I'm starting to get why the conspiracy theorists believe the original moon stuff was faked. My iphone has more than 100,000 times the processing power of the computers used for the Apollo mission and yet it came out yesterday that the latest attempt to simply land a box on the moon has failed.
When I was trying to think of a possible good explanation, I initially thought, "Well back in the day the best and the brightest worked for NASA, now they are all in Silicon Valley acting like ahol** and trying to get rich designing some app that's ultimately of little use. Maybe only the guys and gals who can't get private industry jobs go to NASA."
But then I saw this most recent failure was from some private company that we paid $108 million bucks to. Can the taxpayers at least get their money back?
Science experts of letsrun, let me hear your theories as to why we suck at space much more than 55 years ago.
The only way to spread the knowledge is to fund private industry projects nationwide. You can't have Los Angeles do it all like the 1960s Apollo 11 program. It's not smart for national security.
NASA was mainly Cal Tech, USC, UCLA, and Stanford people. Aerospace companies are all in West LA, Torrance, San Fernando Valley. Tests were held at Edwards AFB and Vandenberg AFB. Because of the turbulent 1960s, JFK and LBJ had to wrestle Southern support for NASA, and were forced to award some work to out of the way places like Alabama, Texas, etc.
I'm starting to get why the conspiracy theorists believe the original moon stuff was faked. My iphone has more than 100,000 times the processing power of the computers used for the Apollo mission and yet it came out yesterday that the latest attempt to simply land a box on the moon has failed.
When I was trying to think of a possible good explanation, I initially thought, "Well back in the day the best and the brightest worked for NASA, now they are all in Silicon Valley acting like ahol** and trying to get rich designing some app that's ultimately of little use. Maybe only the guys and gals who can't get private industry jobs go to NASA."
But then I saw this most recent failure was from some private company that we paid $108 million bucks to. Can the taxpayers at least get their money back?
Science experts of letsrun, let me hear your theories as to why we suck at space much more than 55 years ago.
In today's dollars, how much do you think it cost us to send someone to the moon back then?
I'm starting to get why the conspiracy theorists believe the original moon stuff was faked. My iphone has more than 100,000 times the processing power of the computers used for the Apollo mission and yet it came out yesterday that the latest attempt to simply land a box on the moon has failed.
When I was trying to think of a possible good explanation, I initially thought, "Well back in the day the best and the brightest worked for NASA, now they are all in Silicon Valley acting like ahol** and trying to get rich designing some app that's ultimately of little use. Maybe only the guys and gals who can't get private industry jobs go to NASA."
But then I saw this most recent failure was from some private company that we paid $108 million bucks to. Can the taxpayers at least get their money back?
Science experts of letsrun, let me hear your theories as to why we suck at space much more than 55 years ago.
The US Government made a brilliant decision to fake the moon landings by hiring Stanley Kubrick to film them in a hanger on Earth thereby saving billions of dollars all while humiliating the Russians - why else would they bring a dune buggy up and play golf
Dozens of impossibilities with the official version.
The only way to spread the knowledge is to fund private industry projects nationwide. You can't have Los Angeles do it all like the 1960s Apollo 11 program. It's not smart for national security.
NASA was mainly Cal Tech, USC, UCLA, and Stanford people. Aerospace companies are all in West LA, Torrance, San Fernando Valley. Tests were held at Edwards AFB and Vandenberg AFB. Because of the turbulent 1960s, JFK and LBJ had to wrestle Southern support for NASA, and were forced to award some work to out of the way places like Alabama, Texas, etc.
NASA lost its drive and focus decades ago. That spirit and dedication was lost along the way.
The Transcontinental Railroad was built in about 10 years starting around 1863. California has been building a railroad since 2015 and is looking at finishing the originally planned project in 30 years to never. Even the smallest segment isn't projected to open until around 2030 or later. The Great Projects that were completed in the past: Hoover Dam, Empire State Building, Erie Canal, Interstate Highways, the automobile industry, electric grid, etc. The United States can't even build everyday consumer products anymore.
People these days place more priority on having feel-good meetings, Powerpoint presentations, and endless human relations navel gazing. Not to mention social media cryfests.
Always seemed odd to me that marathoners in the Shorter/Rodgers era would be able to hang with, or beat, American male marathoners of today.
The same thing is seen today in sports where every play is celebrated by posturing, dancing, look at me stuff. Even if the team is getting blown out and has a crappy record.
