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melling

Perhaps we’ll get another Space Race with China. At a point, the United States was spending over 4% its budget on NASA:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/feb/01/nasa-b...

The money would probably be better spent on several projects (e.g. AI, hypersonic flight).

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His useful hypersonic flight may be?

With air being so dense and power-dissipating, it might be more economical to do a sub-orbital jump than to push through the atmosphere at 7M. For short-range military applications, iirc, hypersonic rockets exist.

All current military hypersonic (Mach 5+) weapons are ballistic missiles. No one has demonstrated sustained hypersonic flight through the atmosphere but that's probably coming in a few years.

Really useful.

You've gotta consider how much things change as you get higher into the atmosphere. The obvious thing is that atmospheric oxygen begins to become insufficient to operate engines as you go higher up, so you need engines that use a different oxidizer than atmospheric oxygen which is extremely complex. And even the efficiency and characteristic of engine exhaust changes radically depending on atmospheric density and the characteristics of its exhaust. In other words an engine that works great at sea level might work awfully when you start to get to a fraction of the same pressure.

There's an immense amount of flexibility in being able to travel hypersonic. The SR-71 Blackbird is an amazing example of the potential. First flown back in 1964 (!!) it was capable of hitting around mach 3, some 2200 miles per hour. That's 6 hours to get from one side of the Earth to the other. It's really quite remarkable how much our overall transportation technology seems to have stagnated since the 60s. I'd like to imagine everything is just classified but everything from the SLS to the F-35 to even things like the Zumwalt just seems to indicate that we've simply technology regressed. Kind of disconcerting to imagine the reasons for that.

NASA does a lot of work on hypersonic flight. Lots of sources to link to, here's an article from a few years ago:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/meet-nasas-new-x-pla...

That’s Nasa’s quiet supersonic project.

Hypersonic is five or six times the speed of sound.

It would of course be nice to have both.

I'd rather see them spending it on NASA than on the military.

Ironically, these were mostly the same thing during the space race. I watched a USAF training video on re-entry mechanics[0] a while back that really drives this home in an almost dizzying context switch. It goes from the mechanics of delivering a thermonuclear payload in one sentence, to returning humans to earth in the next.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_bkY7-9c8s

There is no way a space race like the one during the Cold War can appear again. Nonetheless the term space race is often used by the media just because it sounds more dramatic.

It doesn’t have to be the same type. This time the military could be involved. Its budget is approaching NASA’s.

https://spacenews.com/some-fresh-tidbits-on-the-u-s-military...

The Trump Administration wants a Space Force, for example:

https://www.space.com/40942-trump-space-force-reopens-milita...

we used to invest $3 into infrastructure and science for every $1 in entitlements spending. Now we spend $5 in entitlements for every $1 in infrastructure/science

And people wonder why the US is falling apart and technological advances have slowed down.

We're living hand to mouth instead of investing in the future. The sad thing is that many of our problems could be solved permanently via technology rather than government.

Instead of creating the automobile people are trying to make horses faster

Have technology advances slowed down? Or are we just not advancing in the big, exciting really of "blowing shit up"?

It feels like we slowed down in the important areas. Software? Web Apps? We're doing great. Anything space related? Eh. In theory we get to claim SpaceX so I guess that counts but most people couldnt tell you what NASA's been up to recently...

Yeah it is slown https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601199/tech-slowdown-thre... 50s was peak.

There was that landing on Mars two weeks ago...

We are now advancing mostly in the ability to manipulate, exploit and make miserable almost everyone, via adtech.

That's an inevitable result of devoting the efforts of so many of our brightest to attracting eyeballs.

The US is wasting trillions fighting wars in other countries.

China is wasting trillions building infrastructure in other countries.

Wasting money on infrastructure is better than wasting on wars. The government of the U.S. need to learn better.

The problem with war is that no matter which side wins, both side will always in some way hate each other (Once war started, it will never end).

While even in the worse scenario, locals can still benefit from the infrastructure. Booming strategy is something Chinese people play very well.

nice and vague

abolish government, libertarian paradise, ???, solve problems

I wouldn't say "vague". He cited the differential in dollar amounts and drew a conclusion from the data presented. That sounds specific to me. I think you may have overreacted to his point. You should have debated the merits and demerits of welfare spending versus R&D investment. Instead you accused him of something he never advocated for.

And people wonder why the US is falling apart and technological advances have slowed down.

I don't think anyone wonders why it's happening. They just feel powerless to change anything.

Would we fund it even then?

I would expect some nationalistic fervor that would help fund a space race would come from US conservatives.

But in the US the "conservative" side of politics seems more interested in short term tax cuts for corporations, dismantling government, and hating on immigrants, and other Americans...

I have my doubts the US would step up.

Accepting your blatant mischaracterization of conservative US politics as true for a moment, I think given the choice between "othering" folks in the US or a country on the other side of the world that most people know nothing about, politicians of any stripe would prefer the latter.

"I think given the choice between "othering" folks in the US or a country on the other side of the world that most people know nothing about, politicians of any stripe would prefer the latter."

I don't know what you're trying to say.

Show me reigning US conservatives who aren't espousing those ideals cited. Go on, I'll wait. Even the libertarian puritans like rand paul have fallen in line with the socially and economically regressive republican platform of today.

The only ones willing to stand up to the hypocrisy of Trump and actually represent conservatism have been sidelined consistently.

The tech gap is too big, despite media hype, don't think China can even catch up.

So, you’re saying the world’s second largest economy, soon to be the first, can’t catch up in 10-20 years?

The US only spends $20 billion a year on NASA.

You can land on the moon with 60s technology, what basis is there for not being able to reach that?

In space flight some of the most advanced technology even to this day was developed in the 60's and 70's. Things like NERVA[1], the NK-33[2], and the Saturn V[3], were developed back then and are still more efficient or bigger then similar technology we have today. The 60's and 70's were the golden age of spaceflight.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V

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