Neil Armstrong to NASA: You Are an Embarassment

[Jaime_Wolf]

I don't understand why people think the private sector will deal with this better. Or really at all. The private sector can replace government involvement when there's a clear business motive for success, but manned space exploration has very few financial incentives. The few companies we do see going for it are either funded by a handful of wealthy investors for whom this is a personal dream or looking absurdly far into the future for their profits (which prevents them from securing funding from investors who won't even be alive by the time these investments will supposedly pay off).

Of all of the stupid things to pretend that the private sector can do better than the government, this is probably the stupidest.

I can't help but see NASA's decline as the decline of American civilization.

...bwuh?

 

[ediblemitten]

It isn't the cold war anymore. The US has many more pressing issues to deal with, and being embarrassed that a country you were formerly confronting, 30 years ago I might add, is helping you out is just childish.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Tough call. True, we are in debt, and the old shuttles are falling apart... on the other hand, how cold would it be to live on the moon?!

...I'm sorta caught in thr middle here...

EDIT: Also, If businsses get involved, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this line from Fight Club- "When deep space exploration ramps up, it will be corporations that name everything. The IBM Stellar Sphere. The Philip Morris Galaxy. Planet Starbucks."

 

[Sicram]

American pride should take a chill pill but the space program should be up and running again. Also, new shuttles need to be designed, current one's are a wee dated.

How could this be funded? Well, how about cutting down on the ginourmous military?

Also, if the space progarmme is to be revived properly, do so with the other space faring organisations, one can't do it all alone.

 

[Verlander]

So let me get this straight - a country that prides itself on capitalist democracy should have a socialist space program when they're still arguing socialist health care is a bad thing?

Home of the Brave...I guess the kind of bravery that's a kin to stupidity.

That made me laugh. It's true though, priorities people.

Yeah, America's debt is over 14 trillion! Let's spend money on going into space to do...

What exactly?

Apart from jingoistic pride, what exactly does America gain from this? We're talking large sums of money just to hit the atmosphere, so surely there needs to be some tangible gain. Especially to such a deeply capitalist country. Where's the business here? Where's the profit?

Weeeeeell, while I agree with your point about the silly amounts of debt the US is in (and the worse amounts of borrowing that it's still doing), I have to defend NASA a little. In space they send up loadsa things, but some of the more important ones are bacteria, diseases, biological tissue etc. In zero gravity, and in a pure vacuum, these things show properties and mutations that cannot be reproduced on earth. In short, they have helped us find pretty much every medical breakthrough in the last 30 or 40 years and now make up the foundation of breakthroughs to come.

NASA, and all other space programmes, employ the very finest minds in the world to tackle the hostile environment of space. So many of those scientific breakthroughs are now common features in our everyday life, but the necessity to invent them only ever came from the pressures and funding of the space programme.

So yeah, space exploration is good, and privatisation is bad for it, as all private companies have a shared interest in the results. Think about some of the really stupid "for-the-money" decisions that the games, sports,film or journalism industries have made, and think about the impact it will have on space travel. *sigh*

In the article it mentioned that astronauts wouldn't be prevented from going into space, but that they might have to go up on Russian shuttles. So to expand on my point, what is the benefit of having their own space program? The astronauts can still go up, the scientists still get their data, but America isn't bankrupting itself to send people to a station the Russians were sending people to as well.

To try an analogy, it's like when two people have to go to work at the same place. They live relatively near to each other and are the same distance from work as each other. They both drive there in individual cars, effectively wasting the fuel in one car. One of them falls on hard times, but instead of doing the sensible thing and just hitching a ride with the other, he insists everything's fine and keeps on wasting money he doesn't have, all because of pride.

I hope that kind of illustrates my point.

I completely appreciate what you're saying, and you're right that this should be the case in a sensible world. The thing is, America is governed by people who won a popularity contest, and everything they do isn't for sceintific or sociological progress, it's to win a popularity contest with a vast population of ignorant people. After the heavy anti-communist anti-Russian propaganda of the last half decade, the people aren't happy not being in complete control, much less to a former enemy. It's prudent for America to consider keeping the lead for fears that people will call for all funding to be stopped altogether.

It's a messed up world, but in a country where people are refusing free healthcare, I don't see this as an unreasonable assumption for me, or the astronauts to be making

 

[Therumancer]

[
So you have no touch with reality whatsoever? I hope you are aware of the fact that money borrowed from China is the only reason your country got any money. The only reason you can still spend your days writing forum posts?
Now let's say you were to start with your space bombs. What would China need to do to crack America. It's not hard. They would have to utter 3 words. "Pay up now". America would either go to war with China to get out of paying debt or go completely bankrupt. If they did decide to go to war it would mean all influence America's ever had going down the drain.
Everyone would think of you as the bad guys, bad guys who needs to be stopped. Not a pleasant thought, is it?

No, actually I'm more of a realist than you or my other critics. Read this carefully, you might not like it, and wind up having to agree to disagree with me, but you should find it interesting. Believe it or not there is more thought behind what I'm saying than you give it credit for, I'm just not a left winger or a believer in "peace at any price". This is a response to all those who responded to me here so far.

