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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

#171

Post by aredox »

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…

>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.

Yeah, and the USSR would have won.

>When Reagan entered office, the debt was less than $1T (about $3.5T in today's dollars).

Well, guess who won the Cold War? Who pushed the USSR to bankrupt itself?

It would be like saying "no private company should ever raise capital".

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

#172

Post by ceejayoz »

RALaBarge wrote: post #162
notfish wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldnt bet against them either, but the material science aspect of it all just isnt there and wont be for a while. How many tons would we need to get into Earth orbit alone, let alone transfer to mars? I never hear anyone speak of the radiation outside of our atmosphere very often when it comes to 'moonshot' ideas like this, and how we would be incapable of preventing it or surviving it once we arrive, in our curr…

> I never hear anyone speak of the radiation outside of our atmosphere very often when it comes to 'moonshot' ideas like this, and how we would be incapable of preventing it or surviving it once we arrive, in our current biological form.

Eh, it's not that out of the realm of possible. It's about twice what ISS astronauts experience, without any mitigation efforts like shielding. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia04258-comparison-of-marti...

> How much would it cost to get all the lead or H20 you would need to generate a barrier against it into orbit? Do we need to have a moon base extracting materials for us to even think about transferring orbits?

The astronauts will need water either way. Might as well have it be useful in transit.

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

#173

Post by [deleted] »

supertrope wrote: post #139
ceejayoz wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do. Any district with a college or university is likely getting some.

What I mean is universities tend to be in cities with a few satellite branches in rural towns. Spread the “production” across as many Congressional Districts as possible to optimize for votes. When the system incentivizes pandering to rural areas that is the only winning move.

[deleted]

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

#174

Post by coldpie »

supertrope wrote: post #122
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.

Maybe the NSF needs to geographically disperse grants to maximize Congressional Districts that benefit. Kind of like how military spending is spread around states.

Universities do a ton of research supporting rural areas, especially farming. It's about half of the country's population, not to mention the country's food source, so it makes sense that they would spend a lot of research in those areas. Check out your local university's agricultural extension department some time, lots of cool stuff happening there.

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

#175

Post by kelipso »

ethbr1 wrote: post #108
elzbardico wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the stroke of a pen, a rogue billionaire could nationalize SpaceX citing some vague concerns about national security. Money is powerful, but never under-estimate the power of having the coercive apparatus of state at someone's hand.

This is drastically under-appreciating the blowback nationalizing SpaceX would generate. Both from the Republican base, to whom government is anathema and private industry the best. And to corporate interests supporting the Republican Party. Want to see where the real power is? Follow the political money.

You just have to say something something national security and they will fall in line. Modeling politics on people or groups of people having principles is way outdated, and it’s questionable whether it ever was accurate.

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

#176

Post by somenameforme »

IAmBroom wrote: post #127
somenameforme wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Had he not, we could very well have a civilization on Mars today Well, that's an interesting take. Fantasial, but interesting.

And how do you think putting a man on the Moon sounded at a time when we'd yet to put a single person into space?

Werner von Braun was the head architect of the Apollo Program and viewed the Moon as little more than a step on the way to his vision of colonizing Mars, for which he'd already been working on technical plans with the planned first landings to be in the early 1980s. In fact this is precisely where the Space Shuttle, and to a lesser degree the ISS, came from. They were meant to be tools, with the ISS a very small scale version of the supporting stations planned to come with the Space Shuttle working as a beast of burden during their construction.

He retired from NASA once it became clear the politicians were no longer interested in space after winning the space race. As an amusing anecdote, well before he was the head of Apollo, he also wrote a sci-fi book, "Project Mars: A Technical Tale." In it there was an advanced civilization living on Mars headed by a group of ten individuals who were, themselves, headed by "The Elon."

---

Those who lack the ability to think big will, unsurprisingly, never have anything big. Because there's no technological point where colonizing another planet, much like landing on the Moon, will ever be easy or simple. Because you're doing something that's never been done before which means there are a basically infinite number of things that might go wrong, and you simply cannot account for all of them. And this always has and always will be the same story. Technology doesn't simply come to us - we make it happen, and without pushing forward we will stagnate.

