I like the old school dogma underlying the whole thing. Russia is bad, private enterprise is good, the US wants to put weapons in space, and Michael Jackson is rocking the world with Thriller.
Also, this paranoid stance is mildly worrying, because the US is the most weaponized country in the world, and one of the least shy country to use its arsenal, so if it also get a paranoid stance "all the world hate us", then we're all doomed.
There is no NATO country, other than the US, with a manned space program. We don't live in a universe where the ESA's Hermes spacecraft worked out.
I believe the Ariane 5 was supposed to be man-rated when Hermes was on the table, but going from that to a usable launch vehicle is a lot of time, money, and engineering work we could spend on our own system(s). I have no idea if its possible to retro-fit man-rated safety onto the existing Ariane design.
So 5 years out to Orion/SLS and Dragon/SpaceX or 5 years out to some beat up and already badly aging ESA manned system the American tax payer would be on the hook for, and a system that could never leave LEO. The SLS is designed for non-LEO manned missions like the moon, nearby asteroids, and in its highest configuration - Mars.
Lastly, the ESA was welcome to bid in NASA's COTS program, but decided not to. Maybe take up your beef with them. I imagine they aren't remotely cost competitive.
Considering Putin is playing politics with space, namely limiting critical RD-180 sales after the west criticized his illegal annexation of parts of Ukraine, as well as funding and arming rebels who are purposely targeting civilians, well, what exactly do you want us to say here? Engage in more mindless political correctness? Sing kumbaya around the campfire as to not offend Russiophile HN'ers?
Putin's Russia is bad. They're dishonest partners and the US should keep its space policy under its national borders for sanity reasons. Look at the early retirement of the ISS. Russia is taking its modules and leaving the project in a few years, again as punishing the west for criticizing their illegal annexations. Previous to this the ISS was thought to be a project with a decade or two of service left.
Also, Putin's mismanagement of his economy means he just cut the Russian space program by a third and what's left is good at flying Soviet-era Soyuz and building Soviet era RD-180's but can't keep post-Soviet Proton-M's from exploding. From a practical stand-point, ignoring everything else, we simply don't need or want their tech now that the RD-180 based rockets are being made redundant/replaced and Orion/Dragon flying astronauts in the next 3 or so years.
We are bringing back the world into the 20st century, this will be a big problem.
I don't see a problem with this.
>overthrow governments
The middle east is migrating to democracy and has the least amount of dictators in charge in my lifetime, thanks to US foreign policy. While I think foriegn policy is hard to judge, annexing land Russia-style for "fuck you" reasons is very different than overthrowing dictators murdering their people and those people begging for US/NATO/UN intervention, which we sometimes provide. The world tried non-interventionism and it got us WWII. Better the US/NATO making these calls than autocratic powers with annexation agendas like China or Russia.
My idea in the initial post was to have people think about one point of view about this deal. In particular because it seem people are mostly from the left here, but there is a real Reaganian aspect to the move.
How's that democracy working out in Libya and Syria?
Many (probably pretty much everyone actually familiar with the situation) would argue that things were better under those dictators.
How was India immediately after its colonial rule? Or South Korea after the war?
Its incredible how people conveniently forget how long transition periods are for societies that were previous non-democratic to a democratic one. Ten to fifteen years from now it will be a very different picture. Migrating to a democratic capatalistic economy is an incredible thing. GDP comparision between North and South Korea below:
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/default/files/image...
It was rough for the South Koreans until the 1970s then its been all gravy. They went from war ravage rural wasteland to the most envious economy in about 20 years.
Go read Obama's Cairo speech, do impassioned, if only he believed in his own words.
No, instead we watched a people overthrow a corrupt regime, establish a democracy, and then continued to fund the mitary junta and ignore the country as it becamenobce more a dictatorship which just recently sentenced its former president to death.
