The challenging thing here is that NASA does have deep, systemic problems and is in need of some overhaul. SLS is a breathtakingly expensive boondoggle, lunar gateway has no reason to exist, Orion is underpowered and overweight, Mars Sample Return’s entire mission is in question, JWST was a decade behind schedule and an order of magnitude over budget, and the list goes on. Extreme risk-aversion and congressional meddling have resulted in a bureaucratic quagmire of an organization. It’s hard to find nasa projects that are going well.
Of course I don’t think a gorilla with a sledgehammer as we’re sadly going to see from Trump will make things any better, we need a surgeon with a scalpel.
Most of the things you listed are directly related to Congressionally mandated specifics for funding those programs. The money is only there if NASA does it the way Congress dictates, not necessarily the way it should be done.
The entire SLS program is essentially a Congressional jobs and legacy aerospace grifting program post-Shuttle.
If Congress would. Keep their hands off, and just allocate budget, most of the issues would likely disappear since the people that actually know what’s going on could make the decisions instead of a Congress critter that is an imbecile.
It’s the whole reason SLS is the train wreck it is. Congress wouldn’t let them not keep shoveling money to the same people who made Space Shuttle parts. So instead of the best design possible, we got the best design using old parts.
The way I’ve heard it described is a lot of the NASA funding is intentionally spread out across many states, funding many jobs in those states, to get the support of many representatives to vote for the funding. This also means that trying to optimize costs would get a lot of push back, since it will cause jobs to be lost in many states. And these are states which voted for Trump: Alabama, Texas, Florida, etc.
You’re absolutely right, though the extreme risk aversion is harder to blame on congress.
This is such a common theme.
There are huge systemic problems which the “establishment” will demonstratably not address and Trump appears to be the answer to many voters… but him effectively addressing them is a wild fantasy.
You’re absolutely right, which is why I don’t want the left get tricked into defending a status quo that doesn’t deserve it.
They did not get tricked, they chose to defend the status quo.
That being said much of the messaging about change did not get through because, well, they campaigned conventionally… keeping the status quo.
When has that stopped them when they have the Congress and the courts?
“Sure is a nice publicly funded and scientifically minded space program you got here. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.”
Remember when on Interstellar there’s this whole prologue about the collapse of the US, the dismantling of NASA and the family getting on an argument with the school because the official stance now is that the moon landing never happened and mankind never went to space (despite there being still people alive who went there)?
So, anyway, life imitates art …
Recently there was a rerun of interstellar in IMAX at our local IMAX theatre. Rewatched it and had some pretty shocking revelations that I did not think of when I watched it for the first time. The rewriting of history being prime amongst them
NASA, like the post office, is such a public benefit that we should be funding it well.
NASA does research. They push the boundaries corporations can’t.
Depends where the funding goes! And then musk can take a cut.
Corporations cannot carry the risk involved. Because else it would be similar to the medicine industry, but there is no large market to sell to.
We’re going to Mars is not something you can sell in a boardroom, because why? What is the ROI?
What I’m saying is musk wants to divert all of the government funding from NASA to spacex. Roi is all the funding from the government, every year for decades. It’s not a sell a price and profit model in the regular sense. And this way musk can personally take a cut of all that funding.
Not with that attitude…and probably will be able to change that with the upcoming administration deregulating everything. Or did you mean won’t instead of can’t?
Deregulation means private businesses won’t research anything that doesn’t make their quarterly numbers look better. Accelerated capitalism, woohoo!
Yes, so it’s won’t and not can’t. Words matter.
Okay. Explain how his point changed now that you’ve been overly pedantic?
I wasn’t being pedantic for its own sake, but because the Corp has the capability yet refuse to use it for people’s benefit as they value shareholder profit more. They absolutely could, but won’t. To me, this is worse than not having the ability (won’t).
We get it Corp, you would if you could. Good effort. Wait, you actually can but won’t?
That’s not worse to you?
What sucks the most is NASA fights tooth and nail for funding as it is. Imagine gutting it, and then coming back 4 years later to ask just for their existing budgets back.
God, I love how the incoming cabinet has zero redeeming qualities amongst them.
They are predictable
I think I would rather be pleasantly surprised.
Step 1) hurt other manufacturers more than Tesla
Step 2) benefit SpaceX by gutting NASA
Step 3) no regulations for digging tunnels?
Please for the love of God no Tesla tunnels…
President Musk is just there to be less inconvenienced and to revel in finding an easily manipulated orange loophole to being the president of the United States.
I guess that makes us all Musks workers now. What could go wrong?
Convenient? That was the whole plan with buying X all along, to get into politics, and this guy is still there keeping it relevant.
Doesn’t that fat fuck get lots of money from NASA?
He’s cutting out the middleman. See? Efficiency! /s
Please come to europe and lets make the european space agency get their shit together.
