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How do you guys feel about NASA and how does Ron Paul feel about it.
Submitted by galeninjapan on Wed, 10/31/2007 - 17:39
Im guess he says that space exploration should be a private venture? » |
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no constitutional right
Because the US is in debt, I would recommend that we quit, hopefully selling assets to the highest bidder.
The US government does not have the constitutional right to attempt extra-terrestial research.
NASA: $30,000,000 Tonka truck stuck on a Martian dirtclod
Brilliant minds comfortably wasting their existence in a government bureaucracy, tsk, tsk. They should be smacked away from the government teat and cast adrift into the cold maelstrom of the free market.
Kill NASA and it will spawn technological expansion through startups in the private sector.
Dave
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty" TJ
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty" TJ
NASA Federal Employees vs Budget
Remember what the last A in NASA stands for Administration. Most of the money does go to private contractors that do a service for the government. There are NASA employees but they mostly are there to write and keep an eye on the contractors. For example at Kennedy Space Center there are over 15,000 employees of which maybe 3,000 - 4000 are NASA. The United Space Alliance actually launches the Shuttle. But remember that it is a government agency so it wastes tons of money.
But back to the overal question about what should be done with NASA. Why not sell it to the Discovery Channel or National Geographic, ect. There are many private entertainment industries that make money selling science to the public. They could also sell off lottery tickets for shuttle rides. There are many ways a free society could fund the $15 Billion NASA budget.
NASA has been moving toward privitization for some time.
Due to insufficient funding for their projects they've been contracting out more and more of the work which is done. This has done two main things:
1. Allowed free market competition to make things more efficient and less costly.
2. Provided companies that are or want to be involved in the aerospace industry reliable business.
That being said, there are plenty of highly secretive projects which are also conducted which could be trusted to private firms, but probably never would be. The fact is that as long as there is a vested national security and intelligence factor involved in the industry, there will always be a need for a government agency to be involved. I'm not saying it couldn't be sized down through smart privatization, I'm just saying it will probably continue to exist.
For the record, I love NASA for the amount of pure research it does.
NASA vs. the Department of Education
NASA does a mixture of things, some good, some bad.
The manned space program is popular with the public but it is from both a practical and a scientific point of view the least valuable thing that NASA does. And it's horrendously expensive. Going to Mars would make the Iraq war look cheap. Let some country with a budget surplus pull a stunt like that.
The space probes and Mars rovers do good science, although like all space science it's expensive. Your mileage may vary, but I can think of a long list of worse things that the government does with my money.
Finally, NASA provides launch services to various intelligence and defense agencies. The spooks have to get their satellites up somehow. Maybe private industry can take that over eventually, but right now their rockets blow up too frequently.
I was surprised when I looked up the various expenses in the federal budget to find that the Department of Education is much more costly than NASA -- by a factor of over 3. NASA brings back cool pictures of Mars. What does the Dept. of Education do? Mainly, it hands money back to states and local school districts. It would make far more sense to let the states and towns keep more of their money in the first place.
Sell it
sell the whole agency to the highest bidder. i am sure some defense or aerospace company would pay for it. if they can't come to good enough terms, then do an IPO. Take the $50,000,000,000 and pay down some debt.
(they could do the same thing with the billions of acres of land the fed owns)
What NASA didn't invent
Interesting (and short!) article linked on lewrockwell this morning:
http://www.mises.org/story/2434
ignore
Woops. Double post.
The Apollo missions passed
The Apollo missions passed through the Van Allen Belts in less than an hour. When the space shuttle or space station drifts too high while still in low earth orbit, it means prolonged exposure. That's the difference. Like I said, go look through some of the Bad Astronomer's debunking stuff. There's not a single conspiracy theory claim that doesn't have a perfectly rational, valid, scientifically accepted explanation.
