monkspider
Member
Man, what happened to this country? It seems like we lost the strength to do anything hard anymore.
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White House Insiders, "Obama aims to Ax Moon Mission"
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WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
KHarvey16 said:
Except for the fact that you've already bought the games, they sucked and you're stuck with them. Now that you're broke, you probably better hold on to that money instead of buying something that's just going to end up as a turd anyways.
shadowsdarknes
Member
I think it's a good idea. We just can't afford to be spending billions of dollars on so many projects.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
KHarvey16 said:
Did I mention your analogy sucked?
I'm willing to allow that perhaps I'm misunderstanding where you're coming from. Explain.
LiveFromKyoto
Member
If this pen can make it, I don't get why NASA can't. Get it together, dudes.
WanderingWind said:
I really need to explain this?
So you come into a thread about the budget for a NASA project being cut talking about hypocrisy, since everyone complains the government spends too much but when they cut back our favorite things we get upset.
Now, as has been pointed out repeatedly, NASA's budget is minuscule. It is nothing.
When people complain about the government spending too much, cutting out the cost of that pretzel every other week isn't effective in the grand scheme of things because you are still wasting many, many, many times that on other things(like video games, in my analogy).
Get it now?
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
KHarvey16 said:
Okay, so I did understand you. You're just not understanding me. Regardless of the percentage of the whole, 5 billion dollars is still a huge amount of money. There are hundreds of programs being cut back or even eliminated right now. To think that NASA shouldn't be among them is ludicrous.
Frankly, they're lucky they're still operating, given their continuous record of fiscal mismanagement. Especially given the fact that there are really one big mistake away from being dissolved in favor of privatized industries.
I wonder what would happen if China or India or Europe made a very credible, concerted, fast-tracked, high-investment bid to put a man on Mars. Would this light a fire under the US administration? Or did this kind of competitive human endeavour only matter when there was a silent war going on?
For all the downsides to it, the cold war was pretty fricking awesome as wars go - little bloodshed, where the 'war' was waged primarily on human achievement, and topping one another scientifically and in innovative spirit. We need to get back into the spirit of a race again. I would suggest we all cooperate as one planet toward these goals, but as countries or blocs we seem to do better when in competition.
For all the downsides to it, the cold war was pretty fricking awesome as wars go - little bloodshed, where the 'war' was waged primarily on human achievement, and topping one another scientifically and in innovative spirit. We need to get back into the spirit of a race again. I would suggest we all cooperate as one planet toward these goals, but as countries or blocs we seem to do better when in competition.
It's disappointing to see people in this thread asking "Why go to the moon/what's the point?" The point is we are humans and we explore shit because we want to know all there is to know about everything. Venturing into the unknown is ingrained in the fabric of our being. Things on Earth will never be "fixed" in a perfect sense. Of course there will be times that are better than this, but NASA should always be supported and not pushed away. I can understand the position Obama is in with the budget, but it's disconcerting to see the space program getting the short end of the stick. It will be interesting to see what NASA is doing, or not doing, in 3 years.
KHarvey16 said:
What's even more laughable is when you hold up that paltry amount against the massive amount of corporate welfare and giveaways we provide. It is sickening.
I've seen figures ranging anywhere from 40-60 billion a year.
Some examples
evil solrac v3.0
Member
WanderingWind said:
when they cut NASA's budget, they aren't gonna use it on health care.
a Master Ninja
Member
China has a space program. I say we build a moon base before they do!Dresden said:
Megadragon15
Member
Maybe NASA now can stand for National eArth Science Administration. :lolMaxman909 said:
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Welp, I guess it's now just up to private enterprise.
faceless007
Member
How can we establish a base on something made of cheese?
grandjedi6
Master of the Google Search
How many billions of tax payer dollars do the banks still have?
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
-COOLIO- said:
In order to hit other planets we need to develop new technologies and solutions and the moon is the perfect place to do it: it's as harsh an evironment as it gets including killer dust, very low G and no atmosphere and it's relatively close home so should anything happen a rescue is a possibility unlike on more remote locations.
Neuromancer
Member
All that helium-3, going to waste.
