Green Catus ~ a point on your Space Program comments.
I happen to work in the industry on a variety of space programs. There are a few things being missed in your analysis.
Companies do not invest in basic research, they do applied reseach at best. In other words the average company will not sign off on spending a billion dollars to sit a bunch of geeks in a room to think about stuff with no clearly defined payoff. Companies will spend money on tweaking existing technology that has a clear path to profit.
EXAMPLE: This new fangled intersweb dohicky ya be typing on. Do you know how it came about? Corporate America would have been gladly polishing and driving down costs on snail mail services, phone services, and such. It took a government agency to invest in non profit related technology to create it. Now that it exists ... bam ... it gets polished and refined.
Long gone are the days were a lone geek can expand the boundries of science by falling asleep under an apple tree. If you look at expanding knowledge & technology as a solution someone somewhere has to suck up the costs. If you were talking about the pharmecuetical field you would be ranting about the cost of drugs. Why does a pill that costs a dollar to make retail for 100 dollars? The answer is the drug company is attempting to recover all the money that they lost on research while we as a consumer just want it to immediately become generic and cheap.
If you were in Europe basic research is DIRECTLY funded by the government as well as a ton of government subsidies into technology based firms. In America we are against government involvement as a principle (not going to touch the issue of whether ont we ever acheive that goal). If you look at trade agreements over import/export tariffs we get to hold our heads high and declare how innocent we are of government intervention in our poor old US companies and so we need shelters against these big bad subsidized foreign monsters.
In reality one of goals of NASA and other programs like it is an under the table subsidy for private US companies (Lockheed, Raytheon, Beoing, etc ... ) to perform this basic research. If you look at the mission statements and policies of NASA you will find clauses that require the free transmittal of all this basic research to others to commercialize. Who hasnt heard about memeory foam pillows "designed by NASA" ... guess what ... NASA designs and builds NOTHING. That was effort subcontracted out to a private company elsewhere.
Now one can argue ... but what about Xcom??? Realistically if you rely on strange eccentric bored billionaires to put together wacky science projects you may just as well end up with a bunch of Spruce Gooses ... And lets face the rich folks didnt get rich by pouring money down the rathole of basic research where sucess stories are by far the exception.
Does the system work? Does it work well?
It limps along. Can we produce things cheaper iterm per item? Of course ... but just like that pharmecuetical, the cost of the 1 dollar hammer is being raised to mask the costs of all the basic research costs that the company doesnt get paid for.
Then of course you have the blind leading the blind.
Congressional appointed lackeys tend not to have great science backgrounds. Those in the science based govenmental agencies they oversee are comprised of either the fanatically patriotic who like to work cheap or those wh cant cut it in teh private sector. When those two team up to write contracts to the private area you end up with contracts that say "build stuff that is cool ... more specifics to follow on how or what". If you think I am joking then you have never worked in aerospace.
Of course lets not forget the poitcal factor.
There was a wonderful political issue on the Space Station where for various material reasons a large ammount of gold was going to be used. "Thous shalt not put a gold plated station into orbit ... its political suicide!" So another MORE costly material was chosen just to avoid any potentially embarrising issues.
Go see the movie "The Pentagon Wars" for a humerous look at these issues ...
Bottom line the government exists to provide for the welfare of the society it serves and to undertake actions in which no other segment is capable of handling. And that covers basic science research today ... (even if you think it could be handled better and more honestly than they do).
I happen to work in the industry on a variety of space programs. There are a few things being missed in your analysis.
Companies do not invest in basic research, they do applied reseach at best. In other words the average company will not sign off on spending a billion dollars to sit a bunch of geeks in a room to think about stuff with no clearly defined payoff. Companies will spend money on tweaking existing technology that has a clear path to profit.
EXAMPLE: This new fangled intersweb dohicky ya be typing on. Do you know how it came about? Corporate America would have been gladly polishing and driving down costs on snail mail services, phone services, and such. It took a government agency to invest in non profit related technology to create it. Now that it exists ... bam ... it gets polished and refined.
Long gone are the days were a lone geek can expand the boundries of science by falling asleep under an apple tree. If you look at expanding knowledge & technology as a solution someone somewhere has to suck up the costs. If you were talking about the pharmecuetical field you would be ranting about the cost of drugs. Why does a pill that costs a dollar to make retail for 100 dollars? The answer is the drug company is attempting to recover all the money that they lost on research while we as a consumer just want it to immediately become generic and cheap.
If you were in Europe basic research is DIRECTLY funded by the government as well as a ton of government subsidies into technology based firms. In America we are against government involvement as a principle (not going to touch the issue of whether ont we ever acheive that goal). If you look at trade agreements over import/export tariffs we get to hold our heads high and declare how innocent we are of government intervention in our poor old US companies and so we need shelters against these big bad subsidized foreign monsters.
In reality one of goals of NASA and other programs like it is an under the table subsidy for private US companies (Lockheed, Raytheon, Beoing, etc ... ) to perform this basic research. If you look at the mission statements and policies of NASA you will find clauses that require the free transmittal of all this basic research to others to commercialize. Who hasnt heard about memeory foam pillows "designed by NASA" ... guess what ... NASA designs and builds NOTHING. That was effort subcontracted out to a private company elsewhere.
Now one can argue ... but what about Xcom??? Realistically if you rely on strange eccentric bored billionaires to put together wacky science projects you may just as well end up with a bunch of Spruce Gooses ... And lets face the rich folks didnt get rich by pouring money down the rathole of basic research where sucess stories are by far the exception.
Does the system work? Does it work well?
It limps along. Can we produce things cheaper iterm per item? Of course ... but just like that pharmecuetical, the cost of the 1 dollar hammer is being raised to mask the costs of all the basic research costs that the company doesnt get paid for.
Then of course you have the blind leading the blind.
Congressional appointed lackeys tend not to have great science backgrounds. Those in the science based govenmental agencies they oversee are comprised of either the fanatically patriotic who like to work cheap or those wh cant cut it in teh private sector. When those two team up to write contracts to the private area you end up with contracts that say "build stuff that is cool ... more specifics to follow on how or what". If you think I am joking then you have never worked in aerospace.
Of course lets not forget the poitcal factor.
There was a wonderful political issue on the Space Station where for various material reasons a large ammount of gold was going to be used. "Thous shalt not put a gold plated station into orbit ... its political suicide!" So another MORE costly material was chosen just to avoid any potentially embarrising issues.
Go see the movie "The Pentagon Wars" for a humerous look at these issues ...
Bottom line the government exists to provide for the welfare of the society it serves and to undertake actions in which no other segment is capable of handling. And that covers basic science research today ... (even if you think it could be handled better and more honestly than they do).