As for the "flashes"- they were reported by Apollo astronauts, too. Though they have nothing to do with the Van Allen Belts nor do they only occur in the Van Allen Belts. They're caused by harmless non-ionizing cosmic radiation, specifically a form of high energy particle with what's called a "high Z". There was some nonsense TV show on a year or so ago that made a big deal of it (though they were trying to make Apollo 11 seem a lot more dangerous than it really was, not advocating any conspiracy theory), despite the fact that it was known at the time that it was a perfectly harmless phenomenon.
less than an hour through
less than an hour through radiation so strong, it overloads geiger counters.
NASA is a government agency
NASA is a government agency which has close ties to the military. It has accomplished wonderful things but we the people can do much better in the private sector.
If there was no NASA there would be a vacuum filled by responsible adults. Free adults.
The military may well have reason to keep NASA alive and pay for it out of their own budget. NASA should not have access to direct federal funding, it can be funded by the military's portion according to the military's estimation of NASA's military value.
_______________________________
..Without the truth we have nothing
Definitely a military project
A Canadian friend of mine has worked for NASA for the past six years. He was in Houston first and now LA. You know what this guy who specializes in nano-technology has been doing for the PAST THREE YEARS? Making a cappucino machine for the Mars Rover. He says research in his field of expertise is backwards, anyway. I wish I could post his emails.
The Democrats have actually voted against alot of funding that would have benefited NASA. The Supercollider was scrapped by Pelosi, and that cost us 10,000 jobs that were outsourced. The war? That's your military budget. NASA is rife with nepotism, too. It would definitely fare better in the private sector.
Canada Loves Ron Paul
Canada Loves Ron Paul
NASA and Innovation
I used to buy that propaganda too, that without NASA we wouldn't have teflon or Tang. Go to www.LewRockwell.com and search NASA. You will find loads of articles that debunk that myth. Also think about the moral aspects of the redistribution of wealth. Is it right to use the force of government to confiscate other people's money to support a program you think is "neat"?
www.TuNeCedeMalis.com
www.Sitefind.org
I think NASA is great
While I agree that usually the private sector is more efficient than government programs, the private sector is generally profit motivated. Unless they find a bunch of potential customers on Mars somewhere, you're not going to see much investment into space exploration (and the study of) besides individuals and organizations with a lot of cash who are genuinely interested in it.
What you could do though is keep it government funded, but outsource a lot of the activities to competing companies. This might be how it is already though, I'm not sure.
But for the most part, investors invest because they seek a return on their investment. There is no monetary return on investment when you invest in space. It's money thrown to a cause without any expectation of getting it back.
MORE space exploration without government involvement
I recall reading many, many years ago about a Congressman representing a Houston district benefiting heavily from NASA funding, and he voted AGAINST spending for NASA. Clearly, that guy had no future politically. ;)
Many people are interested in space exploration, and the genius of the free market is that people find a way to do something without coercion once we close off the coercion option. In the early part of the 1900s, when radio communication was invented, nobody thought private radio stations were possible, since there was no way to keep the signal from going to everyone. In Britain, they formed a government organization financed by taxpayers (the BBC). In the US, government didn't do such things at the time, and the market figured out something we now all take for granted: advertising.
Having government money go to private companies to do it is Blackwater and Haliburton and Diebold and Mafia-owned garbage collection companies with exclusive city contracts. And NASA. As long as it is funded by coercion, it will inefficent, go to politically connected companies and special interests, and be limited to the knowledge of government officials in charge of choosing private contractors instead of the multiple sources of inspiration and choice in a free market
The market is not all profit-oriented: what is the return on investment when you give your money to a charity? For that matter, why am I giving money to a campaign whose benefits will be allocated among the whole country (and world), when the reality is that Dr. Paul's chances are virtually identical even if I don't personally contribute? Because I care about my fellow man.
People are not all the selfish monsters we are portrayed to be, and don't do cost-benefit calculations before tipping a cabbie we'll never see again, responding to a Red Cross appeal after a natural disaster, or giving to a candidate whose message will benefit the entire world and who would never give us a special government favor in exchange for our money. We actually do care about others, and one of the worst things government does is diminish the natural fellowship and love that every newborn baby begins life with.
