frankly, as it should. If you give them a blank check, you end up with SLS.

And with Nelson now telling Congress they are in a space race with China, we'll probably start seeing more money directed at LEO and Lunar missions.

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No, thats what happens when you have to build a rocket to the specifications of politicians who know about space as much as a 2 year old toddler.

NASA didn't make the demand to reuse old shuttle parts and shuttle part suppliers.

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But they sure were right there to provide a bunch of stuff we said we'd never use again due to safety concerns, huh?

Yes, because the alternative was ignoring a direct order from Congress to do so.

"You were sure ready to shoot that armed home invader, huh?" This is what you sound like.

Congress has a 3rd grade understanding of space. They could have literally said "no, that stuff is proven to be unsafe"

Instead we got the senate launch system.

You don't just say no to a congressional mandate written into your funding bill.

"sorry, those parts are not functional for a space mission, we've been waiting to scrap them".

You think the senate is going to go and put them together themselves?

Reminder, the US Navy pays more money to keep the rust off of mothballed WWII fleet than NASA's entire budget.

They can fire anyone who refuses

Let em shoot themselves in the foot, rather than lining their pockets with unlimited blank checks.

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Yeah. And change their mind every 5 seconds. First it was supposed to resupply the ISS then go to Mars, then jk go yo the moon. So nasa said fuck y'all and built a swiss army knife that coulddd do all 3. Even if it took longer.

What if I told you communists were interested in planetary science?

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They have black budget projects in space so this is kinda misinformation

Wait, didn't we just piss away like 100 billion...?

“Yeah, oh that’s a good title. Why don’t you use the flying lawn chair for that one?”

Wait what?

I don't think you understand how Federal funding works, and it's entirely due to lazy thinking.

On what? The US pisses away money left and right.

I don't think you understand what "no, if you want to use items we retired for safety reasons to launch humans into space in order to line your own pockets, build it yourself" means. They can't force NASA to do shit, or they're going to find themselves with a lack of rocket scientists as they all flee to private companies.

This is actually the way to go, as the US government and by extension NASA have proven themselves completely incapable.

Not to mention loses money. DoD lost another 2 Trillion. Bet that would have funded NASA for a year or three.

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The budget that went to SLS is completely separate from NASA's planetary science budget. There are different divisions for human spaceflight, earth missions, heliophysics, astronomy, planetary science, etc.

Ah yes, i forgot that that a bunch of senators can assemble and fly a rocket.

Did you mean to reply to someone else? This has nothing to do with what I said

Good. NASA should focus on exploring space. Not on some BS "climate change" studies that are useless.

EDIT: Give the money to SpaceX that can get more done at a quarter of the cost

What point are you trying to make? I'm struggling to understand the relevance of any of that info to the comment or post

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All that money could serve a universal healthcare plan but the Congress prefers Defense.

That said, watching the situation in Ukraine, I'm kindda happy DoD has a huge budget or I fear, eastern Europe would have fallen under Putin's rule a decade ago.

Yeah, but it's the DoD...they just lost 2 trillion dollars, so giving them a bigger budget is like taking pellet guns away from kids and giving them flame-throwers instead. lmao Either way, get your popcorn, there's likely to be some entertainment soon.

*reaches for SPF 5000 sunscreen*

How is your comment more relevant, or relevant at all, to the post or his comment? He didn't say anything about the DoD or its entire budget. He said the U.S. Navy (only one part of the Department of Defense) spends more money maintaining decommissioned ships from WWII, than NASA's entire budget. Of course the entire DoD budget will be higher than NASA's, that's a no-brainer. But more is spent maintaining obsolete warships that do not, and very likely never will again, see active service, than on NASA.

Congress has been saying it for years. Artemis was created because they knew we were in a space race.

So far the US are the only Nation to make Outer Solar system probes.

You can say many things about it, but the US has done more for planetary science than the rest of the world combined.

If the US reformed their healthcare system to one like Germany, they would be able to spend more, not less money on defense.

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That didn't even address the substance of my comment, let alone his. You're changing the scope of his comment to make your argument. That's not how it works.

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Lmao glad I wasn't the only one

No, it's just not relevant. You're bringing up the entire Department of Defense budget, he's talking about a single project from a single arm of the DoD. You're changing the scope of his comment well beyond what it actually said.

Few points: 1) The DoD didn’t lose money, they are not a company. They spend allocated money on defense. 2) what do you mean “they just lost $2T”? Their entire budget is 1/3 of that, so unless you mean “just” as in the last 3 years, and unless you count spending their budget as “losing” money, this makes no sense.

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Because we’re wasting money on unnecessary wars.

Give their budget to the IRS. Then they can get taxes from all the rich dicks that don't pay. Boom. Problem solved.

Artemis was created because Richard Shelby wanted to keep Michoud Assembly operating and SLS needs something to launch.

That's a completely different part of NASA. This is planetary science. Which is made up of uncrewed interplanetary spacecraft missions. Examples being: Cassini, Juno, New Horizons, Curiosity, Perseverance, DART, Lucy, Neowise, Osiris-Rex, etc. In general these missions have been considered to be extremely cost effective and well run.

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Your right, their just talking to talk.

Yet they are happy to allocate 800+ billion towards the military.

>Reminder, DoD still owns GPS, is half of SpaceX’s launch demand (which helps pays for the other half); SpaceX would go under without DoD demand), and NASA utilizes DoD’s TDRSS (communication). Among other things.

