People behind the scenes are siphoning NASA space research money and turning it into space profit instead. The growth of private space companies starting in the US is no coincidence. Blame oligarchs for steering the country into a dead end.
Comment on US concerned NASA will be overtaken by China's space program
FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Gee whiz, maybe we should have been properly funding our space program all of these years instead of wasting it on making the military industrial complex filthy fucking rich?
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Jarix@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Hate on spacex and its competitors as much as you want, im not saying you dont have cause.
But defunding NASA caused this. Those billionaires looked and said holy shit, the entire nasa budget is only that much? And they arent building rockets anymore? I can literally fund my own space program? Ide be crazy not to
TurtleJoe@lemmy.world 7 months ago
The government has funded SpaceX, not musk.
FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Don’t worry, I do.
grue@lemmy.world 7 months ago
To be fair, it’s not as if those things are mutually-exclusive. For example, you know how the Hubble Space Telescope is this extremely unique and nigh-irreplaceable scientific instrument that cost a pretty big fraction of NASA’s entire budget?
Well, it turns out we actually have dozens of the damn things; it’s just that we couldn’t be bothered to actually point more than one of them away from Earth instead of towards it.
FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world 7 months ago
They certainly don’t have to be, but there is a well established pattern of the US government getting waaay too chummy with corporations to the point that it can undermine what’s best for the people in pursuit of corporate interests.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Especially stupid considering last time they gave the space program appropriate funding, it led to a lot of advancements that the military industrial complex could use.
Windex007@lemmy.world 7 months ago
You make it sound like the military advancements were an unexpected byproduct, as opposed to the real goal.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
The goal was optics. Kennedy didn’t know what advances would result from Apollo. He wanted to show that the US was better at science and technology than Russia.
Windex007@lemmy.world 7 months ago
The science of putting a ballistic payload anywhere, including heaven.
The space race was awesome because it let the two countries measure their dicks (specifically their military dicks) without actually obliterating the planet.
The “for all mankind” angle was a great way to frame things for the population of Earth, for sure. But just like mobile chemical WMD labs in Iraq, sometimes the given justification and actual justification are two different things.
Don’t get me wrong, there absolutely were beneficial optics. Something doesn’t have to just be for one thing. But it was always primarily about practical demonstration of weapons capacity under the facade of human exploration.
FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Nonsense, surely their shortsightedness will pay off in the long run!