NASA Announces Bake Sale Fundraiser

[guidance]

Come on guys, stop telling America to cut its military budget. It isn't that high...

(the 2011 one is basically the same, I just can't find it because I'm terrible at googling).

Wait, Canada spends more on it's military than Israel? Aren't they in constant war?

 

[lacktheknack]

Come on guys, stop telling America to cut its military budget. It isn't that high...

(the 2011 one is basically the same, I just can't find it because I'm terrible at googling).

Israel's at the bottom of that? Whoa.

Also, I knew that America's military budget was high, but NOT THAT HIGH...

 

[lacktheknack]

Come on guys, stop telling America to cut its military budget. It isn't that high...

(the 2011 one is basically the same, I just can't find it because I'm terrible at googling).

Wait, Canada spends more on it's military than Israel? Aren't they in constant war?

They don't buy multi-billion dollar planes. Guess what Canada does.

 

[guidance]

Come on guys, stop telling America to cut its military budget. It isn't that high...

(the 2011 one is basically the same, I just can't find it because I'm terrible at googling).

Wait, Canada spends more on it's military than Israel? Aren't they in constant war?

They don't buy multi-billion dollar planes. Guess what Canada does.

We should probably stop doing that.

 

[Andy Chalk]

Israel receives billions of dollars in military aid every year from the U.S. In 2007, the U.S. government agreed to give Israel $30 billion in military aid over ten years - ten times the NASA budgetary shortfall, in other words.

 

[lacktheknack]

Come on guys, stop telling America to cut its military budget. It isn't that high...

(the 2011 one is basically the same, I just can't find it because I'm terrible at googling).

Wait, Canada spends more on it's military than Israel? Aren't they in constant war?

They don't buy multi-billion dollar planes. Guess what Canada does.

We should probably stop doing that.

Probably.

Redundant Fact of the Day: Many issues that could be considered "National" issues are coming up in the Alberta Election, but homeland security is not one of them. Cutting the budget is.

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

Let me add my $0.02 on top of Tyson's testimony:

Every dollar spent on the Apollo moon shots pumped fourteen dollars back into the economy.

Those apples are looking pretty shiny.

238U

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Someone should point NASA to kickstarter.

captcha: okey-dokey. It agrees with me.

Damn, ninja'd. I was about to wittily smarm about how NASA could put up a "let's go to Neptune" project on Kickstarter, and we could go back to directly funding them anyway.

 

[Syzygy23]

Just how many people should lose their entitlement to medical care to pay for Mars exploration? Guys in case you haven't noticed the there is the biggest recession in 80 years going on and therefore you have to cut your cloth to suit your purse. I think it would have been more effective to use kickstarter for some projects, say funding one of the instrument packages.




Am I the only one thinking of Howard Wolowitz?

We'll just get by on privatized medicare like we have for the last... forever.

I don't see lower income people dying from the plague in the streets, so either our government is doing a REALLY good job of covering that up or there really isn't a problem.

Mars exploration sounds cool, but why not practice first by trying to get a moon colony running?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

It's worth pointing out that the US government is budgeting $851 billion for "security spending" in FY2013. (http://useconomy.about.com/od/usfederalbudget/p/military_budget.htm)

In other words, for considerably less than half of one percent of the military budget, these scientific endeavours could continue unimpeded. Are there hungry people living on the streets? Are millions of Americans without medical coverage? Are there countless other things the US could be doing do address shortfalls in its domestic situation? Absolutely. But what does that have to do with the prioritization of bombs over knowledge?

As long as they have the bombs; the uneducated, the homeless, the poor and the sick can die on the cold streets knowing they are safe.

 

[Coolpilot]

Mars exploration sounds cool, but why not practice first by trying to get a moon colony running?

NASA tried. The project was called 'Constellation,' and would have seen a return to Luna & the start of a colony there, a trip to Mars that would last 3 months if I remember correctly (2 months for the round trip, one month on the planet), and also an eventual landing on an asteroid.

But then Obama started telling NASA what to do and forced them to change their agenda around, skipping the moon (which is a no-no, as that's the main way to test all the equipment out before going out to Mars - Apollo-like progression is key to safety) and using the CARGO rocket to launch the crew instead of the CREW rocket like NASA had designed & planned.
Then he & congress canned the project when it started going over-budget, instead of just giving them the extra money they needed. So now we have all this equipment for Constellation just sitting around, and all that time & effort wasted.

