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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

#191

Post by supertrope »

Aurornis wrote: post #155
supertrope wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you start spreading the money away from universities it and research institutions it begins to defeat the idea.

Yep. Some things can only run effectively in cities. Also rural infrastructure, rural hospital are starting to become oxymorons.

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

#192

Post by jpadkins »

lumost wrote: post #164
mousethatroared wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Instead of looking at where the tax revenues can come from, which I don't necessarily disagree consider what proportion of the nations economic activity is government spending. I consider govt spending/GDP a much better indicator of economic health. In fact, tertiary_sector/GDP is better still. The US government has too much presence in the economy and can't even provide health care and free tuition.

The issue here is that no one can agree on which portion of government spending is wasteful. It’s almost taken as a tautology that the government is wasteful. After 50 years of cost cutting and wage freezes, I tend to find it fanciful that individuals paid 1/4 of their private sector compensation to work on core civil infrastructure, national research priorities, and policy are somehow a bad deal for the American tax…

it's a straw man argument to say that the average civil servant is the beneficiary of the trillion dollar deficits. No one is making that argument. Very wealthy people, politicians, and corporations are the beneficiary of the government largess.

> After 50 years of cost cutting and wage freezes

It's hard to say the federal government has been cost cutting for 50 years when the budgets have been growing at exponential rates.

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

#193

Post by jpadkins »

unethical_ban wrote: post #23
Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is not With level of debt and borrowing, cannot afford more spending

We could * Not cut taxes on the very wealthy by $4,000,000,000,000 over ten years * Not give $500,000,000,000 to military and police expansion in the immediate future * Not have one person dictating global trade policy with the US that impacts our relationships and competitiveness for the next 30 years NASA is not something we should skimp on.

The constitution clearly sets up one person as having sole control of foreign policy. There is a lot of wisdom in having a single vision / strategy when dealing with external entities. If you disagree, the constitution also has a clear process for updating it.

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

#194

Post by sandworm101 »

somenameforme wrote: post #186
sandworm101 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they were from well-connected political families. The path for wealthy sons of academy ... elite military job ... politics, is well worn. Someone like John Maccain could easily be identified as a future political leader. He would have been a prime nasa candidate if not injured.

Go look at the resumes of astronauts, particularly before modern DEI stuff. For instance here [1] is Buzz Aldrin. A-student in school, varsity football center for a state championship team. Graduated third in his class at West Point with a degree of mechanical engineering while also competing in track and field. Enlisted in the Air Force as a combat fighter pilot where he saw plentiful [successful] combat including d…

But with a father being very senior in the navy, and the war hero thing, he was destined for politics. He would have been a useful friend to have. The crashing thing isn't a big deal. Few astronauts ever actually put hands on the controls. Maccain would have been a perfectly adequate payload specialist.

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

#195

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

filoeleven wrote: post #181
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add to this, somehow the current plan for getting to the moon involves over 15 launches (or 25, the number does seem to vary). With Starship actually having a larger payload than the Saturn V at least to LEO, how 15 launches could possibly be required, and such a plan been approved to spend billions of dollars on, I just don't know. So as much as I like the idea of NASA, something needs to be done there.

Destin from Smarter Every Day put up a video of a talk he gave at NASA about this program, focusing on all the problems that nobody's talking about. It's a great watch and a good example of how to say the hard things to the people who need to hear them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU

That's the one I watched and then fact checked after because I couldn't believe it.

Quite frankly, 15 launches should have never been submitted let alone approved. That it was approved and billions burned already is an obvious sign that something is wrong at NASA.

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

#196

Post by somenameforme »

sandworm101 wrote: post #194
somenameforme wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go look at the resumes of astronauts, particularly before modern DEI stuff. For instance here [1] is Buzz Aldrin. A-student in school, varsity football center for a state championship team. Graduated third in his class at West Point with a degree of mechanical engineering while also competing in track and field. Enlisted in the Air Force as a combat fighter pilot where he saw plentiful [successful] combat including d…

But with a father being very senior in the navy, and the war hero thing, he was destined for politics. He would have been a useful friend to have. The crashing thing isn't a big deal. Few astronauts ever actually put hands on the controls. Maccain would have been a perfectly adequate payload specialist.

The crashing thing was not the point - it was that McCain tended to fail at just about everything he did. I'd agree he'd be far more likely than average to end up in politics, but there's 0 chance he'd ever have been accepted as a working astronaut. Seriously, just look at the CV's of astronauts who aren't there because of DEI. They are the best of the best who excel, to an absurd degree, in just about everything that they do.