Egypt, neighbor to Israel, and the largest secular middle Eastern country by population is too important to the supposed US political interest to allow democracy, especially if that democracy doesn't agree with our policies. It is entirely morally bankrupt, anyone who defends such policy is a warmonger.
US/Western policy in the region can hardly be described as pro-democracy. We've been propping up dictators and overthrowing democratically elected regimes from Iran in 1953 to Egypt in 2013.
Get off your myopic high horse, both the US and Russia are imperial empires bathed in blood.
The same is true for Russia, if Russian-Canadian relations are tense that's not as nearly important as whether its neighbor Ukraine is bombing civilians on its border.
America is not exceptional, your argument requires we treat America and Russia with different moral thresholds, that's insane.
You're on an American site, on the American made internet, using American root DNS, using American made TCP/IP, using an American OS, writing in American English, and on a site about American entrepreneurship in the American silicon valley/tech industry discussing America's space program, which is the envy of the world.
There's a reason we're not all talking on some Chinese or Russian site.
How nationalistic do you have to be to believe there aren't Russian or Chinese tech forums?
America had an amazing run 1950-2000, comparable or even superior to the miraculous breakthroughs which happened in Germany from 1900-1945, that didn't make Germany above reproach, in fact it confused the moral with the technical, which you are doing right now.
Fascist.
The deposed former president of Ukraine, who happened to be close to Russia, had been democratically elected - his removal most certainly wasn't democratic by any stretch of the imagination. You can tell infer the US's political attitudes if you parse the language of US media / politicians at the time. If they are "protesters" rather than "rioters" or "insurrectionists" - they are friends. I perfectly understand that it furthers US interest to pull out Ukraine from Russia's sphere of influence.
Just my $0.02, as an outsider.
Putin's Russia is bad.
Under communism everyone knew the system was a failure and everything was a sham, hell the jokes being made were hilarious.
Now on the other hand in last few years everything in Russia under Tsar Putin went full retard mode with people actually believing the unashamed propaganda that the state controlled media puts out. Many Russians do not speak anything but Russian and can not afford to leave the country to get a look from outside the box in, this means they buy into the nationalistic bullshit being doled out on tv. People there now actually believe the evil Western boogeyman is out to get them. Which in itself is incredibly scary. Talking to some of my relatives I know understand how some Germans must have felt in the 30s in run up to WW2.
In the 80s the KGB was kept out of politics for most part and the Russian military was there to keep in check any ambitions they had. Now the State was taken over by a mix of KGB / criminal mafia elements and the military had its balls cut off.
Nationalism and borderline fascism is the order of the day 70 years after the war. My grandfather must be spinning in his grave.
If you follow the developments of Russian WW2 themed motion pictures you'll notice the corresponding shift. Nearly every movie now features an NKVD or covert ops protagonist. Action TV series are also largely about cloak and dagger types.
People believe the unashamed media propaganda, few speak anything besides English, many can't afford to leave, people believe the evil east is out to get them. In the 80s the NSA kept out of politics for most part... But now the state is taken over by a miz of NSA and criminal corporate-military-financial entities.
Nationalism and borderline Fascism is the order of the day. We've been at continuous war for over 14 years.
* Russia aggressively annexing its neighbors? Hey look over there at the US and Middle East
* Russia curbing various freedoms and opposition? Sure the US is a 2 party system where there is no hope for change.
* Putin gaining complete control of the media? Sure in the US the media is all run by same companies.
And so on, the best lies are those sprinkled with a small grain of truth as the saying goes...
Now this comment depresses me. Why not compare the us patriot act or civil forfeiture, or the wide spread illegal 4th amendment breaking mass surveillance program a whistle blower had to reveal (who incidentally lives in Russia now).
Then you use the phrase hope and change, is that satire, a man became president lying with that platform slogan.
How about including torture, indefinite imprisonment without trial, or kill lists to show how the US also has erroded civil liberties?