Ever heard the saying "Free Trade, means he with the biggest guns trades freely?". We tend to forget that. One of the reasons why The USA has built up as a military power and "borrows" all of this money is that these debts are largely irrelevent if nobody can bother to collect the debt. Someone like China says "pay up", and the USA says "nah, we'd rather not" how does China collect? If it doesn't have a military capable of forcing the issue it doesn't. The international community is also going to look at things like that and figure "well, what if other countries call in their debts with us" not to mention the countries the US has been supporting with that money that will collapse without it, some of which might affect China. In short we're looking at World War III. The simple fact that the US and those who would side with it (due to alliance or dependency) have military superiority due to the US making defense spending it's #1 priority makes it unlikely anyone is going to pick that fight.

Nations like China building up their military, space program, and other assorted things represent a threat to the US because if China gets the abillity to project it's power more efficiently it changes the entire equasion, which of course doesn't benefit the US and it's allies. Of course the people don't much care for a military, or generally think in these terms, because everyone hates wars, and prefers to pretend the world isn't a powder keg that is ready to explode with the wrong moves, which it arguably always has been.

The US's morality has made it so the world no longer fears MAD from the US, basically that we will destroy the world in retaliation if we go down (from anything, including economics). Heck, we aren't even willing to eradicate cultures who attempt a decapitation strike on our goverment (9/11 was NOT just about the twin towers, The Pentagon was also a target, and there was an attempt on DC that was stopped, people tend to forget the intent, I do not, which is why I am as extreme as I am there. If all those planes had hit things would have turned out very differantly. People talk about the few deaths, and excessive response, but just imagine if they had actually destroyed The Pentagon or The Capital Building at that time when a lot of our leadership was present... people should NOT forget that this was tried). If we're willing to do no more than administer what amounts to a slap on the wrist for an attempt to destroy our entire society, the odds of us dumping our nuclear stockpile for economic reasons seem minimal. Like it or not fear and detterance is what makes the world go 'round. It might suck, but if it isn't the US it's going to be the next guy that replaces us. Any economic power is only going to be a REAL power if it has the military to back it up, anything else is naive.

What I am saying here is largely about maintaining the status quo actually. The idea of doing things the way I present basically presents a reminder that the US can enforce the current social order, and isn't going to let itself slip. Aggression (even fairly low end like this... no actual invasions) causes people to wonder if mebbe we aren't going to just keep up the police actions and putting new regimes into power that make no real changes and wind up hating us anyway (ie "do nothing" intervention... there are articles about it, even if not popular with the left wing. You know, replacing a theocratic Islamic regime that does things like oppress women with another one that does exactly the same thing, without even the seeds of change in their new constitution... making you wonder WTF the point was since we're liable to be in the same place in 20 years with the people down there still hating us).

Right now where the US is trying to show off how politically correct our military can be, China is building up it's military, set up specifically to counter ours with things like their anti-saetellite lasers (look them up), and rattling it's sabers about forced colonization internally. Even if it doesn't actually follow through on that it's enough to scare people, so they are looking at China with respect. Nations like China and Russia are viewed as "wow, they have an impressive military, don't provoke them" because of what they might do, with the US we have an even nastier military but nobody worries about provoking us because we're too bloody nice. You rarely hear 200 reasons why nobody should do anything with these other nations, yet rarely anything about "don't fuck with the USA" despite having the power to destroy the world 100 times over (for the moment).

As far as everyone hating the US, well yes... we are the dominant world power. Spain, The British Empire, Rome, Egypt, and others were not exactly popular when they were dominant. Everyone wants their culture/nation to be better off (and ultimatly dominant in the long run), it's human nature. Places like Europe hope to see the erosion of the US so it can in theory rise back to global primacy, as a whole through the EU if nothing else, Asian powers (namely China) of course want the same thing, as does Russia. The gradual erosion of the dollar, transfer of a lot of business away from Wall Street, and other things benefit these dreams, and largely depend on the US not asserting itself, so of course it's pretty accurate to say that choosing to not let this happen... which we actually could do, is "why the world hates America".

This might not be a NICE way of viewing things, but it's pragmatic. A world that doesn't revolve around the point of a gun would be nice, but sadly that's not the world we're in. Left wingers tend to forget that. I'm sitting here writing these messages not because of money China loaned to the US, but because the US military prevents anyone from collecting it. Not to mentiont hat a lot of those loans are ways of extorting tribute, and just being diplomatic about it. Rather than the old school way of sailing a navy into someone's harbour and saying "give us gold, or we shell your coast and you can't stop us" we send a diplomat who arranges a "loan" as a face saving gesture. The problem is increasingly left wingers who don't get that, it's not NICE but it's pretty much how the world has always worked.

I'll also be blunt on another issue for those who read this far. China is a robber economy. Technically we only owe them money because we're too nice to assert our own rights, even not getting into the military aspects of things. See what China largely does is takes technology from the rest of the world, knocks it off, produces it cheaply in it's sweatshops, and sells it for a fraction of the price globally. China does not recognize copyrights or intellectual property laws for the most part. Things have gotten this far because a lot of other nations have been too nice to simply go in and tell them to knock it off, or demand repairations for the money that has been lost. Right now the so called "world court" has been looking at this issue, but has not wanted to do anything because of China's rising military, and have been trying to maintain the peace through inaction. The US and a lot of other nations have been nice in trying to go through the process, due to wanting to hopefulyl avoid a war. See, if China is told to pay up the damages pretty much ALL of it's wealth and development goes down the tubes, it's going to go to war for obvious reasons to prevent that. At the same time economically a lot of nations like the US can't let an official ruling that their developments can just be stolen slide because that's the basis of a lot of their own money and power, and we go to the same place. We see a ruling there and that's a formula for World War III.

