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I had a lengthy argument with someone that Musk couldn’t possibly be kissing Trump’s ass for money - he’s a billionaire after all and “has all the money he needs”. No no, Musk is doing this out of the goodness of his cold billionaire heart. Isn’t it obvious?
Why are so many people so stupid? WHY?
I had similar arguments and the synopsis is that people can’t admit being wrong because it makes them look weak. It’s a toxic masculinity and ego thing.
You basically double down on the bet and ride the boat right into hell over the waterfall.
Dead, but you never had to admit the other person was right about the waterfall!
Good things have happened to Elon, therefore he must be a good person, otherwise my worldview is destroyed and there is no point being good.
NASA has already sent out emails to their teams and contractors about what implications this can have on their departments. Shit’s bad.
He efficiently using the government to make himself richer. What more did anybody expect?
And absolutely no one paying attention was shocked.
This is what losing a space race looks like.
What if these so-called efficiency measures actually help pave the way for the first civil outpost on Mars? I think I want to give people some benefit of the doubt, we can do better than what we have currently. Ideally, it’s realizing that there’s no such thing as scarcity in a boundless universe.
Make no mistake though, the Trump admin is giving grounds to fascism, and that’s a problem. Apologies if I sound unreasonably optimistic, I know a lot is happening which will ruin lives for many. No one should be okay with that.
What benefit does a civilian outpost on Mars give to our current society? We have effectively handled scarcity already. All scarcity that exists today is entirely manufactured by the owner class. We have the means to safely and effectively have infinite electricity, food, and housing. We choose not to. How would that change if we have a base on Mars?
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.
Honestly I think lunar gateway is a decent idea, Its the easiest thing to do thats new as far as space is concerned and thus potentially the cheapest way to gain international co-operation, public interest, and potentially ignite another space race. Looking forward it can can potentially act as a life raft for any future lunar colonies in the event of a mishap. And while a moon colony isn’t as impressive as a mars one its much safer to practice on given that emergency re-supply can actually get there before the crew are already skeletonized. A moon base itself can then act as support for moon based telescopes (which have significant advantages, and disadvantages of course) and if you can get some kind of manufacturing going its far easier to launch from the moon than it is from earth, even if the moon just ends up as a glorified space gas station.
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.
You kill a half dozen people in a space ship explosion that could have been avoided and you will reasonably get a cautious culture.
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.
We are about a decade plus into the current political theme of “throw the baby out with the bathwater”. It’s scary. These people have no plan. It’s the levellers and the diggers all over again.
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.
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 …
I remember when that movie came out people argued with me that the Democrats were the party that was going to create the world of Interstellar and the Republicans were “standing up for science”.
It was obviously nonsense then so i have little illusions that those people have changed their view on it–or if they have, they’ve simply changed to believe the moon landing was faked.
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 product 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?
Not always. There is some research that they could not do without going broke because up-front costs are too high, and there’s no tangible return on investment. In these cases, it makes sense to fund publicly because there is still value to society at large. Accelerators, for example. It doesn’t always have to be some conspiracy.
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.”
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?
No regulations for digging tunnels is the boring part
Please for the love of God no Tesla tunnels…
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.