As for how to pay:
(1) Advertising
(2) Selling books and memorabilia related to exploration
(3) Vanity space flights for the rich as an alternative to cocaine and sports franchises
(4) Listen in on mission communications for a fee
(5) A thousand ideas from a handful of the 300 million people in this country, some of which will be tried and fail, and a few which will turn out to be brilliant.
Thanks
Your post was informative.
Investments on space
I think space exploration should be a private venture and would hope federal funding is eliminated, there are many people who would invest in it I think. As mentioned earlier, millionaires would want to experience it, along with the possible mineral resources in the future. Technology will advance to the point where mining asteroids and the moon with robots will be a realistic proposition. Imagine the possible profits that the enterprising soul would turn with this!
http://www.jbs.org/
http://www.jbs.org/
I am a space enthusiast and Ron Paul supporter.
My gut instinct is to cling to NASA with all my strength. The space program has done more for the people of the United States than anything else in the history of the country. (save the bill of rights, perhaps)
However, I will recognize that a program like NASA is not particularly constitutional. One note: The framers of our constitution didn't anticipate space exploration as far as I know - but exploration has been a HUGE part of our nation since its beginning. (Think Lewis and Clark)
Anyway, it is time for private enterprise to take over space exploration and bring down the cost. I believe it is the remaining responsibility of NASA to see that this happens, through the institution of prizes (think X-Prize). Instead of being actively involved in the process of space exploration, it can sit back and pay out as science and technology progresses rather than hemorrhaging money through its internal bureaucracy like every government program. The jump-start money would allow private companies to R&D technology to lower the overall cost of space travel, and the industry would be able to develop rapidly by itself. When NASA is finally obsolete, it can be retired.
The NASA budget (which is often inflated by detractors as being enough to "fix education" "cure cancer" etc.) is actually only .5% of the national budget. $15 billion. I don't see the need for a decrease, but I also don't see the need for an increase.
I want to be an astronaut.
true
He has a point. Our government has always encouraged exploration, but it has often been individuals who have made the biggest leaps in discovery.
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson, 1791
regarding NASA / Google X-Prize
Just a Thought---If Ron Paul were to express a view about how the Google / X-Prize demonstrates the capacity of the free-market to take over rolls previously filled by NASA, he would probably get the support of some extremely high profile technologists and business people.
For almost all government organizations, de-federalization will take a number of years of decreasing expenditure since our government has numerous employment and pension obligations for employees that still need to be funded.
SpaceShipOne, GovernmentZero
SpaceShipOne was the first private venture that won the Ansari X-Prize for putting private astronauts into space.
I believe they did so on a budget of 24 million funded by Paul Allen. After the demonstration... not unlike the Wright brothers' demonstration, Richard Branson of announced Virgin Galactic venture where private citizens put people into space for a fee.
The SpaceShipOne project proved to me that we don't need government to get people into space. And we can do it with people taking acceptable risk on a shoe-string budget.
PeterSchiffSays.COM
And they did that how?
The technology required for SpaceshipOne - like NO2-HTBP hybrid rocket engines - was developed years and years ago by government money. The preliminary successes of private industry in this area are a direct result of public investment in technology (mostly military technology). And for those of you that follow Bigelow (the company that plans on putting inflatable hotels in orbit and has already tested two smaller versions), the inflatable technology that underlies their concept was created by NASA.
path functions
It is hard to say that in the absence of NASA would mean that we'd be without NO2-HTBP hybrid technology.
My high school buddy worked at the NIH..."What would medical progress look like if unencumbered by resource limitation?"
They wasted so much... open a bottle of reagent just to use 1 mL, throw the rest away.
Thow away pipettes because they weren't calibrated and reordered new ones.
Hard to say that a free-market alternative wouldn't have produced the same result in the same rough time-frame.