The reason why I'm pointing this out is that even beyond the point about military muscle, saying China is actually owed anything is a touchy subject. On a lot of levels they have been stealing from the rest of the world, and then "loaning" the money, while building up a military gradually while playing the diplomacy game ot make it increasingly difficult to stop this and collect. IP and Copyrights and such are a big deal globally largely because of China and it's rising power. To be honest I've been of the opinion for almost 20 years that we should have been attacking China pre-emptively, but of course the US and it's allies are far too peaceful overall. Like it or not we DO have vested interests in doing so, albiet economic ones. Rallying the country to war because we were attacked, or to stop direct conquest and genocide is a much bigger rallying cry than "we must ravage this country because they stole patents for drugs like Viagra" (well tons of patents and such trillions and trillions of dollars globally). The point here is that I can't even take moral arguements about our debt to China paticularly seriously nowadays. Not that it much matters because as much as it sucks it's all about "us or them" (from everyone's perspective) anyway.

To be blunt, I'd LOVE to see China try and call in it's debt... tomorrow in fact. It would simply bring things to a head and let us get on with the inevitable. Right now I think the US and it's allies would win the resulting nasty arse war (which I won't break down, including the usage of WMD, but there is a lot of thought behind this as well). Of course this won't happen because China isn't stupid, it's going to build up more, and then be the one to throw the first punch on it's terms. It knows time favors it.

As far as the space program and what it would take, I'll say that for that to happen it will require a global unity to be honest, I don't think it can happen with individual nations at all, despite what some science fiction authors have proposed. I've gone into this before (and explained it in connection to my other views) but this post is long enough.

In the end I suspect we (all of us involved here) are likely to have to agree to disagree, which is not surprising on these forums. In the end it comes down to me being a lot less idealistic I think, and pretty much holding the position that the world sucks, and anything involving it in a big way is going to suck and be a huge mess especially in the short term... even if long term benefits are achieved.... and yes, I take the position of whatever causes the US to dominate and stay most solidly "in charge" of the globe... I *AM* an American after all and want it to stay on top for much the same reason many Europeans dream of the EU totally overtaking the USA and ruling the world economically. Everyone backs their own peopke/neck of the woods, and I hardly feel any guilt about backing mine simply because we're on top for the moment (even if that seems bound to change, probably within my lifetime).

 

[lolmynamewastaken]

"Also, it's pretty cool that Buzz Aldrin once punched a guy in the face for claiming that the Apollo moon landing was faked. I wish he had appeared on the panel and done that to the Senators and Congressmen in the panel. I feel like that would make the astronauts' point much better."
no we don't need to go in to space anymore, we're done ther-" *Aldrin curb stomps the nae sayer*
in all seriousness, i think as a race humanity need space exploration in order to develop civilisation. with out it, we just sit here and stagnate. and potentially become extinct through either lack of innovation, or a cataclysmic event that can't be avoided because we're all in one place!

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Whilst it's sad to see any reduction in support of a technological industry, we could look at this at it's inverse. The Space Race was not a benign thing, and had escalated into something that was ugly and overtly politicised when IO'm pretty sure the entirety of the research staff on either side of the divide merely wished to progress the cause of Mankind and the knowledge of space.

So doing research for reasons of 'nationalistic' pride seems a fucking retarded thing to base an entire industry on.

Shouyldn't we be looking at this as "You know, if we can work together to better Humanity. When two former enemies can lay down all reservations to undertake the greatest of voyages, surely then our industry can facilitate the ultimate goal of peace?"

I think it's awesome that nations can get together and discuss, and implement, space travel in a free and open manner. Surely international co-operation towards the pursuit of knowledge is a better reason to advance space projects rather than 'nationalistic pride'?

 

[Flying Dagger]

And now we go to the most famous astronaut ever for his unbiased view on the importance of space travel.

 

[Doctor Glocktor]

Thats great and all, but America has more pressing problems than going to a dead rock in space.

 

[SuperWombat6]

..Fuck yeah! I agree with Cernan. Dust the fucking shuttles off and send them back up. Just because they're old doesn't mean they're not useful!

The space shuttle was the biggest mistake NASA ever made. It was a political showboat and little better. What we needed were proper heavy lift vehicles, not star trek style rubbish.

lolwut? What dimension are you from? The Space Shuttles are the best thing that's ever happened to space travel. No longer did we have to spend billions on disposeable hardware. The expensive parts, computers and whatnot, were reuseable. But hey, if you think they're just political showboating then how about you break out the drawing board and come up with a reuseable spacecraft to replace them.


Go on. The world waits.

