The Black Vault

I fully agree with everything you said above greeney.
When I finish my studies that´s exactly what I`m gonna do.
Devote my life to space and not these stupid gay issues,god issues or whatever, leads nowhere anyway

greeney2 wrote:I'd rather have them spend my dimes on space programs instead of wasting it on issues like gay marriage, supreme court cases to take prayer and God out of the Pledge of Allegence, and giving illegals free medical care and enrolling their kids in our schools.

Hey, we agree on something. All a bunch of nonsense isn't it?

CodeBlack wrote:

greeney2 wrote:How do you figure the WPA projects didn't provide jobs to people unemployed at the time in the depression. People were glad to get those jobs. The Hoover Dam was one of those projects.

I don't want to steer this thread in the wrong direction but the answer does apply to the space program so...

Socialists never comprehend economics, oy! Government spending does nothing to increase the size of the pie. The pie represents the wealth of the nation. If the population is increasing and you are not increasing the wealth (the size of the pie) then the people are getting poorer. Poverty is what causes most problems. All government does is transfer wealth around in inside the pie. That does nothing accept choose the winners and the losers. It is corruption.

All socialists in the US should be forced by law to take a college economics class. Economics is not a political philosophy. Its a fact of life.

Same goes with the space program. Being run by government means that any wealth that could be generated by space exploration will not occur and instead the country throws gobs of money down a black hole and accomplishes little if anything in the process. We've got to get space exploration out of the hands of government for it to ever amount to anything.

The US is on the WRONG path.

One of the most important responsibilities of governance, regardless of the Political/Economic system, is the re-allocation of wealth. That is a simple fact. Why this is true should be fairly obvious. Government, of any kind, would not be necessary if it was'nt. Whether or not Government is necessary or not is another discussion, but since I can't off the top of my head think of an example of a group of humans living together without some form of it, it probably is.

And "government spending" which by definition is the re-allocation of wealth, CAN "increase the size of the pie". But only when that spending is done in the form of an investment in the real economy. The purpose of an investment is to increase the size of the pie. The early space program is actually an exelent example of this. So, in their way, were the WPA projects.

Yes. The US is on the wrong path. We are on the wrong path because, in our theoretically democratic system, we refuse to be responsible for the direction our government takes, or to hold them accountable when they act against our well being. Or possibly we are incapable of being responsible. Has nothing at all to do with liberals or conservatives, socialism vs. capitolism.

As we agrue over whether or not socialists need ecomomics lessons or free markets always magically self adjust and save the day, we fail to recognize, regardless of the currently effective disguize, we have the same "system" we have had for the last several thousand years, which, if it was allowed to have a name, more closely resembles a form of feudalism. I'm pretty sure that the microscopic minority in control of all the real wealth DOES hold the government accountable when it acts against their interests. Socialists may need economics lessons, but we might all benifit from a little lessson in proportions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woIkIph5xcU. It boggles the mind.

NASA's budget represents substantially less than 1% of total "Government Spending". Insignificant next to the other great planet swallowing holes we allow the "government" to shovel our wealth into. It is also one of the few proven money makers for government spending, in terms of benefits for everyone. Yet it is always a target for cuts, in a big, public way ("we should solve our problems here on earth.." bla bla bla...), and when money is spent, it is invariably spent on old contracts, old technology...

There is a mystery here. Or are we truly all such complete idiots?

What you have identified is called corruption. Governments are corrupt. They spend money foolishly instead of doing what actually serves the needs and wants of people. But that is because government's motivation is power. Whereas business' motivation is profit, but profit usually comes from developing what people want to buy. So if we apply that to the space program, if the space program doesn't create anything people want to buy then its a failure, economically. Government does not create products, business does. And that is why the space program needs to be moved away from government. So I say keep cutting NASA. And it is my state that would be one of the most hurt by those cuts. Eventually, NASA would be replaced with private industry. But what is standing in the way of that is our paranoid government that keeps the necessary technology for space out of the hands of private citizens, whether its tracking, materials, or communications or whatever.

There could be asteroids of gold out there but NASA will never find it. They're looking for black holes and quasars and dark matter.

That governments an be corrupt is obvious and old, old news. But what, exactly, makes you think that corruption is limited to government? Or an interest in power, for that mater? Or that corruption even starts with government? Governments respond to influence, just like people do. If government is corrupt, what is the corrupting influence? I'm gonna guess that it's not your average voter.

When it comes to re-allocating wealth, is it really the government picking the winners, or is it the winners picking the government to insure that they keep on being winners? And why is it that the peoples wealth somehow ends up in the pockets of these private interests so many of us seem to think would get everything all straightened out if only the government would just get our of their way?

I'd also argue that its a fairy tale to think that "profit usually comes from developing what people want to buy". While this may often be true, I could spend the rest of the month coming up with examples proving that profit comes at least as often, if not more often, from developing things we are either forced to buy, socially pressured to buy, or fooled into buying.

