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Comment by palmotea | Hacker News Reader

Which just shows that DOGE is a lie, and not about government "efficiency" or cost savings. NASA is arguably a giant waste of taxpayer dollars. Very little of its activity tangibly benefits the vast majority of Americans, and much of what it does do could easily be replaced with a generative AI model that produces new space pictures for desktop backgrounds. The entire space exploration and manned spaceflight activities could be cut, and no one would notice.

But Musk sells rockets, so it's not waste. QED.

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> much of what it does do could easily be replaced with a generative AI model that produces new space pictures for desktop backgrounds.

Ok, you're obviously trolling here. This is clearly bait. But for anyone else reading this:

NASA's budget for 2023 was roughly $25 billion [0]

For the same year, NASA generated (again, roughly) $76 billion in economic output [1].

Every dollar of funding goes back into the economy three-fold. Doesn't really seem like a waste to me.

Also, NASA's operations in 2023 created/supported over 300,000 jobs to Americans[2]. Again, doesn't seem like a waste to me.

[0] - https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/fiscal-year-...

[1] - https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/final-fy23-n...

[2] - https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/nasa-fy23-ec...

> Ok, you're obviously trolling here. This is clearly bait. But for anyone else reading this:

Only a little. The point is "waste" and "efficiency" are so subjective to be a near meaningless concepts. You could make the same points you did about many of the things Musk wants to cut, but they're not going to resonate to a tech audience like cutting NASA does. It's basically a temple of geek religion.

> NASA's budget for 2023 was roughly $25 billion [0]

That money could fund a lot of housing assistance or healthcare.

Personally, I think the things that "engineers" like should be cut first instead of being protected.

Right, that's how generative AI is gonna be solving all humanity problems - with desktop backgrounds.

You wrapped propaganda that NASA is useless nicely with a rant about DOGE and conflicts of interest.

NASA is not useless. Just look up how many innovations literally came from the ISS. And that is just one part of it.

You don’t know much about NASA.

Yeah, it’s also really a drag about how we have technology for crossing oceans and flying through the air. Imagine the savings we could have diverted to the rich if only we hadn’t squandered all of those resources learning how to do that useless stuff. After all, humans were just fine for millions of years before ships and airplanes.

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