The problem with the Space Shuttle was a distinct lack of reliability. As I stated earlier, even having only two fatal accidents out of hundreds of flights is two too many. During the entirety of the capsule-based Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, there was a single fatal accident and it had nothing to do with the rocket itself (Apollo 1 had more to do with engineers' arrogance). The Apollo program's Saturn V rocket packed roughly the same amount of power as the Shuttle, and yet there was not a single accident with the rocket itself. Aside from a small glitch in the Saturn V during Apollo 13 (one of the engines cut out too early, but didn't cause any trouble), a lightning strike during the Apollo 12 launch that was fixed due to John Aaron's quick thinking, and a glitch with the modified Saturn V used for Skylab (which was also later corrected) there were no troubles with this behemoth. The Shuttle was so inefficient that there was probably just as much money going into restoring each one after a mission as was saved by their reusable nature. The most expensive part of the shuttle, the heat-resistant tiles, were not reusable. Each and every tile needed to be replaced after each flight, and those tiles are not at all cheap.

Honestly, having a reusable spacecraft isn't nearly as important as having one that works. If a crew dies because a part of the rocket couldn't take cold weather, that's fairly poor design. If another crew dies because a piece of foam wasn't secured well enough for the supersonic speeds of launch, that's poor design. A rocket with as many moving parts and complexities as the Shuttle was just asking for trouble.

Isn't it a bit odd to say it only had 2 and saying the others were completely fine if you ignore the one or two small problems that may have ended badly and could be fatal... I'd say that's a pretty remarkable record and after these accidents they would have taken new precautions and better designed the spacecraft. Writing the whole thing of for this would be like abolishing the automotive industry because cars crash from time to time. It's just unreasonable and they should either improve the designs or start something new instead of just forgetting about it.

Certainly, it was remarkable that there were only two accidents. However, while the previous programs had their issues, they were all fixed in some way and none ended in the death of a crew. To be honest, both of the shuttle accidents had more to do with arrogance than anything else. However, I feel that there shouldn't have been such a problem in the first place. The Challenger accident -- yes, it was foolish of them to launch on a cold day when they had been warned of the possible danger of shrinking O-rings. But why have a system in which the failure of a single part can result in an explosion? Columbia -- the wing leading edge had a huge hole torn in it by a piece of insulating foam. Certainly, it was the fault of the people on the ground to not even bother using satellites to check whether there was significant damage, but the fact that the foam came loose and that the wing leading edge apparently wasn't designed for impact at supersonic speed points to bad design.
I'll point to Apollo 13 again, if only because it's the most major example of near disaster in space. While the accident nearly cost Lovell, Haise, and Swigert their lives, it was not caused by the failure of a single system, or even two or three. The explosion resulted from a long series of events that coincided to create ideal conditions for an explosion. And even with all that, they made it home. Apollo 1 was another instance of arrogance, as NASA was rushing so desperately to get to the Moon before the Russians that they didn't consider the thoroughly horrible design of the original Apollo capsule.
The Shuttle accidents were each caused by one or two systems failing.

As for the problems I mentioned in my previous post, none of them would have been fatal. Apollo 13's Saturn V engine glitch didn't even need to be addressed. Apollo 12's lightning strike would have probably resulted in the crew aborting, jetting away from the rocket using the tower at the top of the rocket. As for Skylab, it was unmanned, and the problem that resulted from the glitch was corrected by the crew that later went up.

The car analogy has already been addressed. Cars can hardly be compared to spacecraft for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that cars are controlled by a single person, who is usually not highly trained in control and emergency procedures and so on.

I do agree that they should "redesign or start something new" however. There actually is a new rocket in development now that is supposed to trump even the Saturn V in power. I believe someone posted an article about it earlier.

 

[n00beffect]

"in the prime of it's life"? Don't be rediculous! It's old as hell and in dire need of refurbeshing. Or, better yet, just build a new one, you geniuses! I couldn't care less, honestly, whether it be the Americans who do this, or the Russians, or the Chinese, or even some private corporation, as long as they do it, and they do it right! This whole "nationalist whim" of theirs is rather annoying, but it's just the right thing to make them do it, so I stand behind it. It would be even better, I think, if they all teamed-up and made some Global/ International/ World-Wide Space Exploration Coallition... thing, and just started investing into it, because then at least, it would have more resources, and, hence, it would be more efficient. And, not to mention it would shut these moronic nationalist idiots up, once and for all.

P.S. Honestly, who gives a fuck if it's America or Russia who gets to do it, aren't we all human?

 

[Bonham79]

So let me get this straight - a country that prides itself on capitalist democracy should have a socialist space program when they're still arguing socialist health care is a bad thing?

Home of the Brave...I guess the kind of bravery that's a kin to stupidity.

Would you kindly tell me your country so I could comment negatively on it as well?

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Why waste tons of money in space, when there are so much problems down here?
They should consider themselves lucky to have been to the moon. Oh, and for still being alive. Old farts...

 

[Arcanist]

Nationalist pride, because that's what America needs more of.

No, we need more nationalist pride with a purpose. Shortly after World War 2, we felt pretty good about ourselves. And why shouldn't we? We helped beat the Nazis, after all.

This weird cultural backlash against legitimate patriotism needs to stop. As a country, we actually feel kind of shitty about ourselves, and again, for good reason. What, exactly, have we done recently to warrant any feeling of pride?

 

[Yopaz]

[
So you have no touch with reality whatsoever? I hope you are aware of the fact that money borrowed from China is the only reason your country got any money. The only reason you can still spend your days writing forum posts?
Now let's say you were to start with your space bombs. What would China need to do to crack America. It's not hard. They would have to utter 3 words. "Pay up now". America would either go to war with China to get out of paying debt or go completely bankrupt. If they did decide to go to war it would mean all influence America's ever had going down the drain.
Everyone would think of you as the bad guys, bad guys who needs to be stopped. Not a pleasant thought, is it?

