Quote:The USPS actually improved a lot after FedEx provided competition. They don't guarantee 2nd day delivery on Priority Mail, but they usually deliver it in two days. Before FedEx there was no such thing as Priority Mail.
A better comparison is 55 years of NASA vs. less than 10 with Space X and Blue Origin. NASA was only improving when facing competition from the Soviets. They haven't developed a new human launch vehicle since the Shuttle. Now we're back to capsules, and they haven't even launched "Orion" yet after 10 years of development. The great leap backwards.
Don't let Oface here you talking abount NASA like that... lol.
Quote:The USPS actually improved a lot after FedEx provided competition. They don't guarantee 2nd day delivery on Priority Mail, but they usually deliver it in two days. Before FedEx there was no such thing as Priority Mail.
A better comparison is 55 years of NASA vs. less than 10 with Space X and Blue Origin. NASA was only improving when facing competition from the Soviets. They haven't developed a new human launch vehicle since the Shuttle. Now we're back to capsules, and they haven't even launched "Orion" yet after 10 years of development. The great leap backwards.
That's because SpaceX is building on 55 years of knowledge and experience from NASA. They're entering the space industry now because advances made possible by NASA and other space agencies have reduced the cost a made it into a profitable industry.
If left to the free market there would not have been a space race.
Quote:Nonsense, NASA built the Shuttle, and before that the Saturn 5. That was the heyday of NASA, when it was still facing Soviet competition. NASA was tasked to develop human spaceflight. NASA may contract to launch robotic spacecraft, but the launch vehicles were designed and built by Boeing and Lockheed Martin. NASA has not created a new human launch vehicle since the Shuttle way back in 1982.
In case you didn't know it, the Atlas and Delta rockets are launched from pads in Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (US military), not from Kennedy Space Center (NASA).
The launch vehicles from Space X and Blue Origin are nothing like the Shuttle or Saturn 5, and are not built on that knowledge.
What are you trying to say re: NASA and Space X? NASA is impeded by a campaign to defund science not regulation or red tape. Just money and the politics behind it.
Quote:I did. When an entitt has the power to tax the price mechanism can easily be distorted. Free government phones arent actually free. An accountant should know better.
Answer the question about the ussr and cuba.
I missed the Q about USSR and Cuba. Although not really relevant because Cuba was stuck with sanctions. However Cuban people still live longer than Americans...
Must be that socialist healthcare.
Quote:What are you trying to say re: NASA and Space X? NASA is impeded by a campaign to defund science not regulation or red tape. Just money and the politics behind it.
You need to respond to what I wrote, not what you imagined I wrote.
NASA's failure comes most prominently in the manned space program, which is NASA's primary objective. The failure to develop an improved human launch program has been ongoing through numerous administrations, Pub and Dem. We have not had a new manned space launch vehicle since the Shuttle in 1982. It's not a funding problem or a regulation problem, but the typical stagnation of a monopoly with no competition. 34 years of stagnation.
I could have used pretty much any government agency as an example, but NASA is the most familiar. All government agencies are monopolies, and almost none have competition.
My comment had absolutely nothing to do with your cherished Global Warming group, which is just a very small part of NASA's budget (although frankly, it also hasn't done anything significant this century to justify it's continued existence).
In fairness, NASA has designed and built several excellent scientific spacecraft, so NASA funding is not a total waste.
Quote:I missed the Q about USSR and Cuba. Although not really relevant because Cuba was stuck with sanctions. However Cuban people still live longer than Americans...
Must be that socialist healthcare.
Lol and thank u for playing.
In other news venezuela has announced tgat the country cannot produce enough food to feed itself.
Quote:You need to respond to what I wrote, not what you imagined I wrote.
NASA's failure comes most prominently in the manned space program, which is NASA's primary objective. The failure to develop an improved human launch program has been ongoing through numerous administrations, Pub and Dem. We have not had a new manned space launch vehicle since the Shuttle in 1982. It's not a funding problem or a regulation problem, but the typical stagnation of a monopoly with no competition. 34 years of stagnation.
I could have used pretty much any government agency as an example, but NASA is the most familiar. All government agencies are monopolies, and almost none have competition.
My comment had absolutely nothing to do with your cherished Global Warming group, which is just a very small part of NASA's budget (although frankly, it also hasn't done anything significant this century to justify it's continued existence).
In fairness, NASA has designed and built several excellent scientific spacecraft, so NASA funding is not a total waste.
