Quote:
kitsune posted
Okay -- lets say we limit NASA to nothing but launching satellites for-profit every year and that they have to support themselves. We'll get ~12 billion dollars back every year.
Just out of curiosity, what would you do with the money? Where would you budget it and make it be put to use?
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First, NASA does not profit from launches. And it is a tough market since the French Arienne is a superiour launch vehicle for most satellites. France all but owns the launching business for reasons summarized at the end.
Second, NASA is chock full of good ideas that simply don't cost much. But this was even a complaint in the late 1980s. NASA's big buck project (space shuttle and then ISS) literally devours most every other science project. As one Greenbelt MD project manager complained to me once, everything must be proposed related to the Space Shuttle or it just does not get considered (let alone approved). Since then, the Challenger exploded meaning that some science was liberated. But ISS is again doing to science what the Space Shuttle did.
Third, there is no problem with defining safety procedures. They are well defined in NASA - and then routinely ignored by top managers that just don't understand the concerns of the little people - as the Columbia disaster report so roundly noted. Furthermore, the reasons for those management attitudes are attributed to NASA management structure. Such managerial procedures are simply illegal in other organizations such as the Nuclear Navy and Air Force.
But again these three points keep coming back to the same problem. We have priorities based upon political agendas - and not upon science. It is why a super collider did not get built. It is why ISS exists. It is why astronauts on Columbia were killed for the same reasons that Challenger exploded. Fundamental objectives should be based upon science. NASA has many good ideas and a paltry budget of something like $8billion.
Hell. A president finds no problem with lying to attack another nation, then lying that it will not cost anything - until we have no problem with another $87billion for a nation that did not want to be liberated. That will be something like $400 billion on one stupid country that was not even a threat to its neighbors. So why is the NASA budget considered so large? Its not. But it is poorly appropriated because polticians - not science - are making the decisions.