Posted on 12/29/2008 5:47:05 PM PST by KevinDavis
The United States has never fully subscribed to the Roman policy of providing its citizens with bread and circuses. The bread is just too expensive. Besides, poor people should be self-reliant enough to earn their own bread.
Circuses, though - they're different. They distract attention from governmental disorders that voters might not be so thrilled with. Say, wars, or ruining the environment, or corporate boondoggles.
And the greatest of these circuses has been the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It began in response to the embarrassment of the Soviet Union putting up the first satellite. From there the agency went ballistic. We needed our own satellites, of course; we needed people out there in space; we needed rockets to the moon, to Mars, to Venus, to Mercury, to Jupiter, etc. Then we needed to get human explorers to the moon (and back).
(Excerpt) Read more at stamfordadvocate.com ...
See that little blue world in the picture in reply 2? That’s our basket and all of our eggs are in it unless we figure out how to get off of the planet.
Velcro alone made it worth the money.
Any questions???
Don’t forget Tang, Superglue, microwave ovens, freezedried foods, etc.
However, I am not convinced that NASA has been a good return on the investment.
In the same vein as the last question, looking back at your three and a half decades in SF, what are you most proud of having gotten right? What do you feel you got most spectacularly wrong, by way of failure to predict or just plain being wrong?
We should not have assumed that a political space station could be built. We'd have most of what we predicted of the conquest of space, if we hadn't ignored parasite control. The wealth (as in flying cars) predicted by Heinlein and his followers (including myself) was another matter. It all went to welfare programs.
Vast numbers of people are microscopically better off for that, except that we all have less to aspire to.
Here is where the predictions failed: We didn't take Cargo Cult mentality into account [that being] "if somebody has something I don't, he must have stolen it."
We didn't understand how good we could get at communication -- when you have something that someone else doesn't, the whole damn planet knows it. But the space defense initiative drove the USSR bankrupt, and it originated at my house in Tarzana.
Vulcans invented velcro
google up “Carbon Creek”
Minuteman Media distributes sound, progressive opinion to places where it is sorely needed -- smaller newspapers nationwide.
your computer, your electronic, bluray, high def, cell phone world was all birthed by the space program and the moon program.
another MMM contributor is Ryan Alexander:
http://www.taxpayer.net/
here’s the cadre:
http://www.minutemanmedia.org/AUTHORS%20PHOTOS.htm
I suppose if you live in a desert with few water resources, this may seem like an important technology. There are many things to criticize about NASA, but a former Mayor of Norwalk is not someone I would take seriously.
It seems that these you know whats thinks we need to spend more money on welfare programs even though we spent more money on welfare programs than NASA
What does that clown think food stamps and the NBA are?
I just post this for you know what and giggles..
It is funny... but scary!
What a short sighted fool.
Proof anyone can use a keyboard.
The nations that lead on the frontiers, dictate the course of human history.
Sorry, but you’re still not convincing me.
I believe this Nation’s best days were prior to computers, home electronics, bluray, and cell phones.
We could have done without these “advances” and probably would have had them eventually anyway, less the astronomical (no pun intended) NASA pricetag.
Don’t get me wrong: I admire NASA’s accomplishments, I just think that were spent way too much National Treasure for them.
It undoubtedly *was*, if you subscribe to that theory, up until some point. Even detractors of NASA (there were some) would concede that.
All those people involved were *paid*, and those monies circulated in the local and greater economy, wholly apart from any technological advances. Even the internet - how we are communicating now - was a DARPA affair, while not NASA, a necessary component of government. It’s not like one single US state carried the ball and went to the moon. Thousands of contractors, large and small.
I agree, except I’d probably have said “these so-and-so’s” or “these [characterization delete]s”.
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