Comment by Teever
4 days ago
All of this stuff is really great but it's not worth the cost that was spent on it.
The thing you have to keep asking yourself is "what could 100 billion dollars of non-pork barrel spending have bought instead of what we ended up with?"
A month of war in the middle east.
> All of this stuff is really great but it's not worth the cost that was spent on it
It’s building towards a system. If we get Starship and in-orbit propellant depots and a lunar nuclear reactor and then kill the programme, it will probably be judged by history as a success.
> what could 100 billion dollars of non-pork barrel spending have bought instead of what we ended up with?
Rien. This is the system we have, and it’s unclear such a program could have survived sans pork.
It may be building towards a system. Or it could all be cancelled in 3-4 weeks after these four explorers burn up on reentry.
And then all these hopes and dreams that you have will be gone, like that $100 billion dollars just up in smoke.
I can tell that you're as passionate about space exploration and colonization as I am, but this isn't the way my friend.
This program is coming at the cost of the Aldrin Cyclers and Von Braun Wheels that you and I know could and should have existed decades ago and while you may think that those things will come from this program I think you should consider the fact that root cause of this program's dysfunction is what is denying us this reality of humanity spreading across the stars.
> It may be building towards a system
It may build. It is building.
> it could all be cancelled in 3-4 weeks after these four explorers burn up
We’d have wasted money. But we’d still be ahead. Artemis has funded a lot of development.
> can tell that you're as passionate about space exploration and colonization as I am, but this isn't the way my friend
In a perfect world? No. Is it a legitimate way? Absolutely. We’re still moving forward.
> This program is coming at the cost of the Aldrin Cyclers and Von Braun Wheels
Nobody is funding these. We’re beating the Chinese to land. That clicks. That sells. Space-based infrastructure is hallucinated competition.
> that root cause of this program's dysfunction is what is denying us this reality
The alternative is we spend NASA’s Artemis budget on Medicaid billing at autism centers in Indiana.
I’d prefer the vision you painted. But I won’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. This program moves us forward and funds roads to alternatives. Starship, for example.
What a simultaneously cynical and boring and completely useless attitude. Is it your position that if this hadn't happened 100b of otherwise more important spending would have happened?
I think that $100 billion, spent effectively could have resulted in Von Braun Wheels in LEO. I think that it could have resulted in teleoperated lunar mining and smelting that would be allowing us to build human bases on Earth now instead of a single fly by that may end in the death of these four amazing explorers.
There is no world in which lunar mining and smelting economically produces anything useful on Earth.
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