Americans need to get serious again about space! 11

[whotmewory]

I wanna toss my hat in for American getting serious again about space!

American's gotten a pretty black eye from industry shifts away from home, and now with chine being soooo good at aircraft manufacturing thanks to the traitorous folks at Boeing, seems to me there's one last area where - at least for now - America leads the way, and that's SPACE!

Sure would be great if GW or the next Prez would come out - like Kennedy - and say "Let's do this!"

In '69 with Armstrong kicking up dust on the Moon, Stanley Kubrick's "2001 Space Odyssey" was seemingly a No Brainer and a lot of us kids envisioned working for NASA and us being as far as Mars if not at leaset mining the Moon.

Something went wrong somewhere - now all we have is a junker shuttle and a program lacking vision.

Perhaps we ought to hassle our legislators about this screw up - so younger engineers have a field to work in in 2020.

Let's go for space again and leave the Earth to China!

Cheers!

 

[whotmewory]

Eddy C:

I hope your questions are retorical regarding China. Stunning how many Americans have no concept of the Russo-China agreements of 1996-2001. They may make pretty kitch and cheap clothes, but they are not at all our friends.

Remember Neville Chamberlain!

 

[whotmewory]

Moltenmetal:

That's quite a chip on your shoulder.

Regarding your Comment that we "leave public money, collected using the taxation powers of the state, for uses of wider public benefit," there will be arguments ad-nauseum for time ad-infinitum about defining that better good.

We all get mad at programs we don't feel we should pay for, and there are surely a multitude of tax-funded programs under the guise of "social welfare" or "public good" that are as equally corrupt as you allude to about non-socially oriented programs.

You might be surprise to know that in the Federalist and Anti-Federalist arguments in the later 1700s and early 1800s, our Founding Fathers abhored the idea of Federal taxation. If you revisit these arguments, you'll be surprised that Madison, Washington, Adams, and especially Jefferson feared that these taxes would become the pig troughs of special interests and corruption by a greedy public all looking for their share.

Sound familiar. We've made the very mistake they attempted so very hard to prevent.

As for corruption, as long as religious institutions remain as corrupted as they are, I'm sorry that you and I will have to wince at corruption for a long time.

cheers!

 

[moltenmetal]

whotmeworry: I've earned my cynicism fair and square, like all frustrated idealists.

I'm not against taxation and government expenditure as a principle. Far from it- taxation is the only means we have to redress the natural tendency of capitalism to concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Rather, I'm against the use of significant quantities of public funds for projects of questionable societal benefit. When the argument is made about a project that there is little to no direct public benefit, but we should trust that vast benefits will "trickle down" from the public expenditure of vast sums of money, my bullsh*t detector starts ringing. I agree that it's better to "waste" this money on scientific megaprojects than it is to not collect it in the first place and leave it in the bond accounts of the super-wealthy. Even "wasted" taxation money circulates to some degree in the economy.

I'm not against space exploration or pure research- there is definitely merit in doing work to enhance our understanding rather than merely to solve smaller technological problems. What I am against is scientific megaprojects in general. I'd rather see the public money distributed amongst larger numbers of smaller projects.

 

[davefitz]

I am surprised that a collection of engineers would offer opinions on a mega project without asking or stating what the costs and the benefits are expected to be. One would think that such a decision would require justification and planning.

There are suppressed rumors that we have a budget deficit of rotund proportions, and that it would ( or rather, should) have long term implications on planning for discretionary mega projects. If such projects are pursued without a stated rationale or justification, we could expect that spending trend would lead to an inflationary spiral that would make the 1979-1982 period look conservative.

 

[EddyC]

The lowly sewer has contributed more to humanity than the space program. But the space program is technically more interesting than the sewer and therefore more appealing to engineers. But public money raised via taxation should go to projects that have more bang for the buck than the space program.

 

[controlnovice]

Are you serious? The American's went to the moon? I thought that was a hoax!

I thought this thread was going to discuss the urban space issues facing America today, such as suburban growth taking away all the farmland. Now that's space in which to be concerned.

