K&R if you think that instead of cutting from NASA, we should be eliminating the wars.

[FLAprogressive]

[sudopod]

1. ! nt

[Warpy]

2. kickeroo

[The Traveler]

3. Ya bloody well right

K&R'ed.Spaceships. Solar road ways. Inventions. Not bombs.

[hifiguy]

4. More money spent on air conditioning

in Iraq and Trashcanistan every year than is spent on NASA. It is to mourn or cry. Or both.

kicked

[Johonny]

5. I think they should listen to people there for once.

I vote politicians listen to NASA's plans for the future instead of telling what their plans should be for a change. Politicians want space planes, moon bases and trips to Mars, it would be nice just once the space community actually got some of what they wanted.

[Rex]

6. Yes, science not insanity.

War is insanity.

[Enthusiast]

54. Particularly these wars.

They are/were actually counterproductive.

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. Neil deGrasse Tyson just tweeted this.

The US military spends as much in 23 days as NASA spends in a year - and that's when we're not fighting a war.

[FLAprogressive]

8. +1000 wow

[Rex]

10. Gotta feed the MIC.

That monster controls a large part of the American agenda.

[progressoid]

38. +1 for Neil

[Enthusiast]

55. But we must hand over all those hard won

technological advancements to private interests so they can create private sector jobs! Don't you know anything? NASA is socialism!

[Occulus]

64. Oh, he's one of the best

Very good at presenting science in a way that's accessible to the layman. We need more like him.

[newfie11]

9. agree nt

[WillyT]

11. K & R !!!

:kick:

[Mojeoux]

12. K & R

[Canuckistanian]

13. K&R from me

Spending on NASA brings returns. Spending on war is pure waste.

[LongTomH]

14. Quoting the late, great Bill Hicks

“Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.” – Bill Hicks 1993

The greatest philosophers of our day had to masquerade as comedians to get their message across!

[Ignis]

23. ^^^ This.

I just finished watching American the other night. :toast: RIP, Bill.

[Enthusiast]

56. Dude...

Great post!

[rhett o rick]

88. But, but, but that'd be socialism. I am almost afraid to even type the word. nm

[Booster]

15. It seems so simple to fix doesn't it?

[Journeyman]

16. Let's defund all three. There are plenty of better places to spend that much money. . .

[FLAprogressive]

20. These inventions haven't benefitted society as a whole?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off

[Journeyman]

27. And the same money put into pure research wouldn't give us equally valuable advances?. . .

Perhaps more so, since so much of it wouldn't have been wasted building a space truck?

The same silly argument could be made for advances we've received through military investment - medical, transportation, construction - the list is equally endless.

No need to strip all funding from either Nasa or the military, but a definite need to prioritize investment of our limited resources.

[FLAprogressive]

28. what's wrong with space exploration?

[Journeyman]

29. And now we're back to the beginning of this discussion. . .

There are plenty of better places to spend that much money.

As I only entered this thread to register an opinion on my sense of priorities, I'm going to go now. Plenty of better pursuits for my own time, too.

[Johonny]

37. you know NASA tries to do this

and they get over ruled by our elected officials that demand they do stupid things.

[Odin2005]

39. I wondered how long it would take for a NASA-hater to show up.

:eyes:

Do you not understand how puny NASA's budget is compared to the whole federal budget?

[Journeyman]

49. Very good argument. We won't miss 'em then, will we? . . .

[LongTomH]

79. For those who question the value of space exploration............

May I humbly submit these posts from Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy website:

Debating Space has links to a number of Phil's posts on the value of space exploration.

What value space exploration?. Here are some excerpts:

First, the question of why spend money there when we have problems here is a false dichotomy. We have enough money to work on problems here and in space! We just don’t seem to choose to, which is maddening. $12 million an hour is spent in Iraq; the US government chose to do that instead of fix many problems that could have been solved with that money. NASA is less than 1% of the US budget, so it’s best to pick your fights wisely here.