Good going, government. You just wasted tons of money, time, and resources that amounted to nothing because you couldn't spare some money to the good of the country, science, and humanity, and instead spent it on bailouts, over-bloated military budget, social security that you still haven't fixed, and a messy healthcare bill that doesn't actually fix many problems. *slow clap*

 

[CleverCover]

That moment when you believe the article is a joke and then realize it's all true.
That moment is very, very painful.

Can't we cut the military and just raise taxes?

 

[Ticonderoga117]

Hmmm, here's the deal US Government. We need to get our asses to [del]Mars[/del] space. You want Defense. We can have both. Weapons in space, while exploring space. Have you guys even watched any SciFi? Will be totally worth it. Totally beats out spending more money on the F-35 that is a waste of money.

 

[Draconalis]

June 9th is my wife's baby shower... considering the shower is being held at a burger joint on 'Nasa Rd 1' maybe I'll swing by the space center and pick up a few things...

Because frankly... it saddens me how bad things have gotten.

 

[Sean951]

Mars exploration sounds cool, but why not practice first by trying to get a moon colony running?

NASA tried. The project was called 'Constellation,' and would have seen a return to Luna & the start of a colony there, a trip to Mars that would last 3 months if I remember correctly (2 months for the round trip, one month on the planet), and also an eventual landing on an asteroid.

But then Obama started telling NASA what to do and forced them to change their agenda around, skipping the moon (which is a no-no, as that's the main way to test all the equipment out before going out to Mars - Apollo-like progression is key to safety) and using the CARGO rocket to launch the crew instead of the CREW rocket like NASA had designed & planned.
Then he & congress canned the project when it started going over-budget, instead of just giving them the extra money they needed. So now we have all this equipment for Constellation just sitting around, and all that time & effort wasted.

Good going, government. You just wasted tons of money, time, and resources that amounted to nothing because you couldn't spare some money to the good of the country, science, and humanity, and instead spent it on bailouts, over-bloated military budget, social security that you still haven't fixed, and a messy healthcare bill that doesn't actually fix many problems. *slow clap*

I'm not going to address most of your post, but your time frames are horribly out of scale. Mars would be a 23 month trip, minimum. We were also planning on going to an asteroid before Mars, now we are just skipping the moon along the way.

 

[spectrenihlus]

That moment when you believe the article is a joke and then realize it's all true.
That moment is very, very painful.

Can't we cut the military and just raise taxes?

Because this is what the government does with that taxes

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0417/Fraud-waste-corruption-Congress-decries-GSA-culture

Why people think giving the government more money will fix things boggles the mind.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

NASA. Having a bake sale and car wash fundraiser.

I could probably show this article as proof and its source material and people STILL wouldn't believe me.



But yeah, our government's spending is really stupid when you think about it. Sure, we need a strong military, and the minute we lax on making sure that we're on the cutting edge of military technology, something can screw us over. However, I think we're being a bit too excessive on it. The Cold War ended a long while back, people; there's honestly no country that wants to actually punch America in the nose. And before you say something about them, Al Qaeda is not a country; it's a movement of people that have military equipment, but certainly not enough to haul it all the way to Washington DC and give it a kick. Unless you tell me that Al Qaeda is in possession of nuclear missiles and feels like they want to start the world apocalypse, you're not convincing me that we need to spend what looks to be more than four times as much on military funding than the runner-up.

 

[Spartanmk1]

Ever notice how there are always cuts in funding to key areas, like NASA, but politicians never suggest a pay cut for them selves?

The president makes 400,000 a year in raw income, plus more to pay for expenses, entertainment, and travel. Overall, around 500 grand a year, plus free housing.

Retired president: $150,000 pension; plus $150,000 to maintain staff
Former first lady: $20,000

Vice president: $208,100; $10,000 expense account; free housing

Presidential Cabinet member (i.e. secretary of defense, attorney general, etc.): $157,000

Speaker of the House of Representatives: $208,100

Senate president pro tempore: $180,100

Senate and House majority and minority leaders: $180,100

Other senators and representatives: $162,100

Supreme Court chief justice: $208,100

Supreme Court associate justices: $199,200

Circuit judges: $171,800

District judges: $162,100

six figures for being a public servant. I am sure there can be some cuts there. It's not much, but it's a start.