Seriously. NASA has been a shadow of its former self compared to the stellar successes of the 1960s-70s. SpaceX has had much more success and developed the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V, and NASA hasn't even come close to finishing the bloated, money wasting rocket that is the SLS. They still send astronauts on Russian Rockets, 7 YEARS after the last shuttle flew. What has happened?
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Are you this uneducated or are you just asking a leading question? If the latter can you just skip to your point
Projects take longer than one term as president, military spending outstrips everything else as well. Career government admins get into high ranking spots and are risk averse, only doing things to solidify their positions in power, not focusing on space travel, just like every other govt organization they have become corrupt and ineffective.
I'd argue that the 1960's-70's were so good for NASA because having the ability to go to space was seen as an existential necessity. If the Soviets had a monopoly on space travel, they have an entirely different avenue for attacking us that we don't have many ways to effectively counteract. There just doesn't seem to be the same kind of imperative placed on it anymore.
That's essentially the reason. Up until the end of Apollo NASA was entirely mission-driven and everything was done with clear goals in mind, and whatever needed to be done to achieve those goals was done. After the space race was "won" there was no clear direction, and we got the Shuttle which I'd argue was the right idea in that the next logical step was the opening up of routine access to space, it just ended up being horribly inefficient in implementation.
Since there was no clear imperative after that to do something to beat the Soviets or achieve things simply because "they were there", it was much easier for NASA to fall into a role of simply providing contracts for Lockheed and Boeing or other powerful lobby groups. Why risk developing innovative new technologies when you can just keep milking the Shuttle program for billions with all the factories and technology you already have?
SpaceX have been able to achieve so much this quickly simply because one madman came along who was willing to take on a risk of failure that other aerospace companies and NASA just had no incentive to take on.
It's depressing, really. I wanted to work for nasa when I was a kid. Now, I can't imagine the kind of hell it must be to work in.
Military spending is so fucking high because the value of the American dollar hinges on the US having the strongest military in the world
if the military ever slips from dominance, the dollar will fucking implode
naturally, there's a lot more details involved, but that's the general gist of it
tfw i work at spacex and am applying for nasa
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Pretty much this.
Everybody is forced to exchange in dollars or the USA will bring them democracy
i'm actually not baiting dude, spacex is great but I want to work in robotics.
I agree with your second point but not with the first. Not all military spending goes to "creating the strongest military", since one can increase expenses simply through inefficiency or being involved in multiple armed conflicts (which don't necessarily increase the strength of your military).
if you want to work with space robots, choose a private company, there's a few working on them at the moment, and they'd adore more skilled personnel
I'd recommend Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, or Orbital Assembly
they're all glorious spacemen who need more spacemen at their side
NASA will never let you actually do your job, their way of life hinges on doing fuck all
Probably bait, but what the hell.
I am in the aerospace industry. I work with NASA on a daily basis. People tend to think that NASA is some huge, gestalt organization with slow moving parts that never accomplishes anything. Like yourself, they point to SLS as evidence. If they a bit more educated, they may also mention planetary missions or some telescopes - Hubble, JWST, etc. Most people don't realize the vastness of the organization. NASA is involved in a huge variety of projects and R&D - propulsion, communications, avionics, materials science, nuclear engineering, biology, planetary science, space physics, aerophysics, etc etc. The amount of research and breakthroughs that come out of NASA is staggering, but nobody ever hears about it, they only hear about the big projects like telescopes, SLS, things like that. Why? Because unless you're a scientist or engineer working in the field, you're not going to care about solving the tin whiskers problem, low altitude solar magnetic reconnection, or closed-shell polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Even some of the cooler projects (e.g. Quiet Spike) are relatively unknown. The other thing most people don't realize is that NASA is less like a single organization and is better described as a collection of different centers working towards a vaguely common goal. The people at JSC are different from those at MSFC or KSC, and they don't often get along.
>tl;dr
>You're ignorant and I hate you.
Because brainlet Republicans in Congress think that space is heresy, the moon landings were a liberal hoax, and the Earth is flat, so why would they bother to support a space program?
60's nasa was fresh and meant to do things fast if not especially cost effective. Modern nasa is welfare program.
Both did their respective jobs fine.
This. I'm crying thinking what will happen to the space program now that we elected bush v2. We had a good run as species I guess.
>Republicans in Congress think that space is heresy, the moon landings were a liberal hoax, and the Earth is flat
They don't belive that. Democrats, however, do believe that gender is not real. Which is the more anti science party?
