Does the exploration of space get chalked up to foreign or domestic spending?
Originally Posted by: DakotaT
I don't know. Where do you put Hillary's salary? That's where I'd put it.
There's foreign spending, domestic spending, and the biggest category, wasted spending. That's where I'd put 90% of it.
I used to be a big fan of government spending on space ("basic research," "where no man has gone before", "spinoffs," "because it is there", etc.)
I've always been a big space exploration/development guy: do you realize how little energy would be a problem if we didn't have to lift materials for solar power satellites into earth orbit, but could process and construct all of them using lunar/asteroidal materials?
But I'm convinced that government has screwed up space like it screws up anything else. What do we have to show for space spending since the early seventies? Some litter on the Moon for alien archaeologists to puzzle over in 10,000 years. Some pictures of Mars. A half-assed space station. And some international treaties that make it highly problematic that any serious private development will occur in the foreseeable future, Steven Bezos dreaming notwithstanding.
I'm still a space guy. But I'd give a big severance package to maybe 1/2 the Nasa tech types (since they have valuable skills; but none who have moved into "management" positions qualify), fund some space astronomy geeks to man telescopes and computers around the world, dissolve NASA as a lost cause, and eliminate everything else.
Dreams are important. Dream killers, and that's what NASA effectively has been despite its abysmal PR efforts to claim otherwise, pretty much since the Apollo program ended, deserve no funding.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)