How much more comic book evil does the American empire need to become before people stop defending it with 'Russia and China are worse', maybe they are, but its a sad pissing match to ask if Mao or Hilter was the worst 20th dictator, both men caused tremendous amounts of Human misery.
Why do people want to defend a military that has killed hundreds if thousands of civilians? How morally bankrupt are the techies of hacker news.
Can you really imagine USA invading Mexico to extend its area of influence?
Facebook is filled with anti-US and anti-western arguments. VKontakte is filled with love for Putin. Apples to apples here...
My point is they are both so bad that saying one is really really bad is like Dante discussing why the third circle of Hell isn't as bad as the fourth. Pointless academic nonsense, except the jingoistic RaRa America nonsense is killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.
There are superficial similarities. But any investigation shows real difference.
Maybe that is just the world we live in, at least except it and stop trying to glorify the killing of women and children for profit.
This phrase shows a simplified few events and organizations as they actually are. The rest of your post shows a fanatical viewpoint lacking in critical thought.
I will agree with you insofar as not everything is ideal with our military spending, the amount of spending and there is some corruption in military spending.
But the government and military must buy goods, this cannot always be fascism. There exists procedures and regulations that attempt limit corruption and to level the playing field for smaller companies. These rules are exactly what SpaceX used to get its foot the door. These rules require certain levels of "quality" and meeting certain requirements, this in effect rules out many of the smallest startups which contributes to why it is so easy for us to feel like outsiders. The smallest company I have seen provide military goods was 12 people, but most require at least 100.
The military also has other functions than "killing of women and children for profit", and claiming that this is one of their goals without evidence strikes me as fanatical. A military that wastes resources on things other than valid enemy targets is wasteful, we have defeated too many foreign powers to be that kind of wasteful.
I think our current military is built more along the lines of "kill the enemy and break his things". It is sad but sometimes innocent people are near the enemy or his things. It is also sad that we try to use our very effective "breaking" organization to occupy or police despite it not being well equipped for such.
What do you call 14 years of war in multiple theaters resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths? It that not fanatical? You should reassess your heart, you're in need of a new one.
My source if wikipedia, here is one of several examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak
They do however keep these documents classified. I think this impairs oversight and all casualty reporting should be public.
As for the military being fanatical, I do not understand you point. The military did exactly what the publicly elected executive, the President, told them to do.
If you were able to speak objectively you should be destroying anyone taking my stance. You just keep shouting out things that are simple to demonstrate as wrong.
Our current violent streak is 15 and not 14 years long. If you can't get such basic facts straight how can you expect to convince others you are worth listening too?
As for the years of war, you should review history. As a country we have had 21 years of peace in the past 240 or so and our current run is in its 15th year. We have been a warring nation for a long time. This country is obsessed with violence, so we elect violent politicians.
It should be trivially easy to make a moral argument that obliterates anyone siding with the military particularly in discussion place like this. You can't make that simple argument because you speak without fact and with fanatical emotion. Let your emotion guide you, but be rooted in fact.
I cannot continue this discussion because arguing with someone so baseless lowers my credibility. This will be my last post in this debate thread.
If the current war began 2001-9-11 that would be 14 years not 15. You are wrong.
Classified documents are meaningless, I have a classified document that is proof I am God. See, how stupid you sound?
If you believe American is beholden to democratic concerns you are either a troll or hopelessly naïve.
Anyone who isn't upset that they live in a country which repeatedly kills civilians without cause is a monster.
That's what militaries are for. Once you deviate from that core idea you end up with an expensive boondoggle that can't win battles.
Even Henry Kissinger believes their fears to be well-founded.
Nationalism > Communism
Solidarity with the working man is nothing compared to the integrity of the Russian nation and her borders.
Nationalism and borderline fascism is the order of the day 70 years after the war. My grandfather must be spinning in his grave.
The core of the "Great Patriotic War" was nationalism. No one really fights for an idea. Everyone starts fighting to protect their home, and keeps fighting for the sake of their brothers in arms.