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

#197

Post by unethical_ban »

jpadkins wrote: post #193
unethical_ban wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could * Not cut taxes on the very wealthy by $4,000,000,000,000 over ten years * Not give $500,000,000,000 to military and police expansion in the immediate future * Not have one person dictating global trade policy with the US that impacts our relationships and competitiveness for the next 30 years NASA is not something we should skimp on.

The constitution clearly sets up one person as having sole control of foreign policy. There is a lot of wisdom in having a single vision / strategy when dealing with external entities. If you disagree, the constitution also has a clear process for updating it.

Read up on the responsibilities of the Senate again, please. They approve treaties.

The president only has the power (allegedly) to do the tariffs moves he is doing based on a 1970s emergency powers act.

Anyway, that was just one example of "ways to be fiscally responsible that don't involve cutting science research"

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

#198

Post by ACCount36 »

ginko wrote: post #85
ACCount36 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, they know it. Saturn V was less powerful than SLS - but it could send an entire mission in a single launch. Capsule, lander and all. A lot of what NASA has been doing with SLS is just trying to... rationalize its existence. This is what gave us NRHO, Gateway and others. Reportedly, some of the people at NASA just believe that having an inefficient, wasteful and corrupt space program is better than not having it.

>Saturn V was less powerful than SLS - but it could send an entire mission in a single launch. Capsule, lander and all. That's just not true. Saturn V had a paylod of 43,500kg to TLI. Only the largest configuration of SLS(Block 2) exceeds that with 46000kg. A Falcon Heavy is far below that.

Huh, I overestimated SLS? My bad - I think I must have used Block 2 numbers by accident. Thanks for the correction.

My point stands though: no Artemis mission has plans to launch a full Apollo style capsule + lander stack. Artemis HLS, SpaceX and Blue Origin versions both, flies entirely on its own. So what's required of both SLS and any would-be SLS replacement is a far less demanding mission than what Saturn V has done in the past.

Which calls into question: what SLS is even for? Does it add value to the mission, or is the mission subtracted from to justify adding SLS to it?

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

#199

Post by spauldo »

ragnese wrote: post #154
supertrope wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is this different than how military spending is spread, though? That's not a rhetorical question- I'm not tuned in enough to know. Even though I've seen military bases in the middle of nowhere, I've certainly seen some bases and defense contractors (Raytheon, Lockheed, etc) in non-rural areas. I'm cynically, and pessimistically, kind of assuming that it's really just about what's being funded in this case. Military s…

The large contractors are usually based in cities, but their employees are wherever the work is. Often they'll have a small office at the facility where the work is being done. Long-term contract workers usually live nearby and keep the same job, jumping from company to company following the contract.

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

#200

Post by lumost »

jpadkins wrote: post #192
lumost wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here is that no one can agree on which portion of government spending is wasteful. It’s almost taken as a tautology that the government is wasteful. After 50 years of cost cutting and wage freezes, I tend to find it fanciful that individuals paid 1/4 of their private sector compensation to work on core civil infrastructure, national research priorities, and policy are somehow a bad deal for the American tax…

it's a straw man argument to say that the average civil servant is the beneficiary of the trillion dollar deficits. No one is making that argument. Very wealthy people, politicians, and corporations are the beneficiary of the government largess. > After 50 years of cost cutting and wage freezes It's hard to say the federal government has been cost cutting for 50 years when the budgets have been growing at exponential…

> Very wealthy people, politicians, and corporations are the beneficiary of the government largess.

Is the proposal to cut large contracts or replace them with civil service? How do you reclaim these expenditures? My anecdotal observation is that many of these contracts are fundamentally difficult to do correctly. For example, Aircraft Carrier manufacturing has both a monopoly, and a monopsomy. There is only one seller and one buyer. That seller is increasingly having execution challenges due to the overall decline in US ship building but the only real solution would be to either re-shore commercial ship building in the United States, nationalize the seller and see if the government can run it better, or stop buying aircraft carriers.

Unfortunately, a 100% cut to all government defense and discretionary expenditures would only save 1.8 Trillion or roughly ~23% of the Federal budget. Obviously, this would yield problems. The only means available to truly cut the Federal budget at the rate of trillions per year would be a change of entitlement benefits.

It would be expected that the government budget grows as our population ages with current benefit programs. The same programs that the beneficiaries "paid into" for decades.

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