Don't shoot me. I'm just the messenger.

[qso1]

alokmohan:<br />Mars is the only place where we can stay in future afer terra forming.<br /><br />Me:<br />As long as there are politicians, press, and public who buy into the idea that we will somehow cure social ills by cutting an already cut NASA...we are never going to mars...except in the case that the private sector might get us there and that will only if there is a profit to be made. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[qso1]

no_way:<br />So if we accept waste as inevitable within government ( which it basically is ) then any amount of waste elsewhere is no argument for increasing budget. <br /><br />Me:<br />As long as people choose to elect rich people to represent them, there will always be rich taking care of the rich. Even NASA is not exempt from this. So yes, there will be a certain amount of wasteful spending no matter what. The question is really more about can we afford what we do spend. This question changes with the times. We could afford Apollo because we percieved the Russians to be ahead of us if we didn't win the space race.<br /><br />Those days are long over. But today, its kind of like, we can afford to waste $100B dollars on a country that will probably never really be fully democratic. But the alternative is to loose access to oil supplies hat have long been a strategic asset to the U.S. Even deficit spending. We decided in the Nixon years that deficit spending was acceptable. There hadn't been a budget surplus since 1969 until the Clinton budget of 1998. Then comes Bush who resumed deficit spending in 2002.<br /><br />But as for waste...or wasteful spending. A certain amount has always been accepted. In NASAs case, it became unacceptable after Apollo and obviously, where HSF is concerned, has been since. This is evidenced by critics still calling for cuts long after the agency was put on a 50% reduction that has held since the post Apollo era. If this kind of discipline had been applied to deficit spending from 1973 onward...we'd have had surplus budgets since 1973, or at least very small deficits compared to the crap we've had since 1969.<br /><br />It makes no sense to me at all to attack one small part of government spending, then allow much larger wastes to go on. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[CalliArcale]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>There are more diseases than during the Apollo era.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />While I agree with your overall argument, I do not believe it is true that there are more diseases than during the Apollo era. I'd at least like to see some sort of statistic -- along with an explanation of how you determine whether there are more or less diseases. Quantity of distinct diagnoses? Quantity of overall illnesses? Is this limited to infectious disease? What about secondary diseases? Do syndromes count? If real, is the increase any different from at any other point in history, or is an increase in diseases merely a normal product of evolution in pathogens? And most importantly to your argument, how do you quantify whether US government waste contributed to any increase? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[qso1]

After the Apollo era, there have been at least two diseases that came onto the scene that I can think of right off the bat. Legionaires disease and AIDs. Legionaires disease kind of came and went. After the outbreak in 1976 IIRC, I'm not aware of any more outbreaks. AIDS however, became the major disease story of the late 20th century. AIDs was probably around before the Apollo era but its not known for sure.<br /><br />There have been reports from time to time of diseases such as tuburculosis making a comeback because the disease has become resistant to vaccinations. If I had kept these types of headlines for reference, I could make a better argument but since I didn't, I cannot really argue the point other than as a generality. Nobody in the 1960s expected disease to still be such a problem in the 21st century, especially those who called for HSF cuts thinking that would be some cure all for everything. Even reasonable critics who just wanted to take a certain amount of money for use in combating disease, poverty whatever...should have realized that asking a government that gave us Watergate, to apply NASA cuts to where they should go, just wasn't going to happen.<br /><br />As for how the government waste contributing to any increase in disease. That was not my intent. What I was trying to say is that critics of HSF spending often say that the money could be put to better use curing diseases as thought thats where the money would actually go. In reality, the government wastes anything that could be saved for curing disease. If we were to allocate HSF funding to cure cancer...the government would waste several times the HSF budget just in deficits alone thus negating any NASA budget cut savings.<br /><br />My statement "There are more diseases than during the Apollo era." is in error, poor choice of wording on my part and for that, I do apologize. There is really know way to know that I can see, whether there were more or less diseases post Apollo or whatever.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[brandbll]

"You are correct, the cancellation of Apollo and the subsequent compromises to STS have plagued us since. Finally, NASA is back on the exploration path again. I view the last 30 years as a mistake so the L & C parallel still exists. We simply lost our way and our will. "<br /><br />I agree. We've gotten off track. Manned space flights should be used as a means of exploration, not as a means of testing our physiological ability in LEO. We've been wasting our time for decades now and yet i constantly see people wondering why the american public has become so uninterested in space flight. The public isn't stupid, when you tell them your going to spend THEIR money on exploring the solar system, and then you end up spending billions on sitting in LEO; your essentially lying to the people. I still can't believe sometimes that it's going to take us almost a half century just to return to the moon. Imagine the facial expression you'd get from a guy like Buzz Aldrin if you went back in time and told him where we are currently with our Space program. He probably wouldn't believe you. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="3">You wanna talk some jive? I'll talk some jive. I'll talk some jive like you've never heard!</font></p> </div>

 

[alokmohan]

Buzz is a good boxer.Better not to ask.

 

[brandbll]

I was going to say he'd punch out the time traveller who told him that; but i didn't want people to think i was taking a jab <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> at Buzz's character. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="3">You wanna talk some jive? I'll talk some jive. I'll talk some jive like you've never heard!</font></p> </div>