See, I don't care about those things. I care about space.
I've heard Elon talk about in interviews how his issue with all the prior Mars plans were that they are always plans for ten or twenty years in the future. It's such a long time frame that you're never actually doing any detailed design work let alone bending metal. He believes in setting overly aggressive estimates because if you plan for five years hopefully you get it done in ten but the twenty year plan just ends up getting forever pushed back with no real progress made on getting you there. With a shorter time frame set it means you have to start making it right now.
When you look at all the studies done on Mars missions over the years with no actual hardware for a trip getting produced its hard to argue that he doesn't have a point.
because NASA is not full of reddit popsci brainlets and understands that space exploration is pointless and ideas like inhabiting and terraforming mars won't be achievable until at least 2600, so they use their resources elsewhere
Maybe this is the problem with NASA, trying to cover everything from atmospheric research through muslim outreach to space telescopes. Maybe a new agency should be created not to dilute the efforts.
NSCA - National Space Colonization Administration
Man I wish I was as smart as you user, I wish I could work in the aerospace industry. Being a brainlet has held me back from my dreams for too long
LAWMAN BEATING UP THE WRONG GUY
You don't realise how boring, tedious and taxing these jobs are.
Now see, if you think Apollo was a "stellar success" you are part of the problem
The disastrous pointless 200 billion dollar flags & footprints Apollo program lead directly into the pointless shuttle program.
Apollo worked as it did because NASA got everything given to them by the military, plus unlimited budget, afterwards they had to design a vehicle for themselves and they got the Shuttle disaster... it just gets worse from there...
NASA was filled with competent WHITE MEN during the 1960’s and 1970’s while America was experiencing an economic boom and social stability.
We also had a bunch of former nazis working for us and sheet.
Nowadays it’s pretty much hopeless and nasa should just be gutted or scrapped all together.
The main reason I harp on people being stupid is because idiots said my research sucked to begins with and other idiots believed them. Even if you didn't understand physics when that happened almost ten years ago, the fact that people still say, "I can't understand that, I'll just defer to the opinion of the idiots who wear nametags that say 'EXPERT'," means that the idiots not only didn't understand, but have made no effort to try understand over the following ~10 years.
The whole point of God is that he tends the sheep, not everyone is smart. That is ok. I get very angry when we aren't real clear about that, and then I get mad when some people who are not smart believe the other people who are also not smart when they say that my research sucks. There are other smart people out there? Where are they? Where are their reviews of my research? It's the idiots getting in the way pretending to intelligence that are fucking everything up.
TL;DR: It's been al ost ten years, no one can make the legitimate excuse "Oh I can't understand that," any more. Now the excuse is, "I didn't want to understand that." I was in college for less than ten years.
and that's fine if you didn't want to understand but shut the fuck up about me being the stupid one then.
Jews, I am one of them, believe than anyone who can accomplish the mission of the Messiah without dying first is indeed the Messiah. That's what I'm trying to do with my life, what the fuck are you doing?
See
That's no a delusion retard, that really is what I am doing with my life.
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>lets waste billions of dollars so we can see some stars trillions of lightyears away and theorize what kind of star it could be
The republican VP is a creationist and trump's staffed half his cabinet with climate deniers.
Don't try to whatabout this one.
and how is that any different from anti-science liberalism + global warmists who want to shut down the country?
That's a pretty techy kitchen.
this, when liberals accept race realism and put gender politics in the trash bin, i will give a fuck about climate change
>my concerns are shaped by teh Libruls
Eight goddam minutes. Eight. Eight goddam minutes. My mind is still blown. Im still yakking about it to friends and neighbors.
This guy sent a car 70 miles or so into space. dropped it, and was back on the pad in eight goddam minutes.
I can barely make my breakfast and coffee in eight minutes.
Be damned if I would ever go up there. Space has dozens of ways to kill you. Its not meant for humans.
I think the value of the space programs to the human spirit is simply the joy of exploration.
In reality, to me, there is nothing up there, leastways we can get too. If you do the math even broadly, theres no reason to think we will ever be able to reach anything useful.
Mars, for example, is worthless real estate. If Mars conditions were anywhere on Earth, it would be the last place you wanted to build or settle anything.
I like to think we will at least find better ways to harness energy from the sun someday. But as for ever leaving the system or finding anything usable worth the expense and risk, I just dont see it.
