Posted on 02/23/2024 6:12:35 AM PST by Salman
“Space travel will continue to be nothing more than a scientific curiosity mission until we find a way to make money from it.”
Pure and simple truth right there.
It needs to trundle on over to any of the moon landings and take piccies.. Lay to rest all of the idiocy on fake landings.
OTOHand, if they take piccies and nothing is there, just imagine the $$$ they could demand from the Feds!
“But, they show “simulations”.
Were they reruns? lol
“We’re all in this together” right? If your grandchildren are dependent on the government paying down its debt, I have some really, really bad news for you.
“It needs to trundle on over to any of the moon landings and take pics”
There are already lots of pictures, taken years ago, by the Lunar Orbiter Reconnaissance satellite. It’s really strange though. They show everything exactly where they said they were, with all the stuff they took with them!
We could start by not funding frivolous projects like this. It is time to tighten our belts. How could any fiscal Conservative support such unneeded waste like this?
Well, that is certainly an opinion that can be defended, I suppose.
What I’m trying to point out, with a currency that is untethered, generally accepted accounting principles don’t really apply. They don’t “save” any money by not spending. It is all fantasy. If they have a “surplus”, they just borrow & spend even more.
The deficits (and promises made) are so large, most people can’t even comprehend them. I include myself in that category. There isn’t enough money in the world to pay off all the debt, they couldn’t really make a dent even if they wanted to.
My argument is something along the lines that they spent the money on the space exploration infrastructure in the 1960s - a huge sum at the time - and then just quit. I agree with you re-creating what they did in 1965 (Surveyor lander) and 1968 (crew flies around the moon, though not land) is pretty wasteful in that respect.
Here is why I take the stand I do. If you have the Moon as a toy then we don’t need things like a 401k right?
“With a yearly deficit in the trillions, government looks to go after 401(k) accounts for new revenue”
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4219484/posts
I look for the moon to be the launch site for Mars.
The sentiment is understandable, but here’s the problem.
The money budgeted for the space program is a rounding error in the federal deficits and spending. Doesn’t even amount to a hill of beans They could kill all of that, and if your fears are realized they’ll still confiscate your 401K as far as that goes.
But it accrues... There are probably several hundred thousand unneeded programs and projects that would add up to huge savings. We have to start somewhere, Not buying high end toys is a very good start and example to set.
You are correct. But I can assure you there will be no “belt tightening”, we all know what needs to happen, but they can’t do it, or won’t do it, anyway.
What gets interesting is what happens when they are forced to cut. This will happen much sooner than many people expect. They can borrow and spend up until they can no longer make timely interest payments on existing debt. The entire 35 trillion “rolls over” about every 4 years, at ever higher interest rates. I don’t know what happens then exactly, but it will be fairly biblical.
Well, almost successfully. It fell over on it's side after touchdown. The on-board computers couldn't control the lateral movement and one of the landing legs caught on a rock, and the craft tipped over.
Anyway, congratulations to SpaceX for getting it there, and Intuitive Machines for building it. Both are private commercial companies. The government is still pouring many billions of dollars into ULA and it is way behind schedule. Should just let private companies do it and stand aside.
It doesn’t help that its horizontal speed was two mph.
Landing on its legs and then falling over to me does not constitute a successful landing. Would we say the same thing if it was a manned lunar lander?
Compare this lander to the Surveyor lunar landers and Viking martian landers and compare it to the IM-1. What do you notice? The UM-1 is way too tall for it’s landing footprint that results in its CG being way too high. That makes it very easy for it to fall over compared to landers of the past.
Well, I said almost successfully.
If a manned lunar lander landed and then tipped over, we could say the men landed "successfully", but would be unsuccessful in taking off from the Moon. Oh well.
I think IM needs to get some tips from SpaceX in how to land vertically without tipping over (or spread out the landing legs to keep from tipping over).
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