Neil Tyson on NASA

Its sad but true. Kids today would rather watch reality tv and facebook or twitter than do anything meaningful. I can't even stomach The Jersey Shore anymore. Having a good time is awesome but defining it as just drinking and having sex with multiple partners is irresponsible. It's just sad, The next great scientist of our era will be from China, Australia, Russia, or maybe Germany but the days of great American scientist are donzo.

 

the difference is that nasa is completely government owned and funded, whereas privatized businesses aren't. If the government gives more money to Boeing or Microsoft than it would to NASA, on average, I'll eat my boot.

 

It does. Boeing makes aircraft for the military. Here is a report on just *one* of their contracts, worth 35 billion dollars

Pentagon Names Winner of Refueling Tanker Contract


Lockheed Martin, I think, is a larger supplier to the military

NASAs budget for 2011 is 18.5 billion NASA Budget Compromise

The government spends @ $76 billion ANNUALLY on computer equipment & software, and from what I know, that seems to be just what they spend on desktop stuff, not servers, which could come out of the budgets of individual agencies.

Google won an injunction this year to prevent the Department of the Interior from spending $59 million with Microsoft for cloud computing Google wins injunction

 

Too bad whatever they come up with is the property of the corporation and any products derived from it are only accessible to those with money.

Private corporations are sitting on hundreds of cures and vaccines as we speak, and are making billions in profits while people are unemployed, sick and starving.

Enough with the private enterprise supply-side bullshit.

 

Exactly. I think a lot of people fail to realize that the private industry might do things just as well as the government if not better but who will have access to that better. I think that should be considered not to mention this idea we can't afford NASA is the biggest horseshit I've heard in years. How about no foreign aid or bring the troops home. The money is there they just don't want to spend it.

 

If private enterprise was more efficient than government, America wouldn't be so fucked up right now. If the markets were self-regulating, America wouldn't be so fucked up right now. If supply-side-slash-Reaganomics worked, America wouldn't be so fucked up right now.

 

HELL yes. I think I've recounted somewhere on the site about a drug in the pipeline for MS. It's already developed for a rare form of cancer. They're taking it OFF the market and giving it away for that so they can quintuple the price and sell it to MS patients.

 

Exactly. The trickle-down theory is shit. Literally.

 

Nasa and the military are like fingers on the same hand.

The pentagon and nasa are not strangers to one another.

 

Right. I know that quite well living in Denver.

We have Lockheed Martin, Raytheon etc etc lots of space related companies.........they are all doing just fine with their government contracts.

I had a friend who worked at Lockheed Martin and decided he start his own company. He started it and then contracted with Lockheed. They decided to buy it from him and retain him as the president of the company. So he sold it to them for millions and millions. And now he has more money than God.

Nobody's hurting in the private sector. They are getting theirs off the contracts.

 

Private enterprise works perfectly because it does what it was designed to do. Make profits at any cost. Profits profits profits. Government is the one who doesn't their job of regulation and of keeping the people safe from the corporations.