291–300 of 774 posts
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Even the US is not exempt from economic rules. Trump and the rich want less taxation. The deficit cannot grow infinitely. Something has to be cut.
It has nothing to do with the deficit. If it did, the big beautiful bill would have looked much different.
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I’ve dealt with DMVs across multiple living locations and the differences are incredible. The worst ones were a nightmare to deal with that virtually required taking a half day off work. One time I had to line up outside in the sun (I hadn’t brought sunscreen) because they decided that the line needed to be outside the building instead of inside, despite having space for it. My only guess is that they were being meas…
> The bad DMVs oddly had bigger offices, they just had people who moved at a snail’s pace and didn’t care about anything other than running the clock out until they could go home. Well, all of the people? You are certainly looking at the consequence of something that you don't fully understand. All of the people in a place don't start acting the same way for no reason.
It’s because there are no consequences for slow or poor performance. The people who want to do a good job get fed up and leave. The people who just want paychecks and no consequences stay.
It’s not a mystery.
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> SLS is the elephant in the room and is a complete disaster SLS isn't great but it does.. you know.. work.
It doesn't work, not for Moon missions. It was never designed for Moon missions in the first place, the original plan was unspecified "deep space" missions without any clear plan of what it would actually be doing (because it's actual purpose is to keep money flowing to old Shuttle contractors.) Consequently, it can't do a Moon mission like the Saturn V could, it requires the idiotic nonsense that is the NHRO, which…
Maybe I'm missing some details but I thought the entire purpose of first-stage rockets was to get a certain payload with certain max dimensions (what can fit inside a cylinder of a certain height and radius) to LEO, or the equivalent delta-V. At that point first stage is discarded anyway. So what exactly the payload is (beyond its dimensions) and you do with your payload after getting to LEO (or equiv delta V) that shouldn't really make a difference, and you can't blame the first stage (which SLS is) for that if it did its job.
In the case of SLS, Block I can get 95 metric tons, Block I-B can get 105 tons and Block II 130 tons.
The Falcon Heavy in comparison can only get max 64 tons to LEO, less if you want to recover boosters and the core to save money
The real winner is the Saturn V which could get 140 tons to LEO. I know it was expensive per launch (about $1 billion in 2025 dollars) but given all the billions we've blown on trying to develop cheaper tech it seemed like we could have just stuck with what we know worked
I understand wanting to make the organization more efficient, but i don't think this is what's happening here. I think this is the classic republican strat of gutting federal agencies, pointing to the inefficiencies caused by the loss of institutional knowledge, and using that as an excuse to privatize to their friends. The fact that Elon's DOGE suggested these cuts lines up
Politics aside, according to a pretty comprehensive study (118 missions) it does seem that SpaceX is much more efficient than NASA [1]. Data like this would suggest privatization of space missions is a good idea. Maybe this conclusion is biased somehow, or perhaps the purpose of a dedicated govt org is different in some way that justifies its budget and scope despite the difference in efficiency? https://qz.com/email…
I hope spacex,blue origin etc can pick up these people hope the best for them
I understand wanting to make the organization more efficient, but i don't think this is what's happening here. I think this is the classic republican strat of gutting federal agencies, pointing to the inefficiencies caused by the loss of institutional knowledge, and using that as an excuse to privatize to their friends. The fact that Elon's DOGE suggested these cuts lines up
None of this is efficiency. Our local NOAA office has lost their sparse janitorial staff. That doesn't make the agency more efficient. That just means an overworked person making 6 figures now has to figure out how to procure toilet paper and get the bathrooms fixed. It's obstructing people eager to do important work while marginally reducing cost, that's all it is.
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…
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 something like starship were operational. NASA dragging its feet for decades, building silly things likes SLS, trying to find token uses to justify it, doesn’t inspire me anymore.
I understand wanting to make the organization more efficient, but i don't think this is what's happening here. I think this is the classic republican strat of gutting federal agencies, pointing to the inefficiencies caused by the loss of institutional knowledge, and using that as an excuse to privatize to their friends. The fact that Elon's DOGE suggested these cuts lines up
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I’m reading the bill. This is saying they’ll authorize private services to renew licenses in parallel with the public DMV.
Yes, that’s step one. Step two is to ruin the public option. Step three is to complain about how bad the public option is.