The problem with NASA is the same as with other government programs. While there is fear of failure, there is no real incentive to succeed. Disconnected from the need to make a profit, in either the abstract or financial sense, stagnation is the result, and the objective becomes simply to preserve the structure of the bureaucracy. Or, as Jerry Pournelle puts it more simply, the function of a government program is to hire and pay government employees. While this is related to the concept of socialism, the problem is not restricted to socialist societies by any means.
You are correct in identifying the core problem: until humans in space are profitable, they will not go there in any major way. It is instructive that Antarctica, forbidden by treaty to be exploited in any way, remains nearly uninhabited and sterile. Some would consider this a desirable result. I don't know about that.
By the way, socialism, which subverts the individual to the state or collective, is as immoral as any other form of slavery.
Space/Science » in reply to re: No
re: No
The whole thread (44 posts)
- Is This NASA's Problem?
- Plans, plans and more plans
- NASA's problem is simply that Mars is not Earth-like
- There is no disagreement
- No
- re: No
- re: No
- re: No
- sounds like you can't tell the difference between socialism and communism
- difference between socialism and communism
- Go back to elementary school
- difference between socialism and communism
- sounds like you can't tell the difference between socialism and communism
- re: No