On a serious note, we have a lot to learn from going to the moon. People think it's just a big hunk of rock in space but the fact is, learning more about the moon and its composition could teach us a lot about how the earth and the moon were formed. Also having some kind of human habitation (temporary or otherwise) up there would be good practice for when we eventually have to spread out to other planets. Otherwise the next big extinction level event is going to be the death of humanity as we know it, and we'll go the way of the dinosaurs.
On a serious note, we have a lot to learn from going to the moon. People think it's just a big hunk of rock in space but the fact is, learning more about the moon and its composition could teach us a lot about how the earth and the moon were formed. Also having some kind of human habitation (temporary or otherwise) up there would be good practice for when we eventually have to spread out to other planets. Otherwise the next big extinction level event is going to be the death of humanity as we know it, and we'll go the way of the dinosaurs.
bill0527 said:
I'm not sure how any contractor is going to be able to cut costs to make FFP contracts somehow cheaper than just NASA doing it themselves. We've been doing this for, what, 25 years now?
Unless NASA fires everyone and Lockheed/Boeing/Northrop hires them on at 15% less pay.
As excited as I am for that Hubble 3D IMAX movie coming out soon, a Moon 3D IMAX movie would pretty much be the most impressive thing a human might have the chance at seeing in our lifetime.
It will be sad if that doesn't happen. If for no other reason, documenting the trip with a 3D IMAX camera would be worth it.
It will be sad if that doesn't happen. If for no other reason, documenting the trip with a 3D IMAX camera would be worth it.
Cheesemeister
Member
It's this kind of can't-do attitude that took us off the Moon in the first place.
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
I had a moment in this thread where I realized that we are arguing that we should go into space MORE. Humanity has been in space, guys. We are awesome; fuck the misanthropes.
JohnTinker
Limbaugh Parrot
Asinine post ahoy!Maxman909 said:
I wish Ferdinand II was like that: "Hey, Columbus, we don't have money to send you to search for a way to India, and it's stupid anyway, and we can't afford those big ships, so we'd rather give money to our banks and give you a simple boat so you can swim around Spain and catch heretics."
Then maybe we wouldn't have seen such stupidity both from government and people claiming that space exploration is useless.
At least when some dictator arises in China again and puts nuclear weapons in orbit, and NASA would be like "ummm we can't do anything about it, since there are no more shuttles, and we never developed any rockets and now Chinese won't let us buy their rockets to bring down their nuclear weapons!" I'll get a good laughter before being evaporated. :-/
Then maybe we wouldn't have seen such stupidity both from government and people claiming that space exploration is useless.
At least when some dictator arises in China again and puts nuclear weapons in orbit, and NASA would be like "ummm we can't do anything about it, since there are no more shuttles, and we never developed any rockets and now Chinese won't let us buy their rockets to bring down their nuclear weapons!" I'll get a good laughter before being evaporated. :-/
Fuck you guys, we're landing on Jerusalem next:
The moon is unimportant, we have to help Israel oppress Palestine. If you want to talk about budget priorities, take a long walk off a short go fuck yourself. The moon offers Science (and thus the world) far more than giving more money to Israel to buy our killing machines. PEACE.
Wiki said:
The moon is unimportant, we have to help Israel oppress Palestine. If you want to talk about budget priorities, take a long walk off a short go fuck yourself. The moon offers Science (and thus the world) far more than giving more money to Israel to buy our killing machines. PEACE.
jmdajr said:
And it will be more expensive and take us a longer amount of time to do it.
Without a clean continuation from the shuttle into Constellation there's going to be a huge loss of technical know-how, engineering expertise, etc. It was already going to be bad, there are a ton of workers of all stripes at the Cape waiting to retire w/ the shuttle. You spend a few years dicking around and the remaining engineers are going to go elsewhere, and new talent will be hard to recruit.
This is what chaps my ass about people who bitch that America doesn't produce enough technical professionals. When shit gets rough it seems like engineers and skilled trades are the first ones out the door, and we wonder why more kids don't want to go into technical fields, or why it's hard to find technical folk when times get better.
Getting OT, but we laid off six engineers at my workplace last year. I joked that since the average manager has six engineers as direct reports, that we should be able to lay off a manager. That went over like a fart in church.
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