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

#177

Post by Tadpole9181 »

msgodel wrote: post #152
softwaredoug wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The viable alternative is pretty obvious. Don’t renew the tax cuts and cut entitlements and defense. That’s what you have to do to get a balanced budget. You don’t get a balanced budget trimming random measly costs that might look nice but are infinitesimal parts of the budget. But we tend to cut taxes, not substantive spending. Which is going to saddle my kids with a mess.

What do you think the tariffs are? We've just about maxed out domestic tax. Already we're probably past the peak of the laffer curve.

The BBB contained over 4.5 trillion dollars in tax cuts and will add around 3 trillion to the US debt. It is one of the largest transfers of wealth to the corporate elite in the history of America, while removing the healthcare of tens of millions and putting half a million jobs at risk.

Tariffs will not make up for this because tariffs are, beyond specific circumstances, a failed policy that harms your own economy and disproportionately targets your lower class. It threatens US exports, makes many US businesses non-viable (thus losing jobs), slows down economy by increasing the prices of even domestic goods. Combine that with a looming recession and Trump's insistence to take over the fed fiscal policy and enforce a political bond policy...

Crashing your economy does not help reconcile debts.

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

#178

Post by drweevil »

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.

Word. The NSF provides great value from a relatively small budget. Because of the small sums involved I take these cuts as evidence of a fundamental hostility to scientific research.

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

#179

Post by somenameforme »

gessha wrote: post #118
somenameforme wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Putting a man on the Moon is something many view as humanity's greatest achievement, ever. Because the Americans have such an amazing propaganda department and had to rub it in to the Soviets even after flunking every other “space race”. As for canceling the space programs, if it wasn’t Nixon, it would’ve been done by any of the politicians following Hayek/Friedman economic policies - basically everyone after Nixon…

It has nothing to do with propaganda. It's such an inherently unbelievable achievement that many have indeed begun to doubt we ever actually even did it. And that doubt is very easy to understand because in modern times many have lost the ability to think big, let alone actually do big things. I mean can you believe we put a person on the Moon, let alone at a time when a "super computer" would have had a millionth of the processing power of that cheap phone in your pocket? It's nothing short of stupefying.

It's similar to how we still marvel at how people managed to build the pyramids. There, at least, there can be no doubt that they truly exist - but people have been debating, and aweing, at them for literally thousands of years. The Greeks, no amateurs to construction themselves, were debating how they such a thing could have been constructed all the way back in the 5th century BC!

These great achievements are what define humanity. In the blink of an eye on the scale of time, most of every company, person, and thing you know of today will be gone and completely forgotten. The very few things that will stay with us are these grand achievements that define not only an era of humanity, but humanity itself.

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

#180

Post by ceejayoz »

cvoss wrote: post #159
aqme28 wrote: post #70

How does this square with the recent SCOTUS case that says, basically, that the executive can dismantle the DOE with mass dismissals, regardless of Congress? Couldn’t Trump do the same here?

SCOTUS has not issued a judgment in that case (McMahon v. New York). They merely granted the case and will hear it next term. The headlines you likely saw were commenting on how the court chose to deal with the preliminary injunction that was in place in the meantime. It's a major peeve of mine when those headlines make it sound like such an order is actually disposing of the case. In reality, the case is just starti…

Allowing it to go through until next term is fundamentally permitting it. (This is the entire point of injunctions; to prevent irreparable harm while the case is argued.) Many of these folks, once fired, are never coming back. Mission accomplished, even if SCOTUS says "ok we've finally decided that'd be wrong" sometime next year.

> Anyway, on the question of whether the chief of an organization can fire his or her own employees, the answer is usually "yes, of course, how could it be otherwise?" That's why it matters who the chief is.

The government is not a company. It has three coequal branches. The President is often not legally entitled to fire employees, let alone shutter entire agencies whose existence and function is mandated by law.

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48432

"In the 1970s, however, President Richard Nixon asserted the authority to act on his own to withhold funds or curtail programs he opposed. This assertion was challenged in the courts in a number of suits to compel the release of impounded funds or require the Administration to carry out statutory duties that would result in the expenditure of funds. Congress ultimately responded by enacting impoundment control legislation as Title X of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974."

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