jeannelefevre:

sugashane:

msgeeky:

sugashane:

NASA is wasting our tax dollars to tell us that they don’t have enough of our tax dollars. Perhaps the next time they are in space, they can discover the natural element called IRONY. 

I have an even better proposal, NASA, what if we eliminated that half a penny you take from our stolen dollar and we allow private industry to invest in you or to build competing models.

Oh yea, we have. 

Space X is replacing NASA as the space vehicle that will travel between Earth and the ISS (International Space Station). Started on private investment and will soon be publically traded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX

I love NASA and everything that NASA has done, but their insistence that without NASA there would be no space program is an out right lie that I refuse to support. 

Come on people…. it’s space. We have an endless amount of space to explore and we aren’t!

We have a finite amount of space here on Earth that still has tons of issues. Leave space exploration for the private firms. Let them find, terraform and import all the resources we need. 

Okay you know what

no this is a ton of shit

without NASA there really would not be a fucking space program THEY LITERALLY ARE OUR SPACE PROGRAM

SpaceX is cool and I’m really excited about what it could do but it CANNOT MATCH WHAT NASA HAS ACCOMPLISHED AND ON SUCH A MEAGER BUDGET TOO

PLUS SPACEX IS ONLY FOR LAUNCHING VEHICLES INTO SPACE

YOU’RE FORGETTING THAT PART WHERE WE

YOU KNOW

BUILD TELESCOPES THAT PEER FARTHER INTO THE UNIVERSE THAN WE HAVE ANY CHANCE OF PERSONALLY BEING TO IN THE REMOTE FUTURE

SpaceX is great and I can’t wait to see what it can do but the fact remains that it is a commercial endeavor with commercial interests whereas NASA is a scientific endeavor with no interest in profit

SpaceX cannot at this moment match what NASA is capable of, or at least would be capable of, if not for our government’s idiotic belief that spending more than 90% of the world’s nation’s gross domestic product on bigger weapons.

No need to yell, we’re all adults here. 

I never said NASA adds nothing of value to society. In fact, the exact opposite is what I believe to be true. NASA has done more for this country and the world than all other government programs/departments combined. 

All you have to do is click my #Space #Science and #NASA tags to see that I’m a giant geek and I’m actually fond of the work NASA has done. 

The intent of the original post was to point out the ridiculousness of a government agency using (read: WASTING) tax dollars to lobby and try and convince tax payers to give them more tax dollars. 

As for the private > public, I still stand by that and will always stand by that. If NASA was never funded, a private company would have come along and started their own space program to try and profit on space. And even if space wasn’t directly profitable, a non-profit or a collective of curious and rich group of scientist and private citizens would have emerged.

It’s not like NASA has some sort of monopoly on space exploration. Russia has been there and done that. 

As for NASA spending > Military spending… You know that NASA receives a lot of money via our military budget? NASA was funded due to a military intelligence race with the USSR. If it weren’t for military spending and an arms race with Russia, we’d never have a real reason to fund NASA. We would have probably just stuck with a communications and satellite agency. 

Just give it a decade or two and see what marvels a private, low-regulation space race will produce. Only then can we compare the accomplishments of different approaches of business. 

- Sha

(via danganrandpaul)