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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

#91

Post by kelnos »

BlackjackCF wrote: post #4
geuis wrote: post #2

It's refreshing that given everything else happening, Congress is still at least functional at this level. Should be noted that many of NASA's programs are situated in predominantly conservative areas of the country. Brings lots of jobs and resources to the local economies.

I just wish Congress or the Supreme Court would show any teeth whatsoever. Right now most of the firings have been happening illegally, despite all of these programs already being budgeted for and funded.

It's not about bravery. This is what Republican members of Congress want. This is what the conservatives in SCOTUS want.

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

#92

Post by perihelions »

mastermage wrote: post #87
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).

Add to that the fact that to my knowledge while falcon heavy claims it can achieve TLI it has never actually done so.

What?? It's launched multiple missions at energies significantly greater than TLI—Europa Clipper for one.

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

#93

Post by gonzobonzo »

jajko wrote: post #72
gonzobonzo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not sure whats your problem, why can't we have both? Those are definitely not money wasted - for waste look at things in ballpark of trillions like meaningless wars for made up reasons that destabilized whole parts of world and killed millions of civilians, look at various ways ultra rich and their companies avoid paying even bare minimum taxes and contributing back to societies form which they siphoned those vast am…

> Not sure whats your problem, why can't we have both?

Because resources are limited? Any money going to, say, SLS is money that can't go to another project. This would be true even if NASA's budget were 10x bigger.

I'm not sure what it is about NASA that leads people to pretending that we have infinite budgets. In just about any other area, we can have a discussion about whether or not this is a good allocation of resources (for instance, the Human Brain Project I mentioned before). But when NASA comes up, this goes out the window and we're supposed to believe projects like the SLS are tantamount to being free, and that they aren't diverting resources from other potential NASA projects.

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

#94

Post by somenameforme »

gonzobonzo wrote: post #46
somenameforme wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except SLS/Orion should be cancelled. The SLS is pejoratively called the Senate Launch System, because it has no real place in the market yet is continuing to consume tens of billions of dollars. It was mostly obsoleted by Falcon Heavy years ago (SLS has been a black hole of funding since 2011), and its costs are completely ridiculous. You're looking at billions of dollars per launch if it ever is confidently flight…

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).

Putting a man on the Moon is something many view as humanity's greatest achievement, ever. Even if we ignore absolutely everything else, I think this alone makes it worth it. People need to be inspired. It's the spice of life.

But if we look the future, the possibilities are even more enticing. Richard Nixon effectively cancelled human space flight after a series of Moon landings. Had he not, we could very well have a civilization on Mars today, industry in space, and who knows what else. I mean there's no realistic argument for why these things should be impossible given what we know today - they're certainly far less to strive for than putting a man on the Moon when starting from effectively nothing.

And these achievements are no longer just flag poling, but stand to genuinely revolutionize humanity - to say nothing how inspiring such achievements will be. Perhaps we might live in a world where our grandchildren will again want to be scientists and astronauts, instead of YouTubers.

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

#95

Post by esseph »

gonzobonzo wrote: post #63
esseph wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anyth…

So many of the things we use today on a daily basis came from having a manned space program.

It used to be that in the 1960s we were spending about 4.4% of the total federal budget on the space program.

Since the 1970s, it's gone down to around 0.71%.

Since the 2010s, it's gone down even further to 0.3% - 0.4%.

We've also not pushed much for talent in the federal government by way of salary and perks.

Despite these challenges, there are a whole host of technologies, medical treatments, navigational advancements, etc. we would not have without simply being in space. Even accounting for inflation adjusted dollars, the amount total spent in the history of NASA, across all programs, is absolutely miniscule to the technological and economic advancements that have come from it.

There are around 1,600 published papers with data from the ISS, and those have been collectively cited over 14,000 times by other papers.

That is a significant impact and can only be done by having people there.

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

#96

Post by actionfromafar »

esseph wrote: post #95
gonzobonzo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 anyth…

So many of the things we use today on a daily basis came from having a manned space program. It used to be that in the 1960s we were spending about 4.4% of the total federal budget on the space program. Since the 1970s, it's gone down to around 0.71%. Since the 2010s, it's gone down even further to 0.3% - 0.4%. We've also not pushed much for talent in the federal government by way of salary and perks. Despite these c…

We have ad-tech now I guess.

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

#97

Post by ginko »

somenameforme wrote: post #89
ginko wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I did not mention Starship, because I'm not comparing the SLS against future tech, but against tech that was finished 7 years ago and is commercially available at this very moment. You mentioned Falcon Heavy but that has less than half the payload of SLS.

In partial reuse mode, you get 57k kg from Falcon Heavy vs 95k kg from SLS, with the catch that you can launch 25 Falcon Heavies for the same cost as 1 SLS. And that's exclusively the recurring (and likely greatly low-balled) per-launch costs, ignoring the tens of billions of dollars that have (and are) being dumped into its development. In reality those also need to be aggregated into its cost per launch.

Orion's mass far exceeds Heavy's payload to TLI. It simply can't be used for the Artemis manned lunar program unless you want to completely reengineer the entire thing.

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

#98

Post by sandworm101 »

musicale wrote: post #38
trostaft wrote: post #5

I hope they manage to do something similar for the NSF. The proposed cuts there are crushing. The NSF funds great science in all parts of the country, and subsequently tons of jobs to the area.

NSF funds tons of underpaid grad students who are the source of US research productivity per dollar.

And they are the underpaid workforce that keeps the undergrad industrial complex so profitable.

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

#99

Post by dogtimeimmortal »

somenameforme wrote: post #90
adastra22 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starliner was a catastrophe long before Bridenstine was ever involved.

Absolutely but it never should have been greenlit, allowed to simply skip tests (in flight abort) after essentially failing the pad abort test where only 2 out of 3 parachutes deployed + propellant leak in beyond optimal conditions, and so on. That craft was not even remotely fit for humans and there was far too high a chance that their 'test pilots' lost their lives in something that never should have been allowed t…

[flagged]

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

#100

Post by rsynnott »

somenameforme wrote: post #10
geuis wrote: post #2

It's refreshing that given everything else happening, Congress is still at least functional at this level. Should be noted that many of NASA's programs are situated in predominantly conservative areas of the country. Brings lots of jobs and resources to the local economies.

Except SLS/Orion should be cancelled. The SLS is pejoratively called the Senate Launch System, because it has no real place in the market yet is continuing to consume tens of billions of dollars. It was mostly obsoleted by Falcon Heavy years ago (SLS has been a black hole of funding since 2011), and its costs are completely ridiculous. You're looking at billions of dollars per launch if it ever is confidently flight…

> It was mostly obsoleted by Falcon Heavy years ago (SLS has been a black hole of funding since 2011), and its costs are completely ridiculous

Falcon Heavy: Claimed payload to LEO (though it has never done anything like this): 63 tonnes.

SLS: 95t, 105t or 130t depending on version.

These are quite different capabilities.

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