No, actually I'm more of a realist than you or my other critics. Read this carefully, you might not like it, and wind up having to agree to disagree with me, but you should find it interesting. Believe it or not there is more thought behind what I'm saying than you give it credit for, I'm just not a left winger or a believer in "peace at any price". This is a response to all those who responded to me here so far.

Ever heard the saying "Free Trade, means he with the biggest guns trades freely?". We tend to forget that. One of the reasons why The USA has built up as a military power and "borrows" all of this money is that these debts are largely irrelevent if nobody can bother to collect the debt. Someone like China says "pay up", and the USA says "nah, we'd rather not" how does China collect? If it doesn't have a military capable of forcing the issue it doesn't. The international community is also going to look at things like that and figure "well, what if other countries call in their debts with us" not to mention the countries the US has been supporting with that money that will collapse without it, some of which might affect China. In short we're looking at World War III. The simple fact that the US and those who would side with it (due to alliance or dependency) have military superiority due to the US making defense spending it's #1 priority makes it unlikely anyone is going to pick that fight.

Nations like China building up their military, space program, and other assorted things represent a threat to the US because if China gets the abillity to project it's power more efficiently it changes the entire equasion, which of course doesn't benefit the US and it's allies. Of course the people don't much care for a military, or generally think in these terms, because everyone hates wars, and prefers to pretend the world isn't a powder keg that is ready to explode with the wrong moves, which it arguably always has been.

The US's morality has made it so the world no longer fears MAD from the US, basically that we will destroy the world in retaliation if we go down (from anything, including economics). Heck, we aren't even willing to eradicate cultures who attempt a decapitation strike on our goverment (9/11 was NOT just about the twin towers, The Pentagon was also a target, and there was an attempt on DC that was stopped, people tend to forget the intent, I do not, which is why I am as extreme as I am there. If all those planes had hit things would have turned out very differantly. People talk about the few deaths, and excessive response, but just imagine if they had actually destroyed The Pentagon or The Capital Building at that time when a lot of our leadership was present... people should NOT forget that this was tried). If we're willing to do no more than administer what amounts to a slap on the wrist for an attempt to destroy our entire society, the odds of us dumping our nuclear stockpile for economic reasons seem minimal. Like it or not fear and detterance is what makes the world go 'round. It might suck, but if it isn't the US it's going to be the next guy that replaces us. Any economic power is only going to be a REAL power if it has the military to back it up, anything else is naive.

What I am saying here is largely about maintaining the status quo actually. The idea of doing things the way I present basically presents a reminder that the US can enforce the current social order, and isn't going to let itself slip. Aggression (even fairly low end like this... no actual invasions) causes people to wonder if mebbe we aren't going to just keep up the police actions and putting new regimes into power that make no real changes and wind up hating us anyway (ie "do nothing" intervention... there are articles about it, even if not popular with the left wing. You know, replacing a theocratic Islamic regime that does things like oppress women with another one that does exactly the same thing, without even the seeds of change in their new constitution... making you wonder WTF the point was since we're liable to be in the same place in 20 years with the people down there still hating us).

Right now where the US is trying to show off how politically correct our military can be, China is building up it's military, set up specifically to counter ours with things like their anti-saetellite lasers (look them up), and rattling it's sabers about forced colonization internally. Even if it doesn't actually follow through on that it's enough to scare people, so they are looking at China with respect. Nations like China and Russia are viewed as "wow, they have an impressive military, don't provoke them" because of what they might do, with the US we have an even nastier military but nobody worries about provoking us because we're too bloody nice. You rarely hear 200 reasons why nobody should do anything with these other nations, yet rarely anything about "don't fuck with the USA" despite having the power to destroy the world 100 times over (for the moment).

As far as everyone hating the US, well yes... we are the dominant world power. Spain, The British Empire, Rome, Egypt, and others were not exactly popular when they were dominant. Everyone wants their culture/nation to be better off (and ultimatly dominant in the long run), it's human nature. Places like Europe hope to see the erosion of the US so it can in theory rise back to global primacy, as a whole through the EU if nothing else, Asian powers (namely China) of course want the same thing, as does Russia. The gradual erosion of the dollar, transfer of a lot of business away from Wall Street, and other things benefit these dreams, and largely depend on the US not asserting itself, so of course it's pretty accurate to say that choosing to not let this happen... which we actually could do, is "why the world hates America".

This might not be a NICE way of viewing things, but it's pragmatic. A world that doesn't revolve around the point of a gun would be nice, but sadly that's not the world we're in. Left wingers tend to forget that. I'm sitting here writing these messages not because of money China loaned to the US, but because the US military prevents anyone from collecting it. Not to mentiont hat a lot of those loans are ways of extorting tribute, and just being diplomatic about it. Rather than the old school way of sailing a navy into someone's harbour and saying "give us gold, or we shell your coast and you can't stop us" we send a diplomat who arranges a "loan" as a face saving gesture. The problem is increasingly left wingers who don't get that, it's not NICE but it's pretty much how the world has always worked.

