things, and at a deeper level they're romanticizing the shuttle so much and looking so much through the lens and context of the 60's US-Soviet space race that their prescription is nearly the opposite of what we should be doing. I and a lot of techies I know are way more happy with the state of US space affairs now than say 20 years ago precisely because there's so much private enterprise innovation now, while, at the same time, NASA is still doing new missions and research. NASA ain't perfect, govt ain't perfect, market ain't perfect, but there are lots of things going right at the moment. And I think they're overlooking it.
Armstrong to Nasa: You're embarrassing
51–60 of 66 posts
Re: Armstrong to Nasa: You're embarrassing
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry, but you have no way of knowing this. What would happen if you took a bunch of would-be rocket scientists and hadn't given them jobs at NASA?
That's an interesting perspective, assuming you're alluding to private vs. government funding. However, can anyone provide evidence that private funding can accomplish anything near the scale of what NASA accomplished? I'm asking that as an honest question. I don't love government spending or bureaucracy, by any means. Who would, except perhaps government workers? However, I fail to see any major advancements that ha…
It's hard to make an apple-to-apples comparison here as private companies in the past decades have been forbidden to do what NASA has done. Not to mention, NASA's most memorable achievements were fueled largely through patriotic furor.
I suspect that it's possible. Much of NASA's flouted benefit are the technological discoveries it has made while solving the problems of Space exploration. Assuming that those discoveries have benefited our society economically more than NASA has cost it (an argument I've read before) then it seems like their would have been at least one sufficient financial incentive for private industry to pursue space if given the chance. Not to mention R&D that can only be performed in a zero gravity environment. A patent system could make all this profitable.
But there are still so many other concerns, such as national defense that crop up in talk of private space exploration that it's really hard to make any real comparison.
Re: Armstrong to Nasa: You're embarrassing
#53canned primates are not the future of space. I wish every dollar spent on it was spent on brain research. i want to explore space in an appropriate body, not this laughably fragile meat one.
Re: Armstrong to Nasa: You're embarrassing
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eventually the US government will sell back the banks and make some income, so its hardly comparable. Sweden in the early nineties did this and they recovered more than half their money. The bailouts were a necessary step to prevent severe economic crisis - they amounted to just 6% percent of GDP. Clearly worth it, when considering what is at stake here.
>Eventually the US government will sell back the banks and make some income, so its hardly comparable. Sweden in the early nineties did this and they recovered more than half their money. Compared to what America got out of the space race, the bailout was a complete waste. America got something like 100X their ROI in going into space. Major investments in materials science, aerospace engineering, battery technology,…
>Compared to what America got out of the space race, the bailout was a complete waste. America got something like 100X their ROI in going into space.
Oh please. This isn't even close to being true. If you actually go down the list of things NASA fans claim to be commercial space development, what you find is a whole lot of half truths and exaggerations. The space race was expensive, and we never even came close to recouping what we spent. You can try to justify it on scientific grounds, but the space race was clearly not worth it from an economic perspective.
Re: Armstrong to Nasa: You're embarrassing
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
This statement is false. TARP cost $19 billion compared to NASA at $18.5 billion per year. http://www.housingwire.com/2011/03/30/cbo-drops-estimate-of-...
His number is way too small, if anything. There was an awful lot more to the bailout of the US economy than the TARP program. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristoc...
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Re: Armstrong to Nasa: You're embarrassing
#56The shuttle was never flown the thousands of times it needed to have all the bugs worked out, NASA is an agency lost in middle-management hell, and you can't trust exploration to the politicians. That being said, Armstrong has a point: none of what I've just said is new or is satisfactory as an excuse. The failure to manage these facts and manage our access to space -- perhaps by a privatization push a decade earlier…
I strongly disagree with the notion that NASA is lost in middle management hell. Do you know how many successful missions they have running right now, that are to the benefit of all? Dawn, Chanda, Hubble, Messenger, Cassini, GRAIL, 2 current mars missions, one halfway to pluto, another on its way to jupiter. Not to mention all of the valuable earth research. Manned missions are important for inspiring and our long te…
This.
Putting people into space is very expensive compared to putting unmanned instruments into Low and Medium Earth Orbit.
Our nation isn't doing well financially right now, and I see NASA's priorities as logical. They're getting a lot more knowledge per dollar spent right now.
Re: Armstrong to Nasa: You're embarrassing
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
"First of all, let’s clarify what the NASA budget is. Do you realize that the $850 billion dollar bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50-year running budget of NASA? -Neil deGrasse Tyson" http://wp.me/p1bnM2-qW
Seriously. Two weeks ago, the GRAIL project sent two satellites on a Delta 2 to the moon. To the MOON. The entire mission, soup to nuts, cost 496 million dollars. To put this in perspective, with this cash, we could have also purchased one of the following: - Two F-35s - .07% of the TARP bank bailout - Half of Groupon's Series D I'd rather go to the moon.
Sounds like a lot just for the Moon.
The whole Juno mission to Jupiter is currently budgeted at a mere $371.1 million.
(Or for $500 million, we could give a loan guarantee to Solyndra and watch it go bankrupt!)
Re: Armstrong to Nasa: You're embarrassing
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It is hard to start a space tourism business if the person developing your vehicles is barred from showing the CEO of the company the designs (as happened to Virgin Galactic for a couple years because Richard Branson is not a US citizen" For the military, that is a feature not a bug. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Launch#Concerns_and_investi... Realize anyone with the ability to get to orbit has the ability to dro…
"Contrary to popular belief, the people in government who make laws and control regulation are not bumbling idiots." Actually, in the case of the export restriction laws in question, they were bumbling idiots. These laws were passed in haste after there was an accidental disclosure of technology from the U.S. to the Chinese during an investigation of a launch failure. The law is terribly vague, with industry leaders…
As someone who has been trained in the law (admittedly by a large prime defense contractor) it's not that hard to understand.
Re: Armstrong to Nasa: You're embarrassing
#59The shuttle was never flown the thousands of times it needed to have all the bugs worked out, NASA is an agency lost in middle-management hell, and you can't trust exploration to the politicians. That being said, Armstrong has a point: none of what I've just said is new or is satisfactory as an excuse. The failure to manage these facts and manage our access to space -- perhaps by a privatization push a decade earlier…
I strongly disagree with the notion that NASA is lost in middle management hell. Do you know how many successful missions they have running right now, that are to the benefit of all? Dawn, Chanda, Hubble, Messenger, Cassini, GRAIL, 2 current mars missions, one halfway to pluto, another on its way to jupiter. Not to mention all of the valuable earth research. Manned missions are important for inspiring and our long te…
I don't want this to turn into a huge thread listing all current NASA missions, but I just want to put in a word for Kepler, which to me could be easily the most important NASA mission going on at the moment.
In 1994 we knew of zero planets outside the solar system. Ten years ago we had a handful. Now, thanks to the Kepler mission, we're on the verge of really understanding how common planetary systems are, how they form, the typical distribution of planet sizes and orbits, and how common Earth-like planets are likely to be throughout the universe. That's a big freaking deal.
Re: Armstrong to Nasa: You're embarrassing
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
The people don't need to pay more taxes. An adjustment of current budget allocation is all that's needed. For example, you could double NASA's budget by shrinking the war budget from ~$698,000,000,000 to $678,000,000,000 / year. Seems pretty reasonable to me.
And you should not underestimate the propaganda value. Generations were inspired by the Apollo program. The shuttle is a beautiful machine, but it really doesn't go anywhere interesting.
Is the Moon that interesting?