The American people were bored with manned missions to the moon in the 70s. Do we even have the capability to make a manned mission to Mars? NASA's primary objective is certainly not manned missions and anyways they don't have a problem getting people to the international space station. The word monopoly has nothing to do with the current state of manned missions to anywhere. That's just yet another rightwing fantasy.
Also this:
<a class="bbc_url" href='https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/NASA-Budget-Federal.svg'>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/NASA-Budget-Federal.svg</a>
Probably has something to do with it
Quote:Lol and thank u for playing.
In other news venezuela has announced tgat the country cannot produce enough food to feed itself.
Again not sure what this has to do with anything? Does this mean all government is bad?
Still got higher living standards in Australia with our government healthcare...
But if Venezuela is a better comparison to USA I guess you should stick with what you have.
Quote:Nonsense, NASA built the Shuttle, and before that the Saturn 5. That was the heyday of NASA, when it was still facing Soviet competition. NASA was tasked to develop human spaceflight. NASA may contract to launch robotic spacecraft, but the launch vehicles were designed and built by Boeing and Lockheed Martin. NASA has not created a new human launch vehicle since the Shuttle way back in 1982.
In case you didn't know it, the Atlas and Delta rockets are launched from pads in Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (US military), not from Kennedy Space Center (NASA).
The launch vehicles from Space X and Blue Origin are nothing like the Shuttle or Saturn 5, and are not built on that knowledge.
Nothing you said contradicts my post. The fact Boeing and Lockheed Martin built the actual spacecraft doesn't change the fact that they wouldn't have done so if it weren't for a government agency paying them to do so. Neither company would have been involved in the space race if the government hadn't been involved.
As for the comparison of SpaceX and Blue Origin; they might differ from Saturn V and the Shuttle in some aspects but they are still built upon the knowledge of those projects. The basic design of a rocket engine hasn't changed since Robert Goddard launched the first one in 1926; it's still uses a liquid fuel mixed with an oxidizer and ignited in a combustion chamber thereby using Newton's third law of motion to create thrust.
I don't know all the details about Flint, MI but it is very sad that citizens trusted their government to make choices best for the city & instead they are poisoned out of greed / sloth.
It is sad that MSNBC & the Democrat party have spun it as the MI Republican Governor's fault instead of the Democrat woman mayor, or the all Democrat City Council that voted for what lead to the lead in the first place. Or why not bad mouth the Democrat President that didn't bring in FEMA or the Army Corps of Engineers or a bailout bill (even though Obama signed one for his lobbyist in his first term).
Why does MSNBC spin the story non-stop as the one and only republican in power in the whole state of MI, and not blame any democrat that really led to this problem.
I am not saying that the Gov. isnt also at fault but they make it sound like he personally poisoned all of them and chose not to do anything about it.
Quote:The Delta 4 and Atlas 5 were not developed using NASA designs, nor were they designed for use by NASA. There is a large market for non-government satellites in telecommunications. Interestingly enough, the Atlas 5 uses a Russian engine, so it's a stretch to give NASA any credit.
The Delta 4, which uses a US hydrogen-fueled engine could be called a successor to NASA technology. It has been discontinued because it is a distant 2nd to the Atlas 5 in both cost and success rate.
And if really want to say that modern rockets all use a liquid-fueled combustion chamber, then the rocket design credit goes back to Nazi Germany. Both Space X and Blue Origin are developing rockets that land vertically after use, something NASA has never done.
In any case my point was not that NASA has always been a failure. Competition with the Soviet Union made NASA very successful in it's early years. That competition ended by the mid-1980s, and NASA has done nothing noteworthy since the Shuttle in 1982, except for some scientific spacecraft that amount to less than 5% of the NASA budget and that benefit greatly from private sector advances in electronics.
Still nothing you said contradicts my point: SpaceX, Blue Origin and any other private company getting into the space business right now would not exist if it had not been for the research, development and progress made by NASA (and the Russians) in the past 50 years or so. Whether it was developing Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the Shuttle or putting rovers on Mars, NASA has been plenty busy doing stuff successfully for the past while.
And to swing it back on the original point; you need government programs to do the things the free market refuses to do or can not be trusted to provide equally for all. In this case, the free market would never have funded space travel because it would never have been profitable, yet some or our biggest gains in science and engineering have come from space travel. The same with most scientific research; a large part of the scientific sector would not exist were it not for publicly funded programs.
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