Second, space exploration is necessary. We learn so much from it! Early attempts discovered the van Allen radiation belts (with America’s first satellite!). Later satellites found the ozone hole, letting us know we were damaging our ecosystem. Weather prediction via satellites is another obvious example, as well as global communication, TV, GPS, and much more.

If you want to narrow it down to exploring other planets and the Universe around us, again we can give the practical answer that the more we learn about our space environment, the more we learn about the Earth itself. Examining the Sun led us to understand that its magnetic field connects with ours, sometimes with disastrous results… yet we can fortify ourselves against the danger, should we so choose. Space exploration may yet save us from an asteroid impact, too. Spreading our seed to other worlds may eventually save the human race.

But I’m with Fraser. These are all good reasons, and there are many, many more. But it is the very nature of humans to explore! We could do nothing in our daily lives but look no farther than the ends of our noses. We could labor away in a gray, listless, dull world.

When we had a vigorous space program, it gave a cutting edge to our science and technology. Since we've cut back, the lead in science and technology has gone to other countries; the world's fastest supercomputers are now mostly in Asia. We've got a lead in military technology and nothing much else.

We're even losing the lead in space; check out the Dragonspace section of the SpaceDaily website.

[immoderate]

81. NASA is good, but a lot of money had been wasted on shuttles and the ISS...

Which have added nothing to science, while experiments like the DSCOVR satellite are warehoused.

The so-called NASA spinoffs were invented by earth bound scientists, in earth laboratories, using NASA money, which is the same as that of any other agency.

--imm

[Occulus]

63. NASA spends very little money compared to the benefits we see from it

NASA has its fingers in a lot of outer-space pies. It's responsible for putting up weather and telecommunications satellites, monitoring NEOs and discovering new ones, giving us warnings of bad space weather, and so on.

Without NASA, we would never have found that small rock whose closest approach was only 7000Km from our planet; while that one was the size of a house and would have exploded before it actually hit us, there's another one due in the 2020s-2030s that's significantly larger and could pose a threat. Never mind the thousands of other objects out there that could hit our planet.

The Sun is the most violent place in our solar system, and for all we owe it our existence, it can harm our civilization in some profound ways. Were the Sun to burp directly at us by throwing a coronal mass ejection our way, NASA would give us early warning and time to prepare. Lately, all we've seen are some pretty lightshows and the problems these events have given us have only extended to messing with GPS a little; a true Carrington Event could leave the world in complete chaos, and without NASA, we would never know it was coming and the damage we would suffer would be oh so much worse.

You depend on NASA every single day for your local and regional weather report. Without NASA, there would be no further development of weather monitoring and you bet someone- probably all the someones involved- would try to monetize that information. Want to pay for your local weather? No? Don't defund NASA.

To realize all this, of course, you have to actually think about all the things NASA does, and I don't think you did that....

[kick-ass-bob]

17. Abso-fucking-lutely.

That's all I have to say about that.

[Uncle Joe]

18. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, FLDprogressive.

[TriMera]

19. K&R. n/t

[ixion]

21. k/r + infinity

[FirstLight]

22. how about instead

of cutting ANYTHING, first end the fucking WAR Machine and Tax the fucking top 2%

i am so sick of this ...why are we arguing for rational thought, when our POTUS promised to END the wars?

oh yea, he was just trying to get elected...

[inna]

91. Exactly. He also promised to tax the rich and "spread the wealth" -

well, it sure got spread UPwards, in case someone didn't notice. I simply cannot BELIEVE sometimes what this president is doing.

[bananas]

24. k&r nt

[Lebam in LA]

25. K&R

[SlipperySlope]

26. K&R

[JHB]

30. K&R with booster rockets...

...and multiple stages.

[Gemini Cat]

31. Big K&R!

[Octafish]

32. If we could put a man on the moon we could do anything.

All we got to is try.

Take peace.

Please.

Works every time.

And it builds a better world for everybody.

Not just the Have-Mores.

[Rex]

34. True!

We can do anything! Yet many in the ruling class prefer that we stay stagnant and docile, it somehow adds to their profit margin.

