The problem being the billionaires have trained attack dogs that fight viciously in their defense and the national security people have half the country convinced that relaxing the Pentagon budget even by a few percentage points will lead to their kids all speaking Mandarin
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
So we are where we are The problem is that I think very visible stuff like NASA, whose "practical benefit" is hard to articulate, becomes a lightning rod during hard times But I continue to maintain whether you love or hate space stuff it is not that big a deal
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I'm absolutely fucking disgusted by NASA because it epitomizes the fascist "cells of the body" view of humanity by justifying all current world suffering as a necessary down payment for some hypothetical glorious future for a handful of hypothetical people we will never be
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Well yeah Artemis, which was a Trump talking point in his campaign and which was approved in his first year, has a bit of that stench to it I think the stuff about Perseverance scoping out a site for a future Mars colony is the dumbest thing about it
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
But "manned spaceflight" and the idea of "space colonization" I see as mostly orthogonal to the idea of "space exploration" and "space research"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
Manned space flight seems like mostly a pie in the sky idea or a weird strategic play that assumes people won’t give a shit about space unless it’s a human in a lil space ship doing things and space colonization sounds terrifying
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Replying to @Cybren @Nymphomachy and
If you really push space people on this a lot of them will straight up admit that astronauts are a "marketing stunt" That the admittedly very high investment of the Apollo missions paved the funding for decades of other, less glamorous space work later on
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Cybren and
The rocketry and satellite research that DID lead to stuff that impacts your daily life, like satellite radio/TV/Internet, the GPS system, etc.
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Cybren and
The cynic's view of the Space Shuttle and the ISS and whatnot is that they saw how high the pricetag for Apollo was and they deliberately tried to reshape the marketing stunt to provide a much higher ratio of eyeballs for dollars spent
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Cybren and
Like they go into space, but not very far into space (not even close to as far away as the Moon is), so that, unlike the Moon guys, they can send constant photo ops and video greetings and updates from space to keep people interested
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(I don't think people really appreciate how weaksauce the ISS is compared to Apollo Like if Apollo was the equivalent of getting your license as a teenager and driving to the next town over for the first time The ISS is pulling out of your driveway and parking on the curb)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Cybren and
(And then livestreaming back to your house like "Hey everyone check it out! I've LEFT THE HOUSE! I crossed over the line and now I'm on PUBLIC PROPERTY")
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
I mean also the time the space shuttle exploded and killed a beloved school teacher in addition to some military nerds probably also hurt public interest in space flight
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