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Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

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Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#61

Post by fn-mote »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #18
mousethatroared wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the OP believes the BBB is stupid too?

Warren Buffett had this line that we would have no budget deficits if it we're required that every Congress person who voted for such would be ineligible for re-election. Pushing the cost burden on subsequent generations is a cowardly way to deal with our financial problems. When Reagan entered office, the debt was less than $1T (about $3.5T in today's dollars). The #4 cost currently is paying off interest (not princ…

It’s funny but economically wrong to ban deficits.

I agree we are spending too much now, but the solution should not be to stop all spending.

The problem is deeper than just a deficit.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#62

Post by wordofx »

7e wrote: post #31
mjamesaustin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real tragedy is that the administration withdrew Jared Isaacman's nomination to be NASA administrator. He had bold plans for modernizing NASA and the experience to lead. But he didn't kiss the ring and instead made comments suggesting NASA's budget shouldn't be eviscerated, so his appointment was torpedoed.

A tragedy avoided given his close ties to SpaceX and Musk, which would have been inappropriate at best and corruption at worst.

Just because Elon knows people doesn’t make it automatic corruption.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#63

Post by gonzobonzo »

esseph wrote: post #49
gonzobonzo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manned space flight in generally is a hugely wasteful money sink. It eats up about 50% of NASA's budget, and there's no real reason for it other than "we're putting people into space because we want to put people into space." People vigorously defend these boondoggles, then finally admit they were a huge waste years after the fact (as we've seen with the space shuttle, and as we're now starting to see with the SLS).

Idk, absolutely does fucking not at all look wasteful: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/20-breakthroughs-from-...

> Idk, absolutely does fucking not at all look wasteful

It does if you actually look into at the facts instead of just taking a PR listicle at face value.

For instance, the very first thing mentioned on that list is Alzheimer's. Go ahead and look into what the ISS actually did with regards to Alzheimer's, and you see a lot of "this has the potential to teach us more about the disease," without any evidence that anything was ever learned. There's a reason why you don't hear researcher's working on these diseases go "well, we expect a huge breakthrough once this ISS experiment is done!"

This is the problem every time this gets discussed. People just run a Gish Gallop of copying and pasting a big list of vague claims from the NASA PR department, without bothering to look at the actual claims to see if they're accurate. When you do, they're invariably far less than they're made out to be.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#64

Post by ginko »

fn-mote wrote: post #58
ginko wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Falcon Heavy as a TLI payload of 16,800kg. A fully decked Orion spacecraft weighs 33,446kg. Really the only alternative to SLS for Artemis would be Starship but that hasn't even achieved orbit yet (meanwhile SLS already did a successful lunar orbit and return).

I’m not happy with this argument because the Orion comes in two modules. It’s designed to go in SLS but each module separately can be launched by Falcon Heavy. In view of the launch economics, this argument still doesn’t make sense of SLS. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)

>but each module separately can be launched by Falcon Heavy.

How do you know that they can feasibly be launched separately? Do you think NASA would have asked for a launch vehicle the size of SLS if could have done a manned lunar mission with something less then half its size?

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#65

Post by northlondoner »

Happy to hear about this. Actually, budget should be increased not reduced. From purely ROI terms, NASA has a stellar return on investment. Immense contribution to human civilisation beyond US.

Just a reminder from 2012: [Neil deGrasse Tyson: Invest In NASA, Invest In U.S. Economy](https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisbarth/2012/03/13/neil-degr...)

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#66

Post by naysunjr »

notfish wrote: post #34
naysunjr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA going back to the moon and Musk to Mars is nothing but pipe dreams to sell the story mode types. The US government has pivoted to animal husbandry of the populace through techno police state, and handing sycophants to power their own title, land and serfs

My ex coworkers at spacex are pretty damn motivated to get to mars, many of them despite all the Musking happening. I wouldn’t bet against them.

You ever see that video of the flat Earther who disregarded what his own eyes saw for his memorized semantics?

Your ex workers goto work whistling Star Trek TNG theme song?

Come on… the shit people believe? Some people just “believe” to make money but so many many more believe in American civil religion, or whatever stream of consciousness they simmered in early on.

I’m not hating. I’m saying direct experience is truth not our visual syntax. Still waiting for my nuclear powered… everything. Where’s my mini commuter helo and …etc etc etc

It’s a government job with extra steps. No hate. Good grift if you can get it.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#67

Post by zamadatix »

riffraff wrote: post #42
somenameforme wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to imagine any scenario where this happens. The only real possibilities are SpaceX going bankrupt or leaving the country. In either case, the government has substantial capacity to nationalize companies for the sake of national security during times of crises. It's also likely impossible for SpaceX to leave the US owing to ITAR and other regulations.

What about SpaceX deciding to raise the price 30 times because they no longer have any potential competition? I don't believe that likely, but it does seem like something similar is a good reason to keep options open.

I'm sure SpaceX would be more than willing to sign a non-exclusive no-minimums fixed-price-per-launch (based on mass/orbit/etc) indefinite contract for any types of missions the SLS could hope to do. This type of contract isn't even new to NASA (or SpaceX), it's just the policy says "competition" like SLS has to exist and be funded too.

The two main stated aims of fostering competition are contingencies for any single provider and hopes that funding competition lowers cost in the long term (which is separate from preventing cost from going up). I used to be much more supportive of this policy... but nowadays I find myself on the fence. It's hard for me to believe however many billions of dollars we funnel into SLS per launch will ever result in cheap alternatives being developed. It may even have the opposite effect of "SLS got funded through all of its overruns on this policy, we should have no problems doing it again". On the contingency side it's a bit harder to navigate... but it's starting to feel like programs like SLS don't produce realistic alternatives anyways so how much of a contingency is it really providing to fund things like that.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#68

Post by gonzobonzo »

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #50
gonzobonzo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manned space flight in generally is a hugely wasteful money sink. It eats up about 50% of NASA's budget, and there's no real reason for it other than "we're putting people into space because we want to put people into space." People vigorously defend these boondoggles, then finally admit they were a huge waste years after the fact (as we've seen with the space shuttle, and as we're now starting to see with the SLS).

Well, you have to quantify "waste" to make that claim. There are many arguments that the space shuttle program's side effects helped win the cold war, foster modern communications, inspire generations to study science, ... Those are good things, without stating its known direct accomplishments.

People debate whether the Human Brain Project was a failure, despite the fact that it generated a lot of new research.

In 2025 dollars, the cost for the Human Brain Project is just under $2 billion. In 2025 dollars, the Space Shuttle total cost is $311 billion. NASA spends about $3 billion every year on the ISS - more than the entire Human Brain Project.

The problem is that people are able to look at the Human Brain Project, and say that despite important research coming out of it, it might not have been a good idea (again, this gets debated). But people act as if some research coming out of NASA's endeavors entirely justifies them. When people refuse to look at things critically, resources almost invariably end up misallocated.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#69

Post by ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 »

gonzobonzo wrote: post #68
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you have to quantify "waste" to make that claim. There are many arguments that the space shuttle program's side effects helped win the cold war, foster modern communications, inspire generations to study science, ... Those are good things, without stating its known direct accomplishments.

People debate whether the Human Brain Project was a failure, despite the fact that it generated a lot of new research. In 2025 dollars, the cost for the Human Brain Project is just under $2 billion. In 2025 dollars, the Space Shuttle total cost is $311 billion. NASA spends about $3 billion every year on the ISS - more than the entire Human Brain Project. The problem is that people are able to look at the Human Brain…

I am not saying that because good things happened that there was no waste. However, to say that nothing good came from (or can come from) something and it was a waste is stating something else entirely.
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