[Octafish]

35. And how.

Rex, you and I know he'd have applied our nation's know-how to solving other problems. Pollution and "De-Pollution" were two of the areas Kennedy asked about, for instance.

And you know he wouldn't stand for complaints from the monied class when the subject was the national interest. Being a good Democrat -- positive, liberal, progressive and egalitarian -- he believed that was defined as the People's interest.

[Rex]

36. I have to agree with your opinion on America being a completely

different country IF JFK would have been allowed to finish his term in office. His fatal flaw imo - wanted to do away with the CIA and the Fedral Reserve...hold the military accountable for civilian deaths...and look what it got him.

'Positive, liberal, progressive and egalitarian' - We need John and Robert now more then ever.

[malaise]

33. We were talking about this at work today

Makes sense

[Odin2005]

40. We should have been on Mars by now.

[Starry Messenger]

41. k&r

With bells on.

[Lugnut]

42. K&R n/t

[LiberalAndProud]

43. k&r

for what it's worth.

:cry:

[defendandprotect]

44. kr

[TheKentuckian]

45. Most definitely.

[phasma ex machina]

46. K&R. IIRC the powers-that-be use NASA's budget to hide a chunk of the massive military shadow budget

[donheld]

47. We need NASA to seen Tea Baggers to the moon.

A one way trip.

[Fearless]

48. There's a Uranus joke in here somewhere... n/t

[donheld]

78. I was going to leave uranus out of this

:hide:

[Fearless]

100. Much obliged.

[Warren DeMontague]

50. And ending the drug war. And legalizing and taxing marijuana.

It's amazing how much crazy-ass shit people will entertain- like gutting social security & medicare; but cut defense? End the ridiculous $40 Billion a year war on dangerous pot smokers like Willie Nelson or, yeah, the late Carl Sagan?

Right, that's crazy talk.

:eyes:

[me b zola]

51. K&R

[Duppers]

52. Absolutely.

Besides scrapping the Shuttle, what almost equally pisses me off is that Congress has de-funded the James Webb Telescope, the scientific successor to the Hubble Space Telescope!!

Okay, so we have to pay for the $1.2 Trillion wars & pay for bailing out the 'too-big-to-fail' banksters to the tune of $4.6 Trillion and sacking the Shuttle Program could save a few dollars, but the Telescope??!! I cannot see the justification. It's like they're afraid that we know too much about reality already and how are they going to keep us down on the religious farm when we've seen the universe?


End the damn wars already. There's not a 'win' to them, so end them now.

K&R

[Enthusiast]

53. No brainer.

The wars are actually serving no purpose. Can you say tits on a boar hog? I knew you could.

[Fumesucker]

57. K&R

[ProfessionalLeftist]

58. K & R n/t

[Overseas]

59. K&R.

[Amaya]

60. dream on

never ever happening. :(

[Baclava]

61. K&R - with pics

[kestrel91316]

62. K&R. Duh.

[sazemisery]

65. K & R n/t

[a2liberal]

66. K&R (n/t)

[woo me with science]

67. K&R nt

[dlfuller]

68. Duh!

K&R

[saras]

69. That's a good start...

The other half is here...

http://www.lcurve.org/

That graph is pretty straight from the zero income line to over half a million per year income. What we need to do is just cut that spike off completely. There's no reason that the income distribution should peak so extremely except systematic cheating. And if everyone was cheating, the whole curve would be distorted, not just the L at the extreme high end.

If America had had any sense, we would have begun getting off of oil (and cars) back in the seventies. Just like with global warming, the basic science was in, the only questions left were about the details of the timing - and two thirds of the country is acting like they STILL can't imagine a world not structured around the internal combustion engine.

Because funding NASA is not enough. We need to start funding basic science again in all fields, separate from corporate agendas. We can no longer afford to let corporations tell us what to research and what not to.

[Atypical Liberal]

102. Great link, but...

Great link, but I don't attribute the spike to systematic cheating.

