n.a.s.a-the money pit (1 Viewer)

[wilbur]

I would like to ask a question of my fellow maters.I have an idea. Would,nt it be great if we stopped, or severely cut back the space program. Then we could fund our police depts. thus maybe preventing our kids from being raped, and murdered, ( example , the girls in california). We could house our homeless. We could feed our starving. We could better educate our children.We could pay off some of the trillions in nat. debt. We could build new roads and bridges. I realize this probably won,t happen. But could you imagine a president with the balls, saying lets make a change, lets do this differently. They spend billions on rockets that explode two hundred feet off the ground. They have no clear cut mission. I,m not saying no good comes from n.a.s.a, I,m saying, lets cut it back for ten years, billions if not trillions saved. Put everyone on unemployement, tell them to live check to check. I know we could cut the defense budget, and I also know that won,t happen. Can you just imagine if a president, or other politiciens, said whoa there, heres how we can fix our country, or at least help fix it. God please, bring us a man or a woman who can think outside the box. Who does,nt bow to pressure. Or someone who can fix this mess, we call a government.And don,t tell me , to leave the country, if I don,t like it..I love my country. But I think It,s being driven into the ground by greedy, lazy, beurocrats. Theres my rant for the year.

 

[Gary H]

They already killed the planned trip to the moon. If you're going to do that, might as well close all the military bases in europe too. No need for them. Discharge everyone there. I think you forget all the people that work for the companies that supply nasa. But hey, whats a few thousand more unemployed.

 

[Draw 3D]

First, defense spending is quite a bit smaller, percentage wise, than most other US departments.

Second, the main role of government is to protect its populace and you do that with the military.

Third, I read recently the once the Space Shuttles are retired, over 25,000 tax-paying workers will be laid-off from private business.

Space projects produce a lot jobs and many new technologies.

The problem with most government budgets is that they got used to spending like crazy, that is spending tax-payers hard earned money, and when the reality of overspending hit them, first they try to raise more taxes, then they reduce what gives them the most political clout, law enforcement and emergency workers, so people like you who don't know the difference can rant.

 

[see h 3 N 0 TOO]

Well who is gonna put the satellites up? For our cable tv ,GPS ,DSL Ect..

 

[Rexfiles]

NASA Budget - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not quite the "money pit".

Sorry, as the article says, "space pays".

rex

 

[G'ginna]

Well who is gonna put the satellites up? For our cable tv ,GPS ,DSL Ect..

From what I understand... Private parties have to pony up and other countries are being paid as contractors to do the work.

 

[see h 3 N 0 TOO]

From what I understand... Private parties have to pony up and other countries are being paid as contractors to do the work.

Well how many jobs has that cost over the years? But thanks for the info i was thinking that is was something like that.

 

[wilbur]

Rex, thanks for the wikipedia link. Very interesting. I would have thought they spent more than that. These other posters all have valid thoughts. We needa way to put satts. up,and we need the tech. that they aquire. I,m just saying, you would think with all the brain power they have (p.h.d,s), being able to put a man on the moon(unless you think that was all a scam), how bout having them find a clean fuel for our vehicles. Imagine how many people we could feed if we cut thier budget by half for five or ten years. I guess what I,m getting at, is that our government has ways to cut back, without always doin it on the middle-class. It just bugs me, and I needed to get it off my chest. Lord knows their are other ways to save money. I just wish some of these 85 year old bureau-crats in wash. would give way to some newer, younger, brighter people. A new way of doing things. Again, just my opinion.

 

[90-percent]

The Military Industrial Complex eats up a hell of a lot of our national budget.

Remember when we were enjoying a "peace dividend" at the end of the cold war in the early 90's? That didn't last very long, did it?

America's military spending is greater than the rest of the world combined, and even with all that military spending, we were brought to our knees by Saudi's with box cutters on 9-11.

At least the world got to see Saddam at the end of a noose. I'm sure the families of our Iraq War Dead take great comfort in that.

For more about the MIC look up Eisenhower's farewell speech in 1961.

-jim

 

[G'ginna]

Rex, thanks for the wikipedia link. Very interesting. I would have thought they spent more than that. These other posters all have valid thoughts. We needa way to put satts. up,and we need the tech. that they aquire. I,m just saying, you would think with all the brain power they have (p.h.d,s), being able to put a man on the moon(unless you think that was all a scam), how bout having them find a clean fuel for our vehicles. Imagine how many people we could feed if we cut thier budget by half for five or ten years. I guess what I,m getting at, is that our government has ways to cut back, without always doin it on the middle-class. It just bugs me, and I needed to get it off my chest. Lord knows their are other ways to save money. I just wish some of these 85 year old bureau-crats in wash. would give way to some newer, younger, brighter people. A new way of doing things. Again, just my opinion.

At the risk of turning this in to something it wasn't intended, all the phd's in the world can't fix stupid and until the people passing laws get their greedy little fingers out of the pot the government will not cut back. N.A.S.A. is very tiny in comparison to one or two of the porky issues in the budget no one can read. While I believe you are on the right track in looking at government funded programs or parts of programs, I think I would personally choose to eliminate programs that aid illegal immigrants for a starting place.

 

[FC138fan]

Carl Sagan had a great answer to that question. I couldn't find the exact quote but I found a smilar one.

"We embarked on our journey to the stars with a question first framed in the childhood of our species and in each generation asked anew with undiminished wonder: What are the stars? Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still."

Nasa is the modern day equivalent of explorers of the past like Christopher Columbus. Today we've pretty much got the planet covered, today we must expand our horizon to outside the planet.

I don't know where the money is going, I'm sure there are alot of other places to cut before I'd cut Nasa. Everyone has their opinion though, and different people have different values so I can't say your opinion is wrong.

