Dang maybe we should take a fraction of the trillions we spend on the military to fund scientific research, and also health and education while we’re at it so we’d get even more potential scientists.
They must have made some huge advances since the last time I checked in on them because they haven’t exactly been considered sophisticated in the art of rocketry for a couple centuries now. They first had a person in space in 2003 and they’re still using the same Shenzou line of rockets since that time. They’ve had some controversies about where their boosters are landing and covering people with Hydrazine which is also an outdated fuel type, imo.
Yeah, a space station is actually pretty impressive given that no other country besides the US and Russia have one, and that will be gone by 2030 with no plans for a replacement. If you don’t think a Space station is impressive then you’re very ignorant. So in a few years China will have the only space station in space. They launch multiple rockets per week while the US just has SpaceX launching at a similar cadence. Go stick your head in the sand if you want, but outside of SpaceX the Chinese have a better space program and just saying “we did it x many years ago” is completely irrelevant to today. All of the tech isn’t here anymore. There is no space shuttle. The SLS is a boondoggle that will never fly after a few expensive Artemis missions. ULA is basically bankrupt and trying to get sold. Boeing Space is a disaster. Today is what matters and I believe Chinas space program is in a much better place than ours. Today. It’s a result of attitudes like yours that handwave away anything that China does and leads to stagnation and complacency and corruption
The ISS was designed and built in various countries across 4 continents in the 80s and 90s, I would hardly call it only Russia’s and the USA’s. I honestly respect India’s Aerospace more than China’s current level of technology. Even the UK, who historically have had no interest in the field, are in the midst of planning 2 massive Space Ports in England and Scotland.
I’m not dismissing the failures of USA Space Program, it’s so inefficient to its core that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos each started their own rocketry firms that blew conventional compartmentalized industry pricing out of the running. I’m just striving for accuracy of Chinese Failures. They’re not currently neck and neck with us, at all. When they figure out how to make coal powered rockets, then maybe I’ll sweat a little, lol.
US: continually decides to not fund scientific exploration of space
Also US: GUYS! BE AFRAID! ANOTHER COUNTRY DID DECIDE TO SPEND MONEY ON IT! NOW WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO IF…UM…WELL, I GUESS IF THEY TAKE OVER SPACE…? Or…wait, what are we concerned about? Ah, fuck it. Cut NASA’s budget again. We got genocide to fund and taxes to cut for the wealthy.
Probably. I don’t remember. I do remember them screaming that something has to be done about the border, then the Democrats gave them virtually everything they asked for on the border and Biden said he would sign the bill, but then Trump told them not to agree to it because it would hurt his campaign and they shot down the bill that would have given them what they wanted.
And the really sad part is that half the country, at least half the country, doesn’t even know.
Yep, you have a ghost president calling the shots for half the elected representatives, and the current president condoning a genocide. Really no winning.
I’m not having any trouble at all. You believe my lack of death means I support genocide, unless I do the things you’ve said. And since you claim I already support genocide, you must know for a fact that I didn’t do those things you said.
Therefore, I support genocide by existing.
Are you going to pretend you didn’t write what I pasted above?
Honestly, I’m just waiting for you to tell me to kill myself. That’s the next step.
my god, like, could you stop using the genocide logic to do this shit? you see “the people in Gaza deserve to be targets of a genocide because they didn’t rise up against Hamas”
Yes. And now we’re going to have two senile coots yelling “He let the illegals in!” back and forth at one another as we stumble into another national embarrassment of an election season.
Export all your technology and jobs to cheaper labour to make more profit. Now you will slowly become bankrupt, as no one can afford the enshitification products and services.
So they had no issue relying on Russia to service the ISS ever since they shutdown the space shuttle, but now they’re afraid of China… doing space science faster?
Ignoring the fact that this is not even a real concern, maybe don’t spend morbillions on free munitions for Israel or Lockheed’s next stupid idea.
They defunded NASA so hard that they started hallucinating about going back to the moon with 15% of the Apollo budget.
At the time, Russia wasn’t as……problematic. We had been working with Russia as an International Partner since the very early days of ISS and even during Shuttle/Mir.
Obviously they did become problematic, but we didn’t have other options until SpaceX. Now that’s….obviously got its own issues, but Russia is vastly different than China when it comes to space. Russia needs the money, China already has it.
The fact that NASA had to rely on Roscosmos in the first place is shameful. It highlights long standing issues facing the space program. I think some of these problems trace back to the cost of the ISS. It’s been hard to convey the importance and investment into the future the station provides.
For China their station provides proof of concept that they can achieve similar results one day both to themselves and the world watching.
The amount of money spent on Apollo was insane. A reduced budget should have been sufficient. It’s just been weighted down by shit cost-plus contracts and the abomination that is SLS.
The fear of China here is that they are basically single handedly their closest competitor. They’re the only other nation thats managed a Mars Rover landing, building space station, and have their own plans for Moon and Mars with taikonauts( astronaut equivalent) on the ground in the future.
While US youth are rotting their brains via china’s tiktok, Chinese youth are actually learning about science and other useful skills. Of course this is going to happen
Wait. This is a joke right? You really think all youth in america is just messing around on tiktok (yeah just forget facebook, twitter, myspace, instagram and whatever other social media we’ve had) and ALL youth in china is doing science?
But as someone who works in the industry, it is a bleak outlook. NASA absolutely needs more funding for its human spaceflight exploration, Earth Science, robotic exploration, and astronomy/astrophysics.
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 and the world less secure overall?
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.
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.
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.
No, I don’t think anyone has definitely proven that George W Bush and Colin Powell KNEW that the WMD claims in Iraq were bullshit when they were presenting them as the primary justification for the war.
Ha, I was actually taking about the space program, but same for the invasion. Although, I feel like more people have come forward about the invasion being BS than early space program stuff.
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.
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
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.
Hell, a decade ago the National Reconnaissance Office https://www.space.com/16000-spy-satellites-space-telescopes-nasa.html 'cause they just had 'em lying around, but (as far as I know) NASA hasn’t managed to scrounge up enough money from the couch cushions to spruce 'em up and launch 'em yet.
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.
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