351–360 of 774 posts
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I don’t think it actually reduces costs if someone better paid is now doing it instead.
It's not about reducing costs, it's about funding the tax breaks for the rich.
Defunding NASA is about the tax cuts. NOAA is different.
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> Data like this would suggest privatization of space missions is a good idea How is that working out with the US Health Care System?
Better healthcare for fewer people. Might work well for space exploration.
In both cases, I don't think the system works well without assuming spherical cows or something like that.
Edit: ah, I see it's "hurtling." Although I guess in both cases you have to dodge larger and larger geographic regions to claim success, so a bit like hurdling. :)
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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.
> Is the privatized NC DMV any better than the public one? Nobody knows. But the only things guaranteed are: - service prices will rise because now shareholders will seek a return every year. - AI powered elevator music phone service where you must wait 30 mins before reaching a human. - Fees and costs for every interaction. - Workers will be encouraged to do work fast - by providing less service to people, asking pe…
NC outsourced safety inspections to private sector decades ago. And nothing you have described has happened.
- the service prices are all fixed ($30 or $13.60)
- tons of places to do your inspection, wait times are almost zero
- work is done in 10 minutes
- new reduced rate ($13.60) for newer vehicles was introduced some years ago
If they do something similar for driver license offices or vehicle registration offices it will be a giant leap in quality of service. Right now in bigger cities you cannot make an appointment 6 months in advance, and walk-in does not guarantee you will get any service even after spending whole day in line.
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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.
There's never been any step two (cynically, the organization does that themselves). Everyone has been doing step three since time immemorial which is why AAA lobbied to start providing DMV services to their members.
It is the best of both worlds. Nobody is denied service yet AAA members don't have to deal with poorly-incentivized government workers for many common bureaucratic tasks.
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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…
> 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.) Maybe I'm missing some details but I thought the entire purpose of first-stage rockets was to get a certain payload with…
It makes a difference because if you're designing a rocket for a mission then you'll have a rocket that's as close to optimal for the mission, given mission requirements, timelines and budgets as you can reasonably get it. That's not SLS, the Moon mission wasn't planned when SLS was designed and instead SLS is optimized to reuse Shuttle hardware.
Being stuck with a rocket that wasn't designed for the mission, as well as the political decision to use Orion, severely compromise the planning of Artemis. SLS lacks the power to get Orion into a proper lunar orbit, so instead they're going to use a highly elliptical NHRO lunar orbit with an orbital period of 7 days. This is extremely dangerous, it means that if there is any sort of emergency on the moon the astronauts may have to wait as long as a week to get back to Orion; which is probably a death sentence. It also means the lander has to be huge to make up for SLS's inadequacy, which means the Artemis program now relies on the success of Starship HLS and/or Blue Origin's HLS. This is going to delay Artemis and the entire reason this dependency exists is because Congress wanted a shuttle-derived rocket foremost, and then made the situation even worse by saddling it with their Boeing pork capsule.
What it comes down to is SLS is a rocket that ""works"" but isn't actually good at anything and therefore never should have been built.
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Run a profit? What does that mean? What profitable business is currently available for an aeronautics and space agency that was never about making "profit".
NASA should launch internet sattellite like starlink so they can profit off something but its too late I think the thinking that government body is not for profit is misleading since you want a bit of independence in terms on financial budget see what happen when government change stance, NASA hiring and firing depends on political mood at the point having an profitable business wouldn't make NASA cut the job if gove…
There is no sense in trying to treat the government like a business.
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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…
We need to have a viable heavy rocket launch capability in the US at any given time, at very least just in case we detect an asteroid on a collision course. Right now that seems to fall entirely onto Falcon 9 (and Falcon Heavy), but the max payload weight even for Falcon Heavy seems much lower than the planned payload for SLS. Someday Starship may fix this, but we don't know if it will -- or if the final version will…
Well we don't have that. SLS isn't it and never will be. The most SLS can be is a heavy lift rocket that can be used once every few years with a lot of upfront notice. Certainly not "launch capable" at "any given time".
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The flip side of that complaint is Democrats stuffing government bureaucracies with do-nothing jobs for their buddies. Both sides play in this cesspool. It would be nice if we as a nation could just do the work that needs to be done for the people without all of those games but it never has really been that way.
> Democrats stuffing government bureaucracies with do-nothing jobs for their buddies Ignoring the partisanship this argument doesn't make sense on its face: government jobs pay extremely poorly. You might say "well what if you hold more than one of them?", but you can't do that: a federal employee can be employed in two different roles, but their pay is capped at 40 hours a week across the federal government. Anyone…
There are wonderful people in government, I've worked with them. But there are a ton of people along for the ride and it's absolutely insane to argue the opposite given hundreds of thousands of government employees on cruise control. Plenty of folks would (and do) love a GS-scale gig that requires nearly no work and provides terrific bennies. They were never going to work for FAANG or another high-payer anyway.
And many of the people "in on the grift" are constituents, not donors.
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It is worth making the point: a lot of people simply don’t see it (yet?) for what it is and still support the people doing it.
I think GP's point is that it's achingly difficult to believe anyone at this point still buys into the "efficiency" bullshit. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 20 times...
... I'll vote for you again!
Seems to be how that saying goes these days; and here I thought Bush had the dumbest possible ending for it.