 

[wilbur]

Thanks for going easy on me guys and girls,I just wanted to put it out there, to see what everyone thought.I was going to talk about the military budget, I did,nt want to be called an un-american. We,ve got a pretty intelligent bunch of race fans here. This is where I go to sort out some of my thoughts. Thank god I can do that here. God bless the u.s.a.Mike.

 

[T.J.]

The money allocated to NASA is a very small drop in the bucket when you compare to all other agencies who are milking the system dry. My wife and I took our kids to Orlando last summer and spent an entire day at The Kennedy Space center doing several different tours and even got a behind the scenes tour from a family friend up near the pad while Discovery was ready to go. It is truly a must see visit if you are in Orlando. You really get a feeling of just how much the Space Program produces in the way of jobs directly and indirectly thru contractors and suppliers. The Astronauts are actually one of the smallest groups of employees at NASA.
Lets say "what if" for a moment...say the goverment was to do away with NASA...as much as we would like to see these other programs funded, they would most likely never see any extra funding from killing NASA.

 

[FC138fan]

While on the subject of the KSC - One of my goals in life was to see a launch, I was lucky enough to see one in 2007. I thought it would be the loudest thing I've ever heard / felt. Although it was awesome, the closest the general public can get is about 6.5 miles out. Considering the distance it was quite impressive--

although for the noise, you get much more bang for your buck at an NHRA event. (and you don't have to deal with the 3 hour traffic jam out of the complex)

YouTube - STS 124 Launch - May 31, 2008

 

[T.J.]

While on the subject of the KSC - One of my goals in life was to see a launch, I was lucky enough to see one in 2007. I thought it would be the loudest thing I've ever heard / felt. Although it was awesome, the closest the general public can get is about 6.5 miles out. Considering the distance it was quite impressive--

although for the noise, you get much more bang for your buck at an NHRA event. (and you don't have to deal with the 3 hour traffic jam out of the complex)

YouTube - STS 124 Launch - May 31, 2008

Nick, we planned our family vacation around the launch of Discovery last summer and of course, the date was pushed back exactly 3 days after we flew back home. We were going to watch from the press and employee viewing area which is at 3 miles away. We were dissapointed as it was probably our last opportunity to make it to a launch. Hopefully, NASA can get another vehicle into action soon.

Here is another video with some really good sound quality.
YouTube - Real Sound of Space Shuttle STS-117 Launch, 3 miles

 

[FC138fan]

Nick, we planned our family vacation around the launch of Discovery last summer and of course, the date was pushed back exactly 3 days after we flew back home. We were going to watch from the press and employee viewing area which is at 3 miles away. We were dissapointed as it was probably our last opportunity to make it to a launch. Hopefully, NASA can get another vehicle into action soon.

Here is another video with some really good sound quality.
YouTube - Real Sound of Space Shuttle STS-117 Launch, 3 miles

That would have been the memory of a life time! If I had tix to the press site (like you said 3 miles away) I would do whatever it takes to see that launch. That video you linked and many others from the press site are just so amazing. How did you get tix to the press site (they aren't on sale to the general public)?

We planned it so that we arrived the night before the launch so that if it got pushed back we would have a weeks worth of delays to see it. We were VERY fortunate that it launched on the first attempt no problems. It was such a pain to get on the bus in and out of there, and it was so hot that day, that if it would have gotten pushed back we wouldn't have gone back to KSC to see it.

The first time we tried to see a launch it was a Delta II rocket (The second rover to be launched to Mars). We waited at Jetty park in a crowd for about 10 hours into the evening drizzle before they finally scrubbed the launch. In fact, they scrubbed it 3 more times that week before they finally launched it a week after we were back home.

I am thankful that things worked out for us on that shuttle launch, I would have been bummed bigtime had I missed that one.

 

[Larry]

I would like to ask a question of my fellow maters.I have an idea. Would,nt it be great if we stopped, or severely cut back the space program. Then we could fund our police depts. thus maybe preventing our kids from being raped, and murdered, ( example , the girls in california). We could house our homeless. We could feed our starving. We could better educate our children.We could pay off some of the trillions in nat. debt. We could build new roads and bridges. I realize this probably won,t happen. But could you imagine a president with the balls, saying lets make a change, lets do this differently. They spend billions on rockets that explode two hundred feet off the ground. They have no clear cut mission. I,m not saying no good comes from n.a.s.a, I,m saying, lets cut it back for ten years, billions if not trillions saved. Put everyone on unemployement, tell them to live check to check. I know we could cut the defense budget, and I also know that won,t happen. Can you just imagine if a president, or other politiciens, said whoa there, heres how we can fix our country, or at least help fix it. God please, bring us a man or a woman who can think outside the box. Who does,nt bow to pressure. Or someone who can fix this mess, we call a government.And don,t tell me , to leave the country, if I don,t like it..I love my country. But I think It,s being driven into the ground by greedy, lazy, beurocrats. Theres my rant for the year.

Elect Republicans and we can have both !

 

[.]

Elect Republicans and we can have both !

We just wont pay for either. Problem solved.

 

[mick]

For more about the MIC look up Eisenhower's farewell speech in 1961. -jim

so true - he warned against exactly what has transpired.

and your comment about 'peace dividend' is right on too - don't think
this country of ours knows how to be militarily 'at ease'.

 

[Toejam]

If the American people saw exactly where all our Tax dollars go, they would throw out every person in Washington! From $200,000 for Ketchup studies, to congressional districts that don't even existing getting $1.5 Mil. in stimulus money! The Fraud is epidemic! There are a MILLION places our Government could save money! They just aren't held accountable by the public!