Posted on 02/02/2003 3:42:54 PM PST by Pokey78
What exactly has the shuttle program accomplished? Nothing. Its a jobs program for the Florida Space Coast and Houston. That's all. Sorry but I deal in reality. Take your mescaline-induced "dreams" elsewhere or better yet, go off and strip your wire!
What gibberish! I said nothing of the kind. You are aptly named and clearly are a junior intellect.
What the hell does the Space Shuttle have to do with any of that? What is the Space Shuttle exploring? NOTHING. ITS A DAMNED PORK-BARRELING BOONDOGGLE! There seems to be a new political-correctness taking over FR: Anything that NASA does is sacrosanct. NASA is a just another bureacracy like the Dept. of Education or the Social Security Administration. The sooner it is abolished, the better!
"Manned space flight is a waste of resources."
Research as such is neither bad nor good. And plenty of research goes on that is not government funded. My objection is to government funding of research. When you put the government, which uses force to plunder its citizens of their hard earned wealth, in the middle, you distort the market for research. I suspect that if all government sponsored research were stopped tomorrow and the money returned to the people who paid the taxes for it in the first place, a significant fraction of research would continue. However, it would most likely NOT be on the things that it covers now.
Every dollar plundered from the taxpayers and spent by the government on the things that the bureaucrats have decided they like is a dollar that can't be spent by the person who earned it. The point is those dollars would have been spent on things that were more market driven if they had not been stolen by the government. When the government steps in the original earner has no say in where the loot is spent. When this wealth transfer happens it is no different than welfare.
Take Archer Daniels Midlands so beloved by Bob Dole and their taxpayer funded ethanol boondogle This is nothing but welfare - corporate welfare to be sure, but the taxpayers get nothing that they want out of it (except for a few tree huging Marxists). ADM gets billions in stolen pelf. Dole got campaign contributions.
Bottom line is if you're accepting the government's dollars for some job that doesn't exist in the free market sector you're just participating in the beneficiary end of a wealth transfer scheme - crudely known as welfare.
Get together with a bunch of like minded souls, buy a moon rocket and go for it. I'll cheer you on lift off and donate a can of orange spray paint to help with your grafetti.
But, don't plunder my earnings and distribute the largess on a bunch of grabernment bureaucrats (I include astronauts in this category) and fat aerospace contractors using pseudo science as the excuse. I don't give a flying ...k what effects long term weightlessness has on people and I don't care to spend even a penny to find out. The shuttle and the space station are just welfare programs for engineers and PhDs.
You want to let the Chinese figure that one out? Maybe in another decade or so they will have an orbiting base that could take out our GPS and other satellites as part of a first-strike war they launch.
The shuttle and the space station are just welfare programs for engineers and PhDs.
Most of the people working on the space program are neither engineers nor PhDs. For many of the beancounters, it is welfare, but conducting real science is NOT welfare by any stretch of the imagination.
So far they've been too smart to waste the money answering that quesion.
Maybe in another decade or so they will have an orbiting base that could take out our GPS and other satellites as part of a first-strike war they launch.
And maybe cows will fly - although if the taxpayers are paying for it I'm sure NASA will try to justify flying cows in its budget
but conducting real science is NOT welfare by any stretch of the imagination.
You consider the crap that goes on in the shuttle "real science?" When you use it for patronage rides (John Glenn) and "experiments" dreamed up by school children (spider web in 0g) it becomes obvious that NASA is just groping for things to justify its continued squandering of resources plundered form the taxpayers. I guess you and I differ on what we consider constitutes "real science."
They are planning to launch a man into space this year. I also remember reading they had plans to put up space station eventually.
Given their technology (largely stolen from the United States), and their willingness to take chances (even excessive ones which disregard human life), it's only a matter of time before they succeed.
You consider the crap that goes on in the shuttle "real science?" When you use it for patronage rides (John Glenn)
The shuttle program does have a lot of problems. It should not be a vehicle for putting the first (fill in the blank) into space. Those involved in sending up Glenn should be in jail for bribery and wasting the taxpayers money.
But blaming engineers and scientists at an agency where they started being outnumbered by the pointy-hairs and beancounters many years ago is absurd.
I'm not blaming them so much as thinking that we'd all be better off if they offered their service on the free market. (Working at GM, Ford?)
We disagree here too. The technology wasn't stolen. It was given to them by the traitor Clinton and has accomplices.
These days, there is not much difference between working for a large company and the federal government.
And the idea that a "free market" exists in present-day America is absurd, so I don't think anyone would be better off if they were working for Ford or GM as opposed to legitimate gov't research.
I don't disagree except to point out that it was occurring long before Klinton. Prescott Bush was involved in giving them satellite technology in the late 80s. The transfer of technology to communists regimes can be traced back to FDR.
Point taken and agreed with.
When you buy something do you buy it at GUM or Wallmart or any other store you walk into? If you have choice of stores this is free market. Do you only buy what the state tells you to, or do you chose what you want to buy. if you have a choice this is free market.
Likewise corporations spend R&D money on what they think will make them money. This is free market. I agree that at Ford and GM billions of dollares are spend on gevernment mandated R&D and this is not free market, but this just reenforces my point. As long as people/corporations chose where to allocate their resources this is free market. When the government uses its police powere to demand that resources be spent on thing that the people wouldn't chose, this is the antithesis of free market. In fact it's Marxism
so I don't think anyone would be better off if they were working for Ford or GM as opposed to legitimate gov't research
What is "legitimate government research?" I have an idea of what it should be but I'd like to hear yours.
The moon is useless, Mulder!
There won't be a USA in 2200 unless we do.
If that is the conclusion you drew from my post, you need to work on your reading comprehension.
The shuttle is a failure, but NASA nor congress will admit it. NASA won't because, hey, when was the last time a bureaucracy said, "oops"? Congress won't because it mismanaged NASA and the shuttle to produce that failure.
NASA should be exploring, but instead it is wedged into low earth orbit like a 500lb man in a 24" door. Thirty years ago, private enterprise should have been starting a viable space industry. NASA should have spent the last twenty years paying for space on American Spacelines, not operating the shuttle.
That is why whatever replaces the shuttle must be designed around return on investment more than anything else.
Wow, all those government labs, wasted dollars, usless inventions, and usless knowlege. You never even addressed my military question, however, in this light you certainly are placing them as welfare recipients also.
For example:
" It's the stuff of science fiction: Display screens so light and flexible that you could roll them up and carry them anywhere. That's the inspiration behind a U.S. government-funded research initiative announced recently that will rely on Bell Labs to help create thin, flexible color screen circuitry that should be cheap and easy to manufacture.
You take that back. They paid Billzebubba good money for access to that technology.
Returning to the main point of the debate, government involvement in transportation infrastructure is a point on which reasonable people may agree to disagree. Thus, cuts in that area on general principle (as opposed to cuts because a specific stategy is not effective, on which grounds a strong case can indeed be made against NASA) should be considered after every clearly unauthorized and socialistic government program have been completely abolished.
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