"It's all about me", entitlement, putting the wrong people in the wrong jobs to satisfy quotas, bad leaders, ..the list goes on and on.
Whatever it was that made America a powerhouse of civilization is finished, and it's not coming back.
As a young 20-something, I think older generations need to realize that we don't have an answer to "Why is America great?". There are incredible things the US has done (moon landing, beating Nazis, bastion of freedom, interstate system, transcontinental railroad, etc), but none really in the past 20 years. And, the great things we have done are entirely politicized. The Covid vaccine is one of the most impressive things the US has done, but half the country doesn't even think it works. Up until Biden pulled us out of Afghanistan, the US had been in losing wars for my entire life. America used to be a shining beacon of what was possible, but now we can't get anything done. Luckily, Biden got a historic infrastructure bill passed, among other things, but there's nothing we've done since I was born that I feel I can feel national pride over. I look at every other developed country, and see that they don't have homeless people littering the streets of their cities, and they don't have people filing bankruptcy because they got sick. And I'm supposed to consider my country the best?
We need a president to say "We will make it to the moon by the end of this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard", but about climate change. We should be leading the world in green energy, but we refuse to. It shouldn't even be political, and it doesn't need to be about climate change; We should just do it because it'd make life better. We need to use our influence to make other nations more prosperous, and build strong economic and political ties with them. But instead, we're too afraid of brown people, so we try to build $100bn walls on the border. Instead, we try to put more money into fossil fuels, even when China is dumping money into clean energy, because it's obviously the future.
I'm sick and tired of conservatives complaining about how the US was better back in the day. It could be great now, and they're holding us back.
This is a link to an Astro Alexandra short. She is a professional space communicator and very popular on social media, making shorts discussing astronomy and astrophysics. This basically explains why we don't use the old technology to go back to the moon. NASA did send Artemis I to the moon recently, and we are going to send people in a few years. The new tech takes a few years to perfect and be sure it's safe.
We spend 1/10th as much on NASA as a % of the federal budget as we did in peak Apollo Era – AND NASA has many more projects and goals than it did in the 60s.
As a federal agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) receives its funding from the annual federal budget passed by the United States Congress. The following charts detail the amount of federal funding...
This is a bad example too Rojo, it's a private company basically testing their lander for the first time. There were plenty of much more costly failures early in Apollo/other NASA programs.
Besides, Artemis missions are on track... bump this thread when they fail and I'll listen.
As a young 20-something, I think older generations need to realize that we don't have an answer to "Why is America great?". There are incredible things the US has done (moon landing, beating Nazis, bastion of freedom, interstate system, transcontinental railroad, etc), but none really in the past 20 years. And, the great things we have done are entirely politicized. The Covid vaccine is one of the most impressive things the US has done, but half the country doesn't even think it works. Up until Biden pulled us out of Afghanistan, the US had been in losing wars for my entire life. America used to be a shining beacon of what was possible, but now we can't get anything done. Luckily, Biden got a historic infrastructure bill passed, among other things, but there's nothing we've done since I was born that I feel I can feel national pride over. I look at every other developed country, and see that they don't have homeless people littering the streets of their cities, and they don't have people filing bankruptcy because they got sick. And I'm supposed to consider my country the best?
We need a president to say "We will make it to the moon by the end of this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard", but about climate change. We should be leading the world in green energy, but we refuse to. It shouldn't even be political, and it doesn't need to be about climate change; We should just do it because it'd make life better. We need to use our influence to make other nations more prosperous, and build strong economic and political ties with them. But instead, we're too afraid of brown people, so we try to build $100bn walls on the border. Instead, we try to put more money into fossil fuels, even when China is dumping money into clean energy, because it's obviously the future.
I'm sick and tired of conservatives complaining about how the US was better back in the day. It could be great now, and they're holding us back.
Moon Landing - nope
beating Nazis - nope - that was the Soviet Union. US came in at the end and scooped up the glory.
bastion of freedom - where were you during covid?
interstate system, transcontinental railroad - huh? Do you not know what China has accomplished?
Covid mRNA - what? 17 million killed from the vax and counting.
Climate change - wow. You are young.
And before you jump to conclusions and brand me a Trumptard, I'm not American and have never voted in a US election (since citizenship apparently doesn't matter in the US, it seems important to add this).
Patriotism is programming. For most, one's nationality is nothing to be proud of since all they did to 'achieve' this was be born.