Ok, you're right. You brought up the DoD at all, and several unrelated projects, none of which had anything to do with his comment on a single project of a single branch of the armed forces that falls under the DoD. I'm still right, you changed the scope of his comment which isn't how this works.

>Furthermore as much or as little as Europe allocates to defense, the same is true for ESA, when compared to NASA.

You brought up the entire EUROPEAN defense budget, which is even more off-base. Forgive my confusion. In completely missing his point, you created a whole marsh of "wtf is he going on about" that let details overlap in my head. Sucks to suck, I guess.

Real cute trying to imply I'm a sock puppet account, though. Bonus points for pulling an easily disproved deflection out of your ass.

And making bad arguments while doing it.

And SpaceX also self-funded the development of Starlink, which has been vital to Ukraine's war effort and would be similarly vital to the U.S. and Taiwan in the event of a war with China.

And they're still losing money on it, clearly more money then they get from DOD launches.

The DOD is paying for the development of ULA's Vulcan rocket and engine, which they also did for ULA's previous rockets... Nobody paid SpaceX anything to develop Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, or Starship.

Furthermore, every gov't contract SpaceX has won, has been competitively bidded with them the low bidder, and fixed price.

Seems like the government is getting a pretty good deal. But I'd be fascinated to hear arguments against.

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The same amount as the Army spent on air conditioning in Afghanistan.

The US is absolutely not going to war with China and neither is Taiwan, this is insane. And spacex was paid by the government to roll out starlink in Ukraine, which musk threatened to shut down.

To be fair that actually provided some kind of tangible benefit somewhere, which maintaining a couple hundred Liberty ships just in case the world suddenly needs a lot of 80-year-old cargo ships on short notice does not.

Spending the money doesn't count as losing it, but being unable to account for it definitely does. They didn't "just" lose that amount, but over the last decade or so at least that much defense money has just vanished into the aether without anyone being able to tell where it went.

The U.S. government never paid anything for Starlink Service in Ukraine.

They paid for a few dishes, but even on those dishes SpaceX has paid for service for a year now. They are losing money on those, they could have gone to paying customers.

And I wasn't even talking about that. I was talking about development costs. But thanks for bringing that up, it's yet another instance of SpaceX helping the U.S. without adequate compensation.

As for a potential Taiwan invasion I suggest you search Google for recent news on the subject. I assure you the military does not consider this possibility to be insane. Heck, people thought the idea of Russia attacking Ukraine was insane.

Are you talking about the silly claim that AOC made, which was completely debunked, which even the NYT took her to task for? Cause that’s the only thing I can think you are talking about and three seconds on google will show you why it’s BS.

If that's the only thing you can think of I can only guess you aren't paying attention, given funds vanishing on those kinds of scales has been a thing for far longer than one new congresswoman has been doing the rent-free thing in peoples' heads. Unless you're saying she made those claims while Bush was in office too, I guess.

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Yeah before Artemis they tried to force NASA to use it to launch stuff like Europa Clipper which would have been an astounding waste of money when Falcon Heavy can do it...

>Nobody paid SpaceX anything to develop Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, or Starship.

NASA did help fund the development of Falcon-9 through the COTS program and by buying launches before it was ready to fly. NASA is also paying them $3 billion to develop and launch the Starship HLS.

I’m sorry, what was that? What’s this about “adequate compensation”? if you’re going to simp for the world’s biggest fraud, at least do some research.

Also, comparing China and Russia is laughably out of touch.

Sorry, did you miss the part in the last comment where I said this, or did you just want a source:

>They paid for a few dishes, but even on those dishes SpaceX has paid for service for a year now. They are losing money on those, they could have gone to paying customers.

Here's the USAID official spokesperson's statement. Rather then your editorializing from Jeff Bezo's outlet.

>“USAID has purchased Starlink terminals, but has not paid for Starlink service,” the spokesperson said. “Like many mobile network markets, the most important cost factor is not the device itself, but the service, which SpaceX is offering for free for all devices.”

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/22/ukraine-internet-starlink-elon-musk-russia-war/

>Also, comparing China and Russia is laughably out of touch.

Yes, China is obviously a bigger threat. The Ukraine war proves what many had already said, that Russia's capabilities have been greatly exaggerated.

Lmao “oh that part doesn’t count because I don’t want it to”. Hundreds of millions of dollars, to say nothing of the billions in other subsidies musk’s companies have gotten. I guess we won’t talk about the part where he lied about that though right?

The US will never go to war with China over taiwan, to suggest anything otherwise is absurd

Bro, SpaceX sells the dishes at a loss. The Verge and other outlets have done teardowns to confirm this. And USAID says all they did was buy dishes.

If by "subsidies' you mean being the lowest bidder in competitive bidding... and therefore actually saving the government money compared to competitors in all SpaceX's contracts, that's a pretty weird definition of 'subsidy'.

Sitting back and letting China take Taiwan without defending them seems like a bad idea, but I admit that predicting what US political leaders might do in response is pretty hard.

If there's one takeaway I'd like you to have from this conversation, it's that being the lowest bidder in competitive, fixed price contracts is a very different thing from a subsidy.

Because subsidies actually do exist. So do cost-plus contracts, which, without oversight, actually are similar to subsidies.

These are important, basic principles of how the government spends money. Lack of understanding them is ultimately an impediment to having a cost effective government.

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