I'll also be blunt on another issue for those who read this far. China is a robber economy. Technically we only owe them money because we're too nice to assert our own rights, even not getting into the military aspects of things. See what China largely does is takes technology from the rest of the world, knocks it off, produces it cheaply in it's sweatshops, and sells it for a fraction of the price globally. China does not recognize copyrights or intellectual property laws for the most part. Things have gotten this far because a lot of other nations have been too nice to simply go in and tell them to knock it off, or demand repairations for the money that has been lost. Right now the so called "world court" has been looking at this issue, but has not wanted to do anything because of China's rising military, and have been trying to maintain the peace through inaction. The US and a lot of other nations have been nice in trying to go through the process, due to wanting to hopefulyl avoid a war. See, if China is told to pay up the damages pretty much ALL of it's wealth and development goes down the tubes, it's going to go to war for obvious reasons to prevent that. At the same time economically a lot of nations like the US can't let an official ruling that their developments can just be stolen slide because that's the basis of a lot of their own money and power, and we go to the same place. We see a ruling there and that's a formula for World War III.

The reason why I'm pointing this out is that even beyond the point about military muscle, saying China is actually owed anything is a touchy subject. On a lot of levels they have been stealing from the rest of the world, and then "loaning" the money, while building up a military gradually while playing the diplomacy game ot make it increasingly difficult to stop this and collect. IP and Copyrights and such are a big deal globally largely because of China and it's rising power. To be honest I've been of the opinion for almost 20 years that we should have been attacking China pre-emptively, but of course the US and it's allies are far too peaceful overall. Like it or not we DO have vested interests in doing so, albiet economic ones. Rallying the country to war because we were attacked, or to stop direct conquest and genocide is a much bigger rallying cry than "we must ravage this country because they stole patents for drugs like Viagra" (well tons of patents and such trillions and trillions of dollars globally). The point here is that I can't even take moral arguements about our debt to China paticularly seriously nowadays. Not that it much matters because as much as it sucks it's all about "us or them" (from everyone's perspective) anyway.

To be blunt, I'd LOVE to see China try and call in it's debt... tomorrow in fact. It would simply bring things to a head and let us get on with the inevitable. Right now I think the US and it's allies would win the resulting nasty arse war (which I won't break down, including the usage of WMD, but there is a lot of thought behind this as well). Of course this won't happen because China isn't stupid, it's going to build up more, and then be the one to throw the first punch on it's terms. It knows time favors it.

As far as the space program and what it would take, I'll say that for that to happen it will require a global unity to be honest, I don't think it can happen with individual nations at all, despite what some science fiction authors have proposed. I've gone into this before (and explained it in connection to my other views) but this post is long enough.

In the end I suspect we (all of us involved here) are likely to have to agree to disagree, which is not surprising on these forums. In the end it comes down to me being a lot less idealistic I think, and pretty much holding the position that the world sucks, and anything involving it in a big way is going to suck and be a huge mess especially in the short term... even if long term benefits are achieved.... and yes, I take the position of whatever causes the US to dominate and stay most solidly "in charge" of the globe... I *AM* an American after all and want it to stay on top for much the same reason many Europeans dream of the EU totally overtaking the USA and ruling the world economically. Everyone backs their own peopke/neck of the woods, and I hardly feel any guilt about backing mine simply because we're on top for the
moment (even if that seems bound to change, probably within my lifetime).

China got nuclear weapons. Russia got nuclear weapons. France got nuclear weapons. These are but 3 of the countries in the world with nuclear weapons. If USA were to go to war because they don't want to pay back their debt you can bet your ass both Russia and China would be on the opposite side, and probably every European country too. If USA were to go to war against China the world would be able to survive a few months at best, and last time I checked USA is part of the world. Still I really think you should go tell Obama to be openly hostile to both Russia and China. See how long it will take before there's no money left.

 

[Piecewise]

Not surprising that the shut the shuttle program down really. When the shuttles were first greenlighted and introduced, they made a bunch of promises they could never have delivered on. They promised hundreds of missions a year, at a fraction of the cost of the program at the time. In the end, they flew a about 5 missions a year and at a higher price. The shuttle system simply wasn't what they promised, and it was long due for being scrapped.

Beyond this, I think these guys are being a little anachronistic in their ideas. The space race was very unique in that it was a race to beat a rival nation with a competing set of socioeconomic principles; to get somewhere we had never been. Now, if we were going to go to mars or something we might be able to make people a little proud, though many will wonder why we're doing such an expensive thing at a time like this, but we're not going to have the swell of national pride we saw from the moon landing. The space race was more about beating the russians and showing them that capitalism was better then their dirty communism; it was a clear fight with a clear winner.

Now, our only enemy is a gridlocked government bolstered by a short sighted media that sensationalizes every action and demands instantaneous results. The Republicans on capitol hill refuse to even look at anything the democrats put forward, stonewalling progress and then blaming democrats for the lack of progress. Look at how they refused to agree to raising the debt ceiling (something they did what, 4 times under bush?) and then called it Obama's fault despite the fact that they were the ones holding out and that Obama literally had no power to do anything. They've taken to blaming obama for everything regardless of any sort of involvement on his part. Likewise, the democrats continue to piddle around and do very little, even when they have the opportunity to do so. They're busy dumping money into green jobs, a field of technology reliant upon rare earth elements, of which we have little or no infrastructure to mine ourselves, so we buy them at exorbitant rates from china.

