There are some voices of reason in the thread saying that NASA money is a drop in the bucket compared to war spending, but there's a whole lot of support for space exploration by China (and Russia), because of course it's only bad when "USian"

https://hexbear.net/post/8170388

I caught up with the launch stream over the weekend, and was quite excited until they went into full USA nationalistic propaganda mode and mentioned how the US become the best democracy on earth and freedom blah blah blah. Completetly ruined it.

until they

Yeah I get why that sucks. I didn't see it but I'm assuming "they" was a bunch of govt suits instead of NASA scientists?

It's not JUST that it's a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the budget, but it is a huge boon in science for the world.

Almost everything NASA produces is public domain. Even from a capitalist perspective, we get more out of NASA than we put in. Heck, even if you feel like it's just a jobs program, it's a jobs program for highly trained people.

I mean, it's an official govt stream for an official govt project. I'd be surprised if they didn't do that

Sad part is it was probably similar to what was said during Apollo but the national context changed quite a bit since then

I mean, when you consider the two programs on a purely technical level, that post seems like an accurate description to me. Artemis is a huge mess and has been from the start, the Chinese program has taken a much better approach.

Part of that is likely just perception because China doesn't reveal much about their plans before the fact, so we don't get to see as much of where they change their minds along the way or the political wrangling that gets them there. But the end results are different enough that I think a case can be made that China's still approaching this better even allowing for the hidden stuff.

Nasa has created massive economic benefits for the economy and technological innovations that have improved quality of life in a very real way.

Gil Scott Heron had a very valid point that we need to focus on our sister Nell, but Whitey on the Moon is a net benefit to sister Nell and not the reason we ain't taking care of her.

In 2025
Nasa got $24 billion
ICE got $80 billion
Military got $919 billion

I got a guess as to which one is most likely to shoot your sister Nell. Lets take money from that one

...Also When Whitey on the Moon was written, NASA got like 4% of the US budget. NASA now gets 0.35%

Ok, but Whitey on the Moon is actually fire.

"Global south"

Been a while since I heard that. Seemed like that agenda had been put in the fridge. Did anyone get peckish?

The rocket uses pretty outdated tech thats true. I wish they invested more money into developing a reusable rocket like SpaceX once instead of like building throw away boosters. But the crew module was actually tested and they had multiple plans for reentry in case their sensors were of.