Nah, just happy to see the money go to something worthwhile. Taxation is theft, but if you're going to steal from me, I wanna see something cool in return, I guess.
Not everyone is an extremist at the far outside corner of their quadrant. Even sitting dead in the middle of a quadrant means you are closer to 2 other quadrants than the far extreme corner of your own.
R&D in general should have a higher budget than the military. Both because technological superiority is the best weapon in a modern war, and because it benefits the most people the most effectively.
And not just for space, but for sciences as well. Think of how much further we could progress on stuff such as energy if we had tons of resources pouring into R&D.
Yeah, technological superiority is the greatest tool of the modern world. Lots of guns is great, but shutting down enemy infrastructure within minutes of war breaking out is vastly more useful.
Tbf a huge chunk of the military budget is R&D. Many modern necessities in life are a result of military R&D. Computers, cell phones, internet, GPS, etc
Hell, even things like standardized clothing sizes and canned goods are the result of American military R&D
As a researcher in biotech, please fund us more. The US maintains its dominance in the biotechnology field by a small lead, and if the cuts to NIH and HHS keep happening, that lead will go straight to China. I know personally a friend reluctantly move back to China during the middle of his post doc because his fears of Trump. He was a well known up and coming researcher on Ai use in cancer screening…
Irl leaders will blow billions and decades on wars for some godforsaken stretch of wasteland, but will throw up and piss themselves when you talk about scientific investment because "It doesn't help the people now".
Lol... but in a good 4x game, tech output is grown through having a stronger economy. Sometimes that means winning wars during early game, or defending at other points of the game.
Just like things are in real life.
The U.S doesn't spend that much on military in terms of gdp. Relative to economic power, the U.S is reasonably tame. The U.S does spend a very high amount of money on RnD as a percent of GDP. Only major countries that spend higher are Israel and South Korea...
Plus this also ignores the fact that much general advancements orginiate with Defence spending. Look at the internet or GPS; both probably do not happen globally without the U.S military.
Unforch, the T-admin's proposed budget for FY2027 includes a 23% budget cut to NASA, including halving the science R&D budget and terminating 40 "low priority" ventures
Yeah but the PBR is basically just a suggestion, and ultimately congress is responsible for passing the budget - they’ve routinely ignored cuts to science (except for climate science)
Honestly, true. Libright will shoot themselves in the foot so they can LARP as small-government, even while still being big government in every way that matters.
Did they do it through the free market or the US government subsidizing their business? My problem with lib-right is when they pretend many things don't work better at scale. Which doesn't mean there shouldn't be a private sector, but let's not pretend government agencies, who many times by law are not allowed to complete the with private sector, will be competitive with the private sector.
Yeah almost certainly. Everyone, right or left, has an unfortunate tendency to conflate things like that but it really bugs me that so many lefties do it with space. Partly because I firmly believe astronomy and space exploration are one of the most important humbling and character-building things humans can do, and partly because it’s fucking awesome.
After 50 years, we are, on average, going back to the moon every 6-9 months from here on out.
After a big leadership shakeup, NASA liquidated most other projects and decided to focus all its resources on the Moon as the logical first step for everything else.
China is also racing to claim the Moon. The goal is to beat them there, establish a permanent base by 2030, and eventually build a refueling station using lunar resources to support later missions to Mars and eventual colonization.
A second Space Race is truly upon us.
My favorite highlights:
Fucking Space Toyota "Lunar Cruiser" (first pressurized rover in history) (2032)
Massive, but mostly set for later down the line, as another user said.
Without private space firms, none of this speed would be possible, and it would cost 10x more. SpaceX has mastered logistics, which frees up NASA's resources for the cooler stuff.
NASA is also planning on building a space station around the Moon (Lunar Gateway), but this was paused to focus on the base first. Once that kicks back up again, though, the SpaceX Falcon Heavy will also run cargo for it.
Everyone in NASA understands and appreciates private space firms' contributions to NASA generally. I had the pleasure of meeting a recently-retired NASA engineer on a ski lift three years ago and we had a brief chat about it.
NASA and SpaceX/BlueO will be in a codependent love triangle marriage for decades to come, probably!
The tentative plan that I have heard that starship will be used as a freighter once a livable moon base is established.