And then, as if matters weren't bad enough, the media takes every misstep or minor problem and attempts to whip it into a frenzy, slowing the already glacial speed of progress to near non-existent. These are not the sorts of things that a space program will fix.

 

[Piecewise]

[
So you have no touch with reality whatsoever? I hope you are aware of the fact that money borrowed from China is the only reason your country got any money. The only reason you can still spend your days writing forum posts?
Now let's say you were to start with your space bombs. What would China need to do to crack America. It's not hard. They would have to utter 3 words. "Pay up now". America would either go to war with China to get out of paying debt or go completely bankrupt. If they did decide to go to war it would mean all influence America's ever had going down the drain.
Everyone would think of you as the bad guys, bad guys who needs to be stopped. Not a pleasant thought, is it?

No, actually I'm more of a realist than you or my other critics. Read this carefully, you might not like it, and wind up having to agree to disagree with me, but you should find it interesting. Believe it or not there is more thought behind what I'm saying than you give it credit for, I'm just not a left winger or a believer in "peace at any price". This is a response to all those who responded to me here so far.

Ever heard the saying "Free Trade, means he with the biggest guns trades freely?". We tend to forget that. One of the reasons why The USA has built up as a military power and "borrows" all of this money is that these debts are largely irrelevent if nobody can bother to collect the debt. Someone like China says "pay up", and the USA says "nah, we'd rather not" how does China collect? If it doesn't have a military capable of forcing the issue it doesn't. The international community is also going to look at things like that and figure "well, what if other countries call in their debts with us" not to mention the countries the US has been supporting with that money that will collapse without it, some of which might affect China. In short we're looking at World War III. The simple fact that the US and those who would side with it (due to alliance or dependency) have military superiority due to the US making defense spending it's #1 priority makes it unlikely anyone is going to pick that fight.

Nations like China building up their military, space program, and other assorted things represent a threat to the US because if China gets the abillity to project it's power more efficiently it changes the entire equasion, which of course doesn't benefit the US and it's allies. Of course the people don't much care for a military, or generally think in these terms, because everyone hates wars, and prefers to pretend the world isn't a powder keg that is ready to explode with the wrong moves, which it arguably always has been.

The US's morality has made it so the world no longer fears MAD from the US, basically that we will destroy the world in retaliation if we go down (from anything, including economics). Heck, we aren't even willing to eradicate cultures who attempt a decapitation strike on our goverment (9/11 was NOT just about the twin towers, The Pentagon was also a target, and there was an attempt on DC that was stopped, people tend to forget the intent, I do not, which is why I am as extreme as I am there. If all those planes had hit things would have turned out very differantly. People talk about the few deaths, and excessive response, but just imagine if they had actually destroyed The Pentagon or The Capital Building at that time when a lot of our leadership was present... people should NOT forget that this was tried). If we're willing to do no more than administer what amounts to a slap on the wrist for an attempt to destroy our entire society, the odds of us dumping our nuclear stockpile for economic reasons seem minimal. Like it or not fear and detterance is what makes the world go 'round. It might suck, but if it isn't the US it's going to be the next guy that replaces us. Any economic power is only going to be a REAL power if it has the military to back it up, anything else is naive.

What I am saying here is largely about maintaining the status quo actually. The idea of doing things the way I present basically presents a reminder that the US can enforce the current social order, and isn't going to let itself slip. Aggression (even fairly low end like this... no actual invasions) causes people to wonder if mebbe we aren't going to just keep up the police actions and putting new regimes into power that make no real changes and wind up hating us anyway (ie "do nothing" intervention... there are articles about it, even if not popular with the left wing. You know, replacing a theocratic Islamic regime that does things like oppress women with another one that does exactly the same thing, without even the seeds of change in their new constitution... making you wonder WTF the point was since we're liable to be in the same place in 20 years with the people down there still hating us).

Right now where the US is trying to show off how politically correct our military can be, China is building up it's military, set up specifically to counter ours with things like their anti-saetellite lasers (look them up), and rattling it's sabers about forced colonization internally. Even if it doesn't actually follow through on that it's enough to scare people, so they are looking at China with respect. Nations like China and Russia are viewed as "wow, they have an impressive military, don't provoke them" because of what they might do, with the US we have an even nastier military but nobody worries about provoking us because we're too bloody nice. You rarely hear 200 reasons why nobody should do anything with these other nations, yet rarely anything about "don't fuck with the USA" despite having the power to destroy the world 100 times over (for the moment).

As far as everyone hating the US, well yes... we are the dominant world power. Spain, The British Empire, Rome, Egypt, and others were not exactly popular when they were dominant. Everyone wants their culture/nation to be better off (and ultimatly dominant in the long run), it's human nature. Places like Europe hope to see the erosion of the US so it can in theory rise back to global primacy, as a whole through the EU if nothing else, Asian powers (namely China) of course want the same thing, as does Russia. The gradual erosion of the dollar, transfer of a lot of business away from Wall Street, and other things benefit these dreams, and largely depend on the US not asserting itself, so of course it's pretty accurate to say that choosing to not let this happen... which we actually could do, is "why the world hates America".

