481–490 of 774 posts
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Yes, thank you for providing a source that supports what I wrote. Big of you to highlight your prior mistake.
Are you really saying that Clinton didn’t balance the budget that Bush II undid and that Trump’s latest “Big Beautiful Bill” is projected to add 3 trillion to the budget on top of what he did in 2017?
Comments about SLS miss what’s happening. SLS is inefficient and wasteful, but human spaceflight is not what’s getting cut at NASA. Instead, very productive current and future science missions are getting killed, in defiance of Congress [1]. Until this year, NASA was the world leader in space science. We’re pushing out the experts who build and operate astrophysics missions like Hubble, Chandra, JWST, Kepler, TESS, S…
The point seems to be to cut US scientific capacity (and more generally intellectual research capacity) across the board, as a way of hitting back at "the elites" who have the temerity to call GOP politicians and donors out for their lies and bad behavior.
True for academic institutions. No evidence this is the motivation at NASA. Simpler: science costs money and leadership believes that money is better spent giving folks like me a tax cut than paying for poor folks' healthcare or basic research.
Fortunately, it looks like Beijing is ready to pick up the torch [1].
[1] https://www.fdd.org/analysis/policy_briefs/2025/03/19/aiming...
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It’s going to kill institutional knowledge and be so expensive to repair after regime change.
Ever org I've worked for slowly became unable to innovate because of "institutional knowledge". I think it's important to forget, to some extent, every once in a while. It forces a new traversal of the problem space, but in a modern context, with modern tools, fresh eyes, and a better understanding of what's needed. Thus we have Space X. There are some great interviews with Jim Keller, who has a similar perspective:…
There's more to life than "innovation", but what you say tracks, I was part of an organization that became extremely innovative but went bust in the process.
> we have Space X.
Which is amazing for earth-orbit commercial launches, but doesn't move the needle for the many other things NASA concerns itself with, like research as mentioned elsewhere.
I’m trying to think how I feel about this. I’ve been obsessed with space for a long time, remember traveling to see my first rocket launch of the shuttle in 2006. Follow the commercial development closely since then. Their science missions are inspiring, but not as inspiring as they ought to be. NASA needs an overhaul. This isn’t how I would do it, but that’s not how things work in the real world. SLS is the elephant…
> It’s a jobs program limping along decades old technology when the commercial options are better. I’ve worked with a few former NASA employees now. They all said the same thing: There were some amazing, passionate people at NASA but they were all surrounded by people who were only there to attend meetings and collect paychecks. Getting anything done was impossible because you had to navigate webs of org structure an…
Which do you think takes a severance package?
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The point seems to be to cut US scientific capacity (and more generally intellectual research capacity) across the board, as a way of hitting back at "the elites" who have the temerity to call GOP politicians and donors out for their lies and bad behavior.
> a way of hitting back at "the elites" who have the temerity to call GOP politicians and donors out for their lies and bad behavior True for academic institutions. No evidence this is the motivation at NASA. Simpler: science costs money and leadership believes that money is better spent giving folks like me a tax cut than paying for poor folks' healthcare or basic research. Fortunately, it looks like Beijing is read…
The federal government now accepts donations if you don't want the money.
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Are you really saying that Clinton didn’t balance the budget that Bush II undid and that Trump’s latest “Big Beautiful Bill” is projected to add 3 trillion to the budget on top of what he did in 2017?
I’m saying what I said originally: your statement was not factual. Your own source affirms that.
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> a way of hitting back at "the elites" who have the temerity to call GOP politicians and donors out for their lies and bad behavior True for academic institutions. No evidence this is the motivation at NASA. Simpler: science costs money and leadership believes that money is better spent giving folks like me a tax cut than paying for poor folks' healthcare or basic research. Fortunately, it looks like Beijing is read…
>that money is better spent giving folks like me a tax cut The federal government now accepts donations if you don't want the money.
This is silly. I prefer the money be spent on things that have a larger ROI, collectively, than I can attain individually. Destroying the money doesn't achieve that aim.
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Is the privatized NC DMV any better than the public one? I was just at the Delaware DMV getting my 2 vehicles inspected and registration renewed, and while not an entirely horrible experience, it did seem like there were a lot of inefficiencies and complacentcy. I've also noticed the difference in the US post offices around me and the FedEx stores and wonder why the post offices aren't nicer customer experiences.
If you live in the 5 county metro Atlanta area you have to do a biannual emissions inspection. You can go to any of the plentiful inspection stations pay a mandated $20 and they send the results in electronically. You can then pay for your tag online. Change of address within the state can also be done online within GA. Even when you do go in, you just get a number and wait for it to be called. It’s very well organiz…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point seems to be to cut US scientific capacity (and more generally intellectual research capacity) across the board, as a way of hitting back at "the elites" who have the temerity to call GOP politicians and donors out for their lies and bad behavior.
> a way of hitting back at "the elites" who have the temerity to call GOP politicians and donors out for their lies and bad behavior True for academic institutions. No evidence this is the motivation at NASA. Simpler: science costs money and leadership believes that money is better spent giving folks like me a tax cut than paying for poor folks' healthcare or basic research. Fortunately, it looks like Beijing is read…
I’m trying to think how I feel about this. I’ve been obsessed with space for a long time, remember traveling to see my first rocket launch of the shuttle in 2006. Follow the commercial development closely since then. Their science missions are inspiring, but not as inspiring as they ought to be. NASA needs an overhaul. This isn’t how I would do it, but that’s not how things work in the real world. SLS is the elephant…
I hesitated posting this because my very moderate east coast American perspective seems to be appreciated less and less here. I posted this on a lazy Sunday morning and it got a lot of positive initial comments and discussion. Then a few hours later it turned negative. Science is great but launch vehicle innovation is where the problem is so that’s why I focused on SLS. We could easily have 100 JWSTs today if somethi…
The bottleneck is actual manufacturing of JWST - the folding mirror was especially fraught; I think the sunshield as well.