It is simply that wealth snowballs. Once you have a certain amount of wealth, it feeds itself. Moreoever, once you reach a certain level of wealth, you can influence government policy to be favorable to your financial interests, thus increasing your wealth even more.

Unregulated capitalism will inevitably concentrate the wealth in the hands of a few.

[JDPriestly]

70. K&R

[abelenkpe]

71. Big k&r nt

[certainot]

72. and get the military out of nasa- reagan's crew militarized it as part of their star wars givaway

[rosesaylavee]

73. K&R

[Dem2theMax]

74. Kicking this one into the Milky Way.

:kick:

[poverlay]

75. K & R

[October]

76. KICK!!!

[freedom fighter jh]

77. Eliminate the wars, yes. Fund the NASA

Earth science program. Now more than ever we need climatologists to tell us what climate change to expect so that we can (1) do whatever is possible to stave it off and (2) adapt to what can't be changed.

[ejbr]

80. k & r n/t

[I hate liars]

82. What we should do is obvious, even to politicians...

...the problem is far worse than making a choice between A and B. We could kick-start the economy again AND take a chunk out of the deficit by doing this:

- Cutting Defense drastically, and putting returning service personnel on public works projects
- Killing the Bush tax cuts and then restoring Clinton-era (or better yet, early Reagan-era) tax rates for everyone
- Instituting universal health care
- Amending laws that encourage companies to offshore jobs and hoard profits offshore

Of course, the point is that we know what would solve the problem, and if we DID chose to do these things, we'd all be better off (including the wealthy). But it won't happen, because rational choice is not an option, at least not at the Federal government level. Corruption has eaten too far into the system to allow for that.

JMO

[MissDeeds]

83. Absolutely

K&R

[swilton]

84. I think we should cut both

NASA is a clandestine program for the MIC and the goal is to militarize outer space. Furthermore it is a big distraction from issues that need redress on GOPE (good ole planet earth).

[Odin2005]

86. Oh look, another NASA hater!

:puke:

[freedom fighter jh]

97. You are partly right.

About half of what NASA does is secret and that probably means MIC.

But NASA also has an Earth science program. To my knowledge, NASA's Earth science program represents our government's best effort to address climate change. See http://climate.nasa.gov/. NASA's Earth science program focuses right on some GOPE issues, the environmental ones.

[sudopod]

105. Hold on, let me bend over. I can't hear you as well

when you talk out of your ass.

[blackspade]

85. Big K&R!!!!!

The launch was pretty awesome. I have watched the last two live and am just heart broken that the US is such a pale shadow of itself in the world of manned space flight. As fucked up as the Russians are, they at least still have some national pride in their on-going space flight achievements.
I figured by my age that I could go into space myself without having to be a fucking billionaire.

[rhett o rick]

87. Wars are far more profitable to the corp-overlords. Disasters come in second. nm

[SnowCritter]

89. Damn Skippy!!

K&R

:kick:

[Posteritatis]

90. I'd still like to know what percentage of people who want to defund NASA can tell us its budget

Most of them are likely alongside those morons who believe it's in the same league as the defense budget. The Pentagon spends more on air conditioning than the US spends on NASA.

[Beavker]

92. K@R

No brainer

[silverweb]

93. K&R

:kick:

[knitter4democracy]

94. Hell, yeah! nt.

[sarcasmo]

95. Trillions for the military zero for the populace.

[defendandprotect]

96. 80% of the public want an end to the wars .... !!

Pelosi morning after 2006 on video:

"Dems were elected to end the war" -- !!

[ut oh]

98. a little

bumpsy daisy

[blindpig]

99. k&r

[SOS]

101. Cutting the Webb telescope

while flushing $13 billion a month down the toilet in Iraq and Afghanistan
is the perfect illustration of how f#cked up our national priorities are.

[L0oniX]

103. kickypoo

[sudopod]

104. Fuck yea nt

[Capitalocracy]

106. Too late to R, here's a K. We should be eliminating wars instead of cutting a lot of things. nt