This might not be a NICE way of viewing things, but it's pragmatic. A world that doesn't revolve around the point of a gun would be nice, but sadly that's not the world we're in. Left wingers tend to forget that. I'm sitting here writing these messages not because of money China loaned to the US, but because the US military prevents anyone from collecting it. Not to mentiont hat a lot of those loans are ways of extorting tribute, and just being diplomatic about it. Rather than the old school way of sailing a navy into someone's harbour and saying "give us gold, or we shell your coast and you can't stop us" we send a diplomat who arranges a "loan" as a face saving gesture. The problem is increasingly left wingers who don't get that, it's not NICE but it's pretty much how the world has always worked.

I'll also be blunt on another issue for those who read this far. China is a robber economy. Technically we only owe them money because we're too nice to assert our own rights, even not getting into the military aspects of things. See what China largely does is takes technology from the rest of the world, knocks it off, produces it cheaply in it's sweatshops, and sells it for a fraction of the price globally. China does not recognize copyrights or intellectual property laws for the most part. Things have gotten this far because a lot of other nations have been too nice to simply go in and tell them to knock it off, or demand repairations for the money that has been lost. Right now the so called "world court" has been looking at this issue, but has not wanted to do anything because of China's rising military, and have been trying to maintain the peace through inaction. The US and a lot of other nations have been nice in trying to go through the process, due to wanting to hopefulyl avoid a war. See, if China is told to pay up the damages pretty much ALL of it's wealth and development goes down the tubes, it's going to go to war for obvious reasons to prevent that. At the same time economically a lot of nations like the US can't let an official ruling that their developments can just be stolen slide because that's the basis of a lot of their own money and power, and we go to the same place. We see a ruling there and that's a formula for World War III.

The reason why I'm pointing this out is that even beyond the point about military muscle, saying China is actually owed anything is a touchy subject. On a lot of levels they have been stealing from the rest of the world, and then "loaning" the money, while building up a military gradually while playing the diplomacy game ot make it increasingly difficult to stop this and collect. IP and Copyrights and such are a big deal globally largely because of China and it's rising power. To be honest I've been of the opinion for almost 20 years that we should have been attacking China pre-emptively, but of course the US and it's allies are far too peaceful overall. Like it or not we DO have vested interests in doing so, albiet economic ones. Rallying the country to war because we were attacked, or to stop direct conquest and genocide is a much bigger rallying cry than "we must ravage this country because they stole patents for drugs like Viagra" (well tons of patents and such trillions and trillions of dollars globally). The point here is that I can't even take moral arguements about our debt to China paticularly seriously nowadays. Not that it much matters because as much as it sucks it's all about "us or them" (from everyone's perspective) anyway.

To be blunt, I'd LOVE to see China try and call in it's debt... tomorrow in fact. It would simply bring things to a head and let us get on with the inevitable. Right now I think the US and it's allies would win the resulting nasty arse war (which I won't break down, including the usage of WMD, but there is a lot of thought behind this as well). Of course this won't happen because China isn't stupid, it's going to build up more, and then be the one to throw the first punch on it's terms. It knows time favors it.

As far as the space program and what it would take, I'll say that for that to happen it will require a global unity to be honest, I don't think it can happen with individual nations at all, despite what some science fiction authors have proposed. I've gone into this before (and explained it in connection to my other views) but this post is long enough.

In the end I suspect we (all of us involved here) are likely to have to agree to disagree, which is not surprising on these forums. In the end it comes down to me being a lot less idealistic I think, and pretty much holding the position that the world sucks, and anything involving it in a big way is going to suck and be a huge mess especially in the short term... even if long term benefits are achieved.... and yes, I take the position of whatever causes the US to dominate and stay most solidly "in charge" of the globe... I *AM* an American after all and want it to stay on top for much the same reason many Europeans dream of the EU totally overtaking the USA and ruling the world economically. Everyone backs their own peopke/neck of the woods, and I hardly feel any guilt about backing mine simply because we're on top for the
moment (even if that seems bound to change, probably within my lifetime).

China got nuclear weapons. Russia got nuclear weapons. France got nuclear weapons. These are but 3 of the countries in the world with nuclear weapons. If USA were to go to war because they don't want to pay back their debt you can bet your ass both Russia and China would be on the opposite side, and probably every European country too. If USA were to go to war against China the world would be able to survive a few months at best, and last time I checked USA is part of the world. Still I really think you should go tell Obama to be openly hostile to both Russia and China. See how long it will take before there's no money left.

So your idea of the best course of action is for America to start yet another war, this time against a massive, heavily militarized, nuclear armed country which is globally known as one of the biggest production plants in the world? Do you not realize how much money it would cost our nation? Do you realize that china is one of our major importers of materials, meaning we probably couldn't manufacture the weapons we need, even if we actually still manufactured them (a lot are made in other countries), let alone pay for them? Do you really want to have the draft reinstated and then be forced to go die in a trench with a lacerated gi track just to fulfill your inane, juvenile power fantasies?

America is a country founded on ideals of freedom, fairness and honorable action; it is not a nation of petty thieves who borrow money and then threaten to stab the lender when they ask for it back. Are you really suggesting that it's in america's best interest to become the nation equivalent of a violent, dead beat dad?

 

[TheDooD]

The private sector can pick up the slack! Thats what america is all about.

Still, its a shame the first moonbase/colony will be called something like paypal basecamp and not america basecamp.

hell get enough camwhores, SC2 streams we can have enough cash to start / support a full paypal space colony, resort, mining and we be also ready for mars in about a year or so.