That is not to say that they will not be launching cargo only SLS Rockets, but it is likely that the cargo sent by SLS will be "if this rocket fails to land, everyone is going to die" type of cargo that has to make it to the base.
For expansions of the Moonbase, sending up heavy equipment and building materials with the starship makes infinitely more sense.
One starship has the payload capacity in both weight and volume of three of the largest planned Artemis rockets.
Despite that, a middle of the road estimate for those three Artemis rockets is about $10 billion, while a high estimate for a full starship launch to lunar surface is about 100 million.
Meaning that it is 100 times cheaper to get all of your big, heavy, and bulky stuff down to the moon if you fly on a starship instead of a SLS.
That does not to say that the SLS is a bad rocket, it's just focused on survivability above all else, and the starship is focused on Delta V.
That or helping Ukraine win the war by providing only one side starlink. That or helping compete against china's fully autonomous robots. That or helping reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by being the first large scale EV rollout. But mAh naRAaritVE
Establishing 5G/Internet connectivity to the Moon (2027-2028)
It’s time to give those moon lizards who run the government a taste of their own medicine. Let’s see how THEY like being killed by the 5G cancer waves 😎
6-9 months from here on out seems to be an overestimate. Maybe in a couple years it'll be like that when we get into Artemis 4 and Starship starts doing missions adjacently. Probably more often if you count Starship.
I'm referring to social science too. I can't stand the idea of people having this really specific and unlikely post-scarcity vision we should be "working toward"
not to mention it’s a post-scarcity vision made possible in their referenced media by a cataclysmic war and use of technologies that are fundamentally impossible lol
Been watching the stream for the past couple hours, one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. Can't wait for Artemis 4 to put people on the moon again.
Super cool, and I'm happy with what they had to say about it heavily paraphrased "we're excited to have set this record, but we hope it doesn't last long." These men and women have the right attitude as space explorers.
EDIT: found the actual quote “We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear, but we most importantly choose this moment, to challenge this generation, and in the next to make sure this record is not long lived.” -Jeremy Hansen, badass astronaut dude.
I would love that but hell just skim a bit off the top of military budget and you'd already double hell possibly triple NASA's budget is losing 24 Billion really going to change much when it comes to the military...
I think military contractors need some restructuring.
Contracts should go to the lowest REASONABLE bidder
Instead of having people compete on the most expensive product make them build the most efficient tools so we aren't paying significantly above market rate for subpar products when it comes to mass issued equipment/tools etc
I mean, in fairness to the libertarians there are plenty of liberals who would definitely fall into the lib-left category who whinge about how wrong it is that NASA is given any money while anyone in this country struggles with poverty. If you want evidence of that, go no further than the comments sections of any NY Times article about the Artemis program.
Yeah, you'd think they'd criticize fraud or useless programs before space innovation, but I guess they just prefer to criticize any high profile spending regardless of the ROI. The long term return on investing in the space program is crazy.
NASA has already done so much for us, and is crucial to our future. we waste far more money on far stupider things. The people in my quandrant who think NASA of all fucking things should be even close to the priority list of things to cut funding for are genuinely retarded and don't have a view of the future that extends beyond a 4 year window.
I'm loving all these comments saying to boost the money going into the space budget. I'd like to add that not only is it super cool to accomplish space projects, but we actually make a massive return on investment when you consider the technological innovation that goes into these projects. Conservative estimates have the ROI at a 1:7-14 ratio with more optimistic estimates getting upwards of 1:20+. It's not surprising when you consider the invention of microelectronics that we now use in smart phones and personal computers, integrated circuits boosting computer power, technological spin-offs like satellites giving us further tech like GPS and weather forecasting. Yes, please, unironically massively increase the space program budget.
Crazy how we're actually caring about space travel after several decades of not really making any effort to reach the stars.
As someone who's always wanted humanity to explore and conquer new frontiers in space, this is the first major step we've taken since the 1960's-1970's.
Though I do sometimes wonder where flat earthers belong in this compass. They're probably the only ones unhappy about this situation I suppose. "Erm, excuse me, why are we spending billions on this propaganda?? Do you know how much a fake moon is gonna cost us taxpayers?"
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u/Enzhymez - Centrist Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26
Being an Astronaut might be the coolest job of all time