NASA doesn't actually build any rockets anymore - it's all contracted out to various companies.
On the list of governemnt expenses... NASA is almost a rounding error ($18.4 billion in 2011, about 0.5% of the $3.4 trillion US budget). Perspective is important.
I feel like there's probably a "law" using a constant that states "As a project's ETA approaches T, the actual delivery date approaches infinity."
Where T is ~10 years.
And in response to the inevitable "safety" -- let's be honest, we're strapping humans to a giant bomb that hopefully explodes in a controlled way.
Astronauts are some of the bravest people in the world, but the end goal is to explore and colonize space.
The SLS is not about space. It's been referred to as the Senate Launch System for years now and that's very accurate. It started back in 2010 and still isn't going up anytime soon. For comparison the first time we sent anything into orbit (a probe) was 1958. The first time we put a man in orbit was 1961. In 1962 Kennedy would give his famous space speech. In 1968 we sent a man around the moon. In 1969 we put a man on the moon. Compare the timelines and it's simply pathetic.
But what the SLS does provide is an immense number of jobs, votes, and support for the congressmen that keep it funded.
The last chief of NASA, Charles Bolden, was the person you want on paper. A decorated and high ranking military officer who was an astronaut with a STEM education. What he was not was a political player, and I think NASA has suffered under him. The person that has replaced him is, at a glance, is the exact opposite of who you want. Jim Bridenstine is an MBA, career politician, and has no technical background whatsoever. But he does have a genuine interest in space which he has worked to support for years, and he is, for better or for worse, a political player.
And I have hopes and expectations that he will change the direction of NASA into the far more logical direction that you, and just about everybody, sees would be more productive. And I think we're already seeing this. Recently NASA released a scathing report against the SLS which said, without mincing many words, that they're not going anywhere anytime soon if they have to rely on the SLS. The lengthy report is here [1], here [2] is a random media report on it to give some sort of cliff notes. This is the sort of stuff that Bolden, for whatever reason, did not have the capability or will to push through. That report didn't say anything that everybody didn't already know, but actually stating those things was speaking what must not be spoken - and is now something that demands action.
[1] - https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-19-001.pdf
[2] - https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/278656-nasa-report-blame...
I believe this is why the EU has had problems - they're all on the same currency but countries are not permitted to print their own money and they don't have international money redistribution programs. In such an environment any country with a trade deficit will eventually suffer - see Greece.
I'm not advocating such pork distributions but I think they may actually serve a purpose other than getting votes. OTOH some places get pork that really don't need it even for the reasons I outlined above.
There are several mechanisms to move money [0], just the free movement of labor alone has transferred a lot of money from Germany further to eastern Europe for decades already.
I fail to see how military exports would be better than that, defense products are not "money", they serve no productive purpose at all in any country that's not at war.
It should also be noted that Germany is among the biggest weapons exporters on this planet [1] and quite a big chunk of Greece debt boiled down to liabilities for military hardware from other EU members [2].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_areas_in_Europe
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2017/02/10-cou...
[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/912...
In the US the people in rich parts of the country pay more in taxes to the federal government than they get back. This is a good thing, not a problem like many people state. It is not about building weapons for export, it is that the US government spends $600 billion on defense spending, moving resources from rich parts of the country to the poorer parts (to pay for government bases and defense contractors that build weapons for the US government). I agree that there are better ways to do this redistribution of wealth, but it is the only one that seems acceptable to the Republican party. Building infrastructure could be another, but it has not happened since the building of the interstate system ended in the 1980's.
The EU supra-national government (very similar to the US federal government over the US states) has a very small budget (€143 billion for the year 2014, from Wikipedia) and no real ability to raise large amounts of money from taxes it can impose. Varoufakis believes that until the EU has such a mechanism, having a common currency is going to continue to build up financial problems that are like to break up the union in a bad way.
Then, either the EU changed or I did or both, and my opinion changed. Trump definitely did his part to wake me up and see that BREXIT was less about the EU itself as I initially thought and more about populism and protectionism. Both are things I never liked. I still hope that BREXIT served as a overdue wake-up call for Brussels.
Now, I favor European integration and cooperation. I'm simply not sure where to draw the line yet. Defense politics and military cooperation are definetly over due and the EURO needs some kind of reform (no idea how exactly, but the last crisis showed the current system to be not stable enough).
Would I support a "United States of Europe"? Good question, maybe it's inevitable one day. The issue definetly will be that European nation states are much more different, culture, language, politics, history, than American states which share a common history starting with the first settlers. I for my part see the risk of loosing something.
Now that I think about it, that could be a reason for the rise of populist movements.
Thank you for making me think about all that!
If I build a missile factory in Baghdad, Mississippi that runs for 20 years then is closed won't the same problem persist as before the missile factory was created?
I think your point that free trade is the problem is fairly evident in this kind of problem, however, I am not sure that spending on things such as military producers or even national infrastructure is a long-term solution. In the end the project always ends, the product stops being produced, and times change.
Is this just delaying the eventual wealth-death of a town/state or does this lead to a self-sufficient system?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Regional_Development_...:
”The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) is a fund allocated by the European Union. Its purpose is to transfer money from richer regions (not countries), and invest it in the infrastructure and services of underdeveloped regions”
https://www.welcomeurope.com/european-funds/erdf-1-european-...:
”Global budget: 183,3 billion euro (2014-2020)”
That’s 30-ish billion euro a year.
Lack of EU-wide social security payments may be a problem, though.
For comparison, the USA has a federal budget of about $4 trillion.
The problem is that “the EU” doesn’t have an economy, and still is mostly built from individual economies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Spencer#Career
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven#Commercial_avai...
Also, "bureaucratically neutered" is an odd phrase. It's the government, so of course there is oversight and politics at an agency level. But OTOH, the agency's record at not interfering with discrete science findings is actually very good.
What point are you trying to make? [Disclosure, I have published research while funded by NASA.]
I can't say I understand how that's criticizing from both directions. The research is underfunded, and as you noted more funds generally increases the speed of the research. There are layers of bureaucracy, which naturally slows down the rate of research due to waiting on various aspects of the research to get reviewed and deemed useful to the agency. How is that attacking it from two sides?
And your take on what I mean by "bureaucratically neutered" is fairly accurate, but I stand by it. I am referring to having non technical bureaucrats in the agency calling shots about research they may not understand based on non-related pressures (pork funds drying up due to political shifts, undesirable media exposure for research with uncomfortable results, sudden change in leadership that may not think the research is necessary after all, etc).
All this said, I have indeed never been involved with the agency so you might have a better perspective on the matter than I.
Also, I'd think at JPL you guys would have a bit easier time getting funding/latitude to do the research you do vs a lower profile lab, given JPL's track record.
Edited to reflect my opinion of reality...
If you look at how the individual subsystems and subcontractors for the F-35 program were spread around various states and congressional districts, creating jobs in various places, they intentionally designed it to be unkillable.