NASA Budget OT

Larchman

IMO we’ve got bigger issues on earth. Our national credit card is way over balance to the tune of $37T. We’ve spent all the money many times over. We’re broke and overdrawn. As the saying goes no bucks no Buck Rogers. It’s like your kid asking for a chemistry set after all your other kids have partied at the mall with your credit card beyond your ability to pay off for many years.

MacLeech

Meanwhile, there’s the minimum $175 BILLION Golden Dome he wants… how many years of NASA funding would that provide?

BTW, that’s the minimum price if SpaceX helps. If SpaceX doesn’t, the price will be several times higher, and it might get done a decade later.

Larchman

MacLeech Meanwhile, there’s the minimum $175 BILLION Golden Dome he wants… how many years of NASA funding would that provide?

I’m not playing the game of this expenditure against that expenditure. There is a fixed amount of revenue. Divvy up your spending within that amount. No more no less. If you continue to borrow, interest costs will eventually eat up all of your discretionary spending period and then you will have nothing else. Talk to me when the NASA budget (and all other spending) is part of a balanced budget.

px_eliezer_

Larchman We’re broke and overdrawn. As the saying goes no bucks no Buck Rogers.

That money doesn’t get sent to space aliens, it goes to people and companies right here on earth, mostly in the USA.

Money WILL be spent, the only question is does it go to research (scientific/space/medical) or does it go towards bigly military parades (as will happen in DC on June 14), constant trips to golf courses, the overhyped Golden Dome, changing the names of ships and military bases, rewriting books and documents to remove history, etc.

Since its inception the space program has had enormous payback benefits for this country and for the world.

At this very moment, you’re using the Internet which owes its birth to the government.
https://www.darpa.mil/sites/default/files/attachment/2025-01/darpa-vignette-arpanet.pdf (pdf)

Likewise:
5 ways NASA tech has been used to help life on Earth
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/06/nasa-tech-life-on-earth/

Much more to science than “Buck Rogers”.

As for Buck Rogers, remember that he fought against the gangster “Killer Kane” who had seized control of the Earth government.

(Just as Flash Gordon had to fight against “Ming the Merciless”).

Larchman We’re broke and overdrawn.

We’re always broke and overdrawn, which is why it’s wrong to give bigly tax cuts to the rich and very rich.

But if we decide to put everything on hold until the budget is balanced, we’ll be waiting a loooong time, so there is something to be said for plodding on with our lives too.