PeterSchiffSays.COM
Some important benefits from NASA
Although we tend to think of NASA as space exploration, much of their work has been the exploration of Earth and, importantly, the Sun. The only way to get anything into orbit above the Earth is to use rockets. NASA's primary business is rockets. So, if you want satellites that monitor what is happening on Earth's surface and/or atmosphere you need something akin to NASA. The pricetag, compared to what we give away in foreign aid and spend on weapons is fairly small. So, my vote would be to keep NASA but eliminate all the programs that don't directly affect life on Earth.
h-daddy
Tenth Amendment. All the
Tenth Amendment. All the supposed benefits (which are more emotional than material) are meaningless if they're gained in violation of the Constitution.
NASA's not that big of a deal
First of all, NASA's budget is one half of one percent of the federal budget. Second, there is absolutely nothing defense related about it. The Armed Forces and intelligence agencies contract from Boeing and Lockheed Martin to launch their satellites, which all comes out of the DOD budget. NASA performs the function of managing basic research of the universe, solar system and our planet as well (there's a reason we know something about global warming, and it's not because it's in some private corporate interest).
But as others have said, if Ron wants to get rid of NASA, I still support him whole heartedly, but I don't think it's on his hit list since it is such a small part of the budget and is a source of national pride for some.
Watch this movie.....
.....and you will hate NASA:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1138935117048624484
I dare you to watch it :-)
Poke around at the Bad
Poke around at the Bad Astronomy website (his actual website, not his blog). He demolishes every point the conspiracy nuts raise about the moon landings.
Skepticism- it's not just for the government.
Geiger counters overload
Geiger counters overload when in the Van Allen Radiation belts. In 1958, they put lead sheilding around Explorer 4's geiger counter so they could estimate the level of radiation in the belts.
The only manned missions to ever go past the Van Allen Radiation Belts were the Apollo missions. This is not taught in any public school.
All space missions stay well below the Radiation Belts. When the space shuttle gets too high, the astronauts report seeing spots and shooting stars with their eyes closed.
There are no stars in any lunar footage.
The same mountain range is photographed in two separate Apollo missions.
Crosshairs etched into the camera lense sometimes appear BEHIND objects.
Explanation for why we haven't been to the moon in 35 years: It is not possible to survive several hours through the Van Allen Radiation Belts without a tremendous amount of radiation sheilding. To save money and meet JFK's goal, they faked every single lunar mission.
Fruitcakes like you drive me nuts!
"There are no stars in any lunar footage."
Shesh, this is so ridiculous -- get real and get a life! STARS DON'T SHOW UP ON PHOTOGRAPHS FROM ISS EITHER! Do a simple search for the International Space Station: images with space in the background do not show stars either...they are not nearly bright enough to overcome earthshine, lunar reflections, or of course the sun. Do you think ISS doesn't exist?
Crosshairs bled through some backgrounds...oh please..this is such a PATHETIC waste of time.
I AM A MEMBER OF THE ILLUMINATI.
And you're a genius on the Van Allen belts, aren't you?
This dreamcrushing nonsense is embarrassing. We went to the moon. We will return to the moon. We will live on it, utilize it, and move much much further on.I just hope you are still around to get a real life then.
Space is not a big deal. The amount of money actually going to NASA is a fraction of one percent of the Federal Budget...why would a monumental conspiracy be created to LAUNCH SUCCESSFULLY an entire line of rockets (none of the Saturns blew up on the launch pad). They apparently made it into space. So conspirators built and launched successfully these expensive vehicles, and then created a much more enormously expensive conspiracy than it would cost to just go to the freakin' moon -- to siphon a few billion a year into a shadow government? What money???? What would be left??
Here are photos of astronauts with their visors "up" in space...for some reason there is also the suggestion by conspiracy nuts that this presents a "visor problem." Funny how they are such scientific geniuses...you can see the same exact guys arguing Shakespeare's plays were written by someone else and that Atlantis is _____. Where do you find the time to cook up this crap??
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/11jul_lroc.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Moon_Landing_hoax_accusa...
Finally, haven't you seen Ron Paul do the Texas Longhorn/Devil's Sign thing at rallies? Hmmmmm...spoooooky...
ridiculous
Loveolution!