It’s not NASA, it’s Virgin Galactic. You can’t cut something 10% every year and expect it to do its job—for all their talk of “American exceptionalism,” conservative cheapness is starving America’s once indomitable science, infrastructure, military, and competitiveness into third-world status.
Robert Heinlein wrote a great story titled “The Man Who Sold the Moon” in which he assumed that space exploration would be funded by private enterprise. A great story, but he was wrong.
NASA, NIH, CDC, and lots of other “science agencies” lost hugely, even if only via infllation, under conservative government, Federal and State. Manned flight kept money coming, even if much of the work could be done by robotics, there is still the factor of “where no Man has gone before” (referencing a species, not a sex, btw, Roddneberry was a long way from an idiot).
What we DID get was funding for any “science” or “system” as in UAVs becoming UASs, as industry increased funding complexities, and proits, for anything they could come up with, to blow stuff, and Man, up.
The politics of fear, and “why?” has replaced the forward looking politics, and societal courage, of “why not?”.
Wonder if the ’toon really meant to depcit so gaphically with the nuke and drone, and dilapidated shuttle, the politics and economics of contracting out even our greatest fears, to “private interests”, which of course, means corporate interests and profits, regardless the cost to our mental and physical security?
Read this and know the wasteful details: http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ContentRecord_id=f9478504-be7e-4b8f-9ef8-baa0895a9579
Anweir88: I thought Bear at first too, what with our using that era of rocket engines in the corporate world of contracting. Which given the degradation of some of those exotic metal alloys, how reliable, even post-refitting, are those engines?
For me there’s also some irony in the fact that as a former Huey crew chief, getting bullet holes in my bird back then, carbon fiber parts for today’s Huey fuselages, are made in Viet Nam.
OmqR-IV.0 over 9 years ago
ahem. Space Shuttles were decommissioned 3 years ago.
ARodney over 9 years ago
It’s not NASA, it’s Virgin Galactic. You can’t cut something 10% every year and expect it to do its job—for all their talk of “American exceptionalism,” conservative cheapness is starving America’s once indomitable science, infrastructure, military, and competitiveness into third-world status.
lonecat over 9 years ago
Robert Heinlein wrote a great story titled “The Man Who Sold the Moon” in which he assumed that space exploration would be funded by private enterprise. A great story, but he was wrong.
Dtroutma over 9 years ago
NASA, NIH, CDC, and lots of other “science agencies” lost hugely, even if only via infllation, under conservative government, Federal and State. Manned flight kept money coming, even if much of the work could be done by robotics, there is still the factor of “where no Man has gone before” (referencing a species, not a sex, btw, Roddneberry was a long way from an idiot).
What we DID get was funding for any “science” or “system” as in UAVs becoming UASs, as industry increased funding complexities, and proits, for anything they could come up with, to blow stuff, and Man, up.
The politics of fear, and “why?” has replaced the forward looking politics, and societal courage, of “why not?”.
Wonder if the ’toon really meant to depcit so gaphically with the nuke and drone, and dilapidated shuttle, the politics and economics of contracting out even our greatest fears, to “private interests”, which of course, means corporate interests and profits, regardless the cost to our mental and physical security?
MR P over 9 years ago
Read this and know the wasteful details: http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ContentRecord_id=f9478504-be7e-4b8f-9ef8-baa0895a9579
Dtroutma over 9 years ago
Anweir88: I thought Bear at first too, what with our using that era of rocket engines in the corporate world of contracting. Which given the degradation of some of those exotic metal alloys, how reliable, even post-refitting, are those engines?
For me there’s also some irony in the fact that as a former Huey crew chief, getting bullet holes in my bird back then, carbon fiber parts for today’s Huey fuselages, are made in Viet Nam.
hippogriff over 9 years ago
cjr53: Some to storage, but most to redneck police departments.
Dtroutma over 9 years ago
Baslim: and the B-52 remains our only truly reliable bomber!
manteo16nc over 9 years ago
First we make little stop in Ukraine.