 

[VisiGoth]

Farmland in Illinois USA is being covered over quite quickly. It is cutting into some of the lushest deep dark dirt farmland in the world. It seems to be a real shame. There are some low level local efforts, but the economics seem to overrule. Maybe some day we can peal back the black top from the strip mall parking lots and start to spot farm them. Maybe when the housing bubble bursts the growth will slow down and the trend will be to move back into the cities.

 

[wes616]

There was a city mouse.... and there was a country mouse... there never was a suburban mouse. Even if there was, we'd die from boredom reading about his life...

Sometimes big projects that would advance science have gotten short changed for bigger projects that would appeal to the "american public." An example of this is the superconducting supercolider... it was axed for this so called space station. By the time NASA and it's governmental consortium gets around to completing it, that guy from Vegas, will be offering you and me discout weekends for his orbiting hotel.!

Maybe if we Americans really wanted to get serious about funding science (not just space) we would take up a national bond measure. That would tie congress's hands from porking out the science budget, and fund some major project to completion (as opposed to the several half complete half brained billion dollar baby hueys that we have now). We can all spare $1 per month for 3 years... as sally struthers says, "it's less than 4 cents a day." I mean 10.8 billion could complete at least one of the projects....


Wes C.
------------------------------
When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions...

 

[Hora]

Maybe is the right time to open those locked drawers and bring back to light the ideas and inventions of Nikola Tesla.

Transmitting energy from one point to another without wires, that could push realy forward the humankind.

-Hora

 

[GregLocock]

Aye, or we could make little harnesses and fit them to fairies to lift the spaceships up.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[TheTick]

Get your own faeries! Mine are all booke sinning perpetual motion devices.

 

[whotmewory]

Egads, Batman! I've created a monster!

Look what this thread has degenerated into!

chris in NC Wine Country

 

[ziggi]

To be fair, if Tesla were as good a salesman (read bull___er) as Edison was, we might be sitting around balking at Edison's ideas.....hmmm scratch that, Edison stole most of Tesla's good ideas anyway.

 

[PsionSaint]

To try and make a point back on the original thread, I honestly believe that we need to pursue space travel and exploration for one simple, selfish reason. At some point in time, we as humankind on Earth will go extinct. You can speculate about the reason behind it - several options are even presented in this thread:

- China decides to take over the world and we have to fight them with nukes (both land and potentially space-based)

- Big asteroid smacks into our planet

- Our current modes of energy use eventually make our planet uninhabitable

But the one consistent thought is that Earth is a single point of failure. Once it goes, humankind does too. Now I realize that the timing of this may be on a geologic scale or that life may rise again (depending on your views on that whole debate) but honestly I seriously believe that humans should be investing in their perservation on a long-term basis. Yes, we can also invest in alternative fuels, affordable healthcare, feeding the starving people (many more of those that ones that are worried about space travel) but none of that gets us out of our current one-planet situation.

I recognize that we as humans with our massive brains and complex societies have an ability to react to and possibly even control these cataclismic events that threaten our existence. I also believe that we as humans are sometimes a little full of ourselves or don't know as much as we think. We should be hedging our bets that this arrogance doesn't cook our collective butts. Let's use that arrogance to our advantage by saying "Yep - the solar system, much less our galaxy, is a huge place and we have no idea how to explore it right now. So let's see what we can come up with." I'd be happy if we spent 1% of our annual defense budget in the USA on space. Notice I didn't say NASA - we have to use those funds wisely and their track record of late doesn't look "wise" to me.

Feel free to label me dilusional or idealistic or anything else that pokes holes in my argument. We can accomplish truly great things as humans once our society decides the costs are worth it. History has proven that sentiment, particularly in the areas of science and engineering when it comes to perceived threats outside our borders (the Manhattan Project comes to mind). You want to see our space program kick into high gear? Let some astronomer spot an asteroid the size of Texas that will smack us in a year. Too bad we're only scanning something like 3% of the sky right now. Or if you really want some action, let some alien race show up in orbit. Even if they are totally peaceful, we can count on our warmongers to start directing SERIOUS funds into space-based research.

 

[Jabberwocky]

PsionSaint: Yes.