Although I guess one could make the argument that there is some value in escaping the rest of humanity. It makes the issue of refugees and migrants a lot more interesting anyways. I think that was the premise of the film Elysium, probably other films as well.
Reasonable estimations about space though, even with a modicum of knowledge of scale, suggest that we not only will never make contact with other intelligence, but that we never have. The scale is simply too great to think either species would survive the length of travel to intersect.
I suppose they could interact with each other in areas more populated with star systems, but even then, it seems unlikely two species would find each other unless the evolved simultaneously in the same star system, and that would require both planets being able to support life in the same eras.
The pictures are nice though.
Well, people back then said the same thing about the Oceans.
I dont want to be interpreted as being dogmatic. Its just my view. I am open to other ones.
If there is some practical value to constructing anything in space for reasons other than energy collection or mere observation, Im open to hear it.
I can sort of almost see building defense posts in orbit. I can get this far in my imagination if reasonable:
The cost of space-anything seems to mostly be getting materials off Earth, or Mars where it applies. So you might be able to argue a use for mining ores and constructing plants to refine and process them, and then factories to fabricate parts. Okay, so lets look at how that would work.
For one, the working conditions would be miserable. You would essentially have to start with floating trailer parks for the workers, a whole station if they are lucky later. The work is very dangerous, and it would have to be for laborers who need protected. They arent going to be rocket scientists. There would be accidents, and those would demoralize and disincentivize people from even wanting the job. Astronauts now are frankly treated like abused lab rats and live in unhealthy conditions and are asked to live in tin cans for god and country. A laborer is going to be more pragmatic and need real pay.
So now we got our mines, our factories and can fabricate materials without the expense of rockets. So then I ask, what are we building with it? Whats the profit motive that supports all this infrastructure?
What is up there that we cant get down here more cheaply? The only thing I can think of is strategic position for defense, sort of Star Wars Redux c. 1986.
The land is useless, no one really wants to live for generations in a dome. There is plenty of energy to collect from the sun, but thats about it
So, no unique materials, ores, chemical commodities, and as the novelty wanes as accidents rise, people will collectively lose their star wanderlust when the scale becomes more common knowledge, so there goes tourism as well
Likewise. People that don't appreciate how impressive this is should be executed.
When people realize how harsh it really is, how long and far they have to go to get anywhere that is ages spent in "economic" cans (ffs, just look at how miserable first class plane and cruiseliner accomodations are now), the incentive will wane. At best, Musk-Disney will offer orbit cruises from Epcot so us little people can feel we had a taste of space travel, perhaps to whiz by the moon. But it wont last.
Lets look at interstellar travel: the nearest star is 4.3 light years away, which means when your team gets there in 40,000 years, twice the speed we can go now, they will call home and it will take over four years for the phone to ring, Another four to answer 'hello'. Another four to chat about the cosmic 'weather'.
If you think colonization on Earth was hard for empires now....
Or we can imagine "Buy N Large" style cruiseliners, floating cities in space. But for what purpose, to justify the cost?
And thats before you even get to the philosophical issues of government in space. Humans invariably abuse control and influence of others, and up there, you are a prisoner of someone who runs the domain. So sovereign domains are going to be a touchy issue at best. Space madness is a real thing. Its simply not a natural habitat for humans any more than prisons.
To say nothing of competition among these new nations. Lets imagine a 'death star', an artificial satellite that actually enjoys a large productive population that is self sufficient and growing and building. How long before they start viewing terrestrials with contempt and begin bargaining their uniquely strategic military capacity for space strikes with other nations, and in becoming allies, form enemies on the ground, much as the US military is rented to others, which incurs aggression.
I dont think it ever gets that far though. I think basic economic factors obstruct everything but exploration and observation for its own sake and, at best, some energy collection. Maybe. If we're lucky.
Giant space stations. Idiot.
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For the excelceites. Now shut up and keep mining, you lower class depth-groveller
See, thats how it starts....
>How long before they start viewing terrestrials with contempt and begin bargaining their uniquely strategic military capacity for space strikes with other nations, and in becoming allies, form enemies on the ground, much as the US military is rented to others, which incurs aggression.
Imagine the terrorist strikes.
lol'd. I bet deep down inside you just want a father figure to tell you you've done well. You sissy faggot.
I currently work a fed job on the space coast and I love it. Go fed, get that pension, ignore detractors.