That said, how does privatizing space advance the space program? The wolves are already in charge of the hen house. What changes?

Even in a perfect world, where everyone plays fair and is motivated by good will for all, the most compelling argument that privatization alone won't cut it is the very argument that private industry is motivated primarily by profit. It's gonna be a while until space becomes profitable. Maybe quite a while. In the mean time, it will take some substantial investment in pure research, silly, boring, unprofitable things like "black holes and quasars and dark matter" that provide us with the understanding of physics necessary to develop the systems that will eventually make the money private industry is so motivated by.

The profit motive of private industry is not patient enough to make those kinds of investments. Not in the amounts required and not by itself. The current state of the world economy is proof enough of short term profit motivated "Free Market" forces, un tempered by a longer view where the real returns may not even happen in our lifetimes, or where the spin offs would be impossible to monopolize and insure a big return for the investor alone.

There needs to be a moderating, coordinating force that takes a long view. Please identify for me a private, for profit organization that operates from this position that doesn't depend on a government contract.

Sure, eventually, space needs to be privatized. That would be the point, right? Economy building. But private business is not going to get us there. Right now, private business is busy convincing the government that they need more of our money, and we are letting them. So yeah, I guess we really are complete idiots.

greeney2 wrote:Nuclear power probably for deep space travel. That is not a new rocket technoloy by the way.

Interresting so far not a single comment from the Moon hoax landing believers. Begs the question if we faked it all in the 60's, why would the government suggest returning, and actually be working on the J2X as we speak?

More bait for the moon hoaxers: Why have we never been BACK, in almost 40 years? If we can go from horse and buggy technology to hypersonic trans-oceanic flight in roughly 40 years, I'd expect us to have overcome most of the obstacles to affordable trans-lunar flight by now. It only took ten years to go from putting a basket ball into orbit to landing men on the Moon. We should at the very least have a permanent human presence on the Moon, and we should probably have been to Mars by now as well. There hasn't even been any unmanned activity of substance, at least publicly, since we stopped sending people nearly 40 years ago.

I'm not a hoax believer, but there IS something weird going on here. It doesn't make sense for our space program to atrophy so quickly, after demonstrating that it could make such rapid progress and be so economically beneficial in terms of spawning new industries.

When you think about it, we haven't made much technological progress in the last 40 years; not compared to the kind of progress we were making before and during the Lunar Landing program. We've really just refined what we already have.

Heiko wrote:I'm not a hoax believer, but there IS something weird going on here. It doesn't make sense for our space program to atrophy so quickly, after demonstrating that it could make such rapid progress and be so economically beneficial in terms of spawning new industries.

When you think about it, we haven't made much technological progress in the last 40 years; not compared to the kind of progress we were making before and during the Lunar Landing program. We've really just refined what we already have.

This has an answer, but not one that people are prepared to hear, or would know what to do with if they did have the answer. In addition to the primary reason there is also: The mission(s) to the moon cost enormous amounts of money. The US could not continue spending that kind of money on space exploration long term (without privatizing it, that is).

If you want to know what physically stifled progress, it was who they put in charge of the space program. And its not just the space program. This is why prosperity in the US has dropped like a rock. The sabotage worked.

This is effectively what happened to the space program.
Stripped

And now that the US has gone socialist that puts an end to the US as a significant source of technology for the next century. Stick a fork in it.

Was that a capitalist taking off a socialist suite, or a socialist taking off a capitalist suite? I can't tell the difference any more.

I guess my view of political dogma in America goes like the old joke: "Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Under Socialism it is the other way around"

Good question. I'll have to think about that one.

I think the US is more willing than ever to return to the moon, dodgy economy or not, because for the first time in nearmy 40 years everyone else is trying to get there too.

The russians have serious plans in place for their future of space. They have already committed to recovering their parts of the ISS when the station is decommissioned to re-use in their orbital facility for future moon missions, and they have their own new rocket and manned capsule system planned that is just as capable if not more so than the Orion program. Their new rockets don't have quite as big a launch capacity as the US' new ones, but that's because they envisage more progressive launch program. The US is planning to use Orion for apollo-style moon missions, a series of missions to the moon and back, whereas the russian vision is to set up a permanent infrastructure of stations in Earth, lunar and even martian orbit with vessels constantly hopping backwards and forwards as one ongoing continuous mission that is far more cost effective in the long run.

And then there's the Chinese; they have the commitment, no doubt, and if they back it up then the situation in space 10 years from now will be very interesting.

Then there's Europe. The ESA seems more closely tied with roscosmos these days than NASA, but their ATV manned program could be beneficial to either.

I think we are entering 'interesting' times when it comes to space exploration, the conservative era of the shuttle and ISS is passing, and a new space race beckons. Bring it on