No wonder NASA lost funding

He who can move rocks around in space can drop them on his enemy's head on earth.

I think Heinlein covered this off in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Plan makes sense to me. The mission is a technology demonstrator, not an end in and of itself.

NOHOME wrote: He who can move rocks around in space can drop them on his enemy's head on earth. I think Heinlein covered this off in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

I read a book where a planetary system's inhabited planets were sterilized by strapping Orion drives to a bunch of the larger asteroids and aiming them at the planets.

From a strategic standpoint, it didn't make much sense to me, the reader, since it ended up that they expended practically as much effort in defending the planet-killers as they would have in traditional planetary assault. But I think at that point in the story, they were just playing with new and interesting ways of wiping the species in question out of existence.

NASA is the R&D division of the US government. they fund the cool projects that are too expensive or have too little immediate return on investment for private industry to take on, while also serving as a place for the best and brightest in the country- and the world, actually- to get together to invent cool new stuff that eventually works it's way out into the real world.

to summarize: NASA is probably just about the only part of the government that isn't a total fiscal black hole if they are allowed to do what they are good at doing.

I'm in the "let's stop bombing the berkeley out of everyone" and put that money into things like education and science (NASA for instance).

z31maniac wrote: I'm in the "let's stop bombing the berkeley out of everyone" and put that money into things like education and science (NASA for instance).

+1. It would do a hell of a lot more good for us as a country.

Sometimes it's weird working for the part of NASA everyone forgets about (earth science)

It's probably better that people forget about that, you know that includes some things that certain people would love to defund...sometimes it's better to be forgotten about so you can work quietly in the background.

I think that we should give NASA more funding. Only an ignorant person wouldn't realize the value that NASA has brought to the world, and most especially the United States.

Go to asteroid belt.

Grab one decent sized asteroid.

Feed into automated nuclear powered CNC laser cutter and output a lego the size of an apartment building.

Repeat a few hundred million times.

Assemble into some cool hollow shape and move in.

GameboyRMH wrote: It's probably better that people forget about that, you know that includes some things that certain people would love to defund...sometimes it's better to be forgotten about so you can work quietly in the background.

There is a lot of truth there.

rotard wrote: I think that we should give NASA more funding. Only an ignorant person wouldn't realize the value that NASA has brought to the world, and most especially the United States.

True, some very interesting technological breakthroughs have come out of NASA and NACA work over the past 60 years. I doubt any of us are ignorant of that. But we all have our own views on how our tax dollars should be spent. How much have we dumped into research and what's the value of the return? Who knows? But some programs seem to be more far fetched than others. I don't advocate defunding altogether, but I believe we need to be prudent about how much we spend and what we spend it on.

NOHOME wrote: Go to asteroid belt. Grab one decent sized asteroid. Feed into automated nuclear powered CNC laser cutter and output a lego the size of an apartment building. Repeat a few hundred million times. Assemble into some cool hollow shape and move in.

• Go to asteroid belt

• Grab asteroid with a crap ton of of gold.

• Destroy world economy

• F'ing NASA!!

We actually gained about 1% in funding this year. Much of it is going to speed up getting our astronauts to the Space Station with our own rockets.

NASA is one of those things where it's nearly impossible to quantify what comes out of it. That money is not thrown down a rat hole, it does bring back big benefits. In that way it's not that unlike the military; a lot of stuff we now take for granted (microwave ovens, carbon fiber, GPS systems, cell phones, even the Internet) are spinoffs from NASA and military research.

I love pure science just for pure science's sake. The unfortunate thing is, there are a lot of people out there who look at scientists doing basic research and they think 'damn what a waste of money' without stopping to consider that sometimes you have to blunder blindly in the dark, looking for an answer that you aren't even sure is there. Sometimes it becomes a dead end, but other times it becomes something fantastic.

I remember something about pool balls; they used to be carved from ivory (dead elephants) and were horrifically expensive. This guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Parkes managed to accidentally mix a few chemicals and they turned into a hard blob, celluloid. It was the first true plastic and this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Hyatt ran with it and made it commercially viable. Not only did this cut down on the use of ivory but it also kicked off the plastics industry.

The point is, there's a lot of basic research that goes into things like this that don't necessarily show an ROI instantly.

What if Edison had been told to quit messing with light bulbs? He and his team tried something like 6,000 different materials before arriving at a commercially viable electric light bulb. http://edisonmuseum.org/content3399.html

In reply to Curmudgeon:

Pretty much my view, except how does one differentiate from the programs with truly great potential and those that could be classified as second or third tier with less potential. And, one never knows what might be accidentally discovered in second or third tier programs. Problem is, although it would be great, tax dollars can't fund everything. So cuts are a reality.

NASA's budget is peanuts in the grand scheme of things. There are much better places to cut funding.

In reply to Gary:

You could probably prevent some cuts by simply investigating welfare fraud.

Didn't you get the memo? Welfare spending is like 2% of the federal budget. The Occupy Wall Street graph I saw proves it.

aircooled wrote:

NOHOME wrote: Go to asteroid belt. Grab one decent sized asteroid. Feed into automated nuclear powered CNC laser cutter and output a lego the size of an apartment building. Repeat a few hundred million times. Assemble into some cool hollow shape and move in.

- Go to asteroid belt - Grab asteroid with a crap ton of of gold. - Destroy world economy - F'ing NASA!!

I can work with that!

rotard wrote: NASA's budget is peanuts in the grand scheme of things. There are much better places to cut funding.

Very true. Also, much of the R&D is done by private companies, some without funding in order to land a contract. I should also point out that most of the work for NASA is performed by private companies that had to bid the contract, many of these now minority or female owned companies.

racerdave600 wrote: I should also point out that most of the work for NASA is performed by private companies that had to bid the contract, many of these now minority or female owned companies.

...on paper, anyway.

Duke wrote:

racerdave600 wrote: I should also point out that most of the work for NASA is performed by private companies that had to bid the contract, many of these now minority or female owned companies.

...on paper, anyway.

And many not on paper. I used to have go to most of the tech companies and interview the owners for my old job every year. Most people don't have much knowledge about what really is happening in the tech / NASA / military world, nor how it operates.

yamaha wrote: In reply to Gary: You could probably prevent some cuts by simply investigating welfare fraud.

No doubt! That I would love to see, but that probably won't happen in my lifetime.

In reply to Duke:

I don't believe a single thing they claimed should be held credible.....but it is a drop in the bucket to most of the rest of the government, and a good start IMHO to start eliminating corruption as a whole.