The thread for space cadets!

[Lexicus]

When the debt is really out of whack for a long time, the spending that interest on the debt crowds out of the budget is the spending that benefits the 90%, not the spending that benefits the 10%. The spending that benefits the 10% is untouchable.

There is no such 'crowding out' unless the political choice is made at the time to crowd it out.

And the 10% are the ones that own nearly all the debt.

I don't think this is actually true. A good amount of the debt is owned by pension funds, for example.

What this means is that the service on the debt is taxed away from the 90%, and given to the 10%. It is a direct transfer from the 90 to the 10. The 90 will have lower consumption so that the 10 can get their payments on the debt.

Again though, even assuming this is exactly correct (it isn't), these are political choices made at the time this spending and taxation takes place. There is no sense in which future generations are "paying for" spending we are doing now.
I will also note that empirical experience seems to disagree with your predictions here. If what you're saying is true, longer-term increases in the national debt should result in longer-term increases in inequality, but that is certainly not the case- the mass prosperity and unprecedented equality of the mid-20th century was in large part created by the massive government indebtedness in the 1930s and 40s (and when FDR briefly attempted to balance the budget in '38 he got a recession in return). The US national debt has increased almost every year since the foundation of the country but inequality has not increased along with it.

Larger point: what you spend on matters, not just that you spend.

And now to tie this all back into the topic of this thread, does anyone have a good sense of what the distributional effects of space program spending are?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

And now to tie this all back into the topic of this thread, does anyone have a good sense of what the distributional effects of space program spending are?

Unfortunately I do not have any hard data. I just know that the geographical spread of NASA centers was a political tool by Johnson to buy votes to support NASA. It created a huge amount of industry concentration in places like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, Virginia and Florida that previously did not exist. And I know anecdotally at least that this industry concentration provide oases of high wages and standards of living in otherwise poor areas. Some of the centers had a bigger effect than others, of course. And some of those areas (Houston, Virginia) would have probably grown and prospered without the centers but they certainly gave them a large boost that helped accelerate the process.

The downside is that this intentional spreading of the industry has created entrenched interests that inflate costs overall. There was no reason to give contracts to suppliers for the space shuttle in all 50 states other than to build political support for the program. This had a serious negative implications for the program. There is the direct cost of having to coordinate production between all the disparate states and companies and ship all the parts around. There is also the direct cost of each supplier adding profit margin to each part or service they are providing. Then there is the indirect cost of the inefficiencies all of that coordination entails. Then you have Congress throwing its largess around by mandating programs that no one wants or needs (see the SLS).

I hope that's what you meant about the distributional effects of the space program, apologies if I missed the mark.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Orbital ATK's new OmegA rocket has a higher payload than F9 and FH in expendable mode. Solids + Hydrogen fueled upper is a pretty powerful combination.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yesterday the Senate confirmed Jim Bridenstine to run NASA on a party-line vote after a couple of Republicans switched their votes. There is a ton of resistance to this nomination, including among Republicans who I believe finally acquiesced to the nomination after holding it up for over a year due to promises made to benefit their states. I've said in the past that Bridenstine probably isn't the worst pick for this agency. Unlike Pruitt, Bridenstine actually loves the agency he is now in charge of. The main objections are about his stance on climate science and his lack of experience running an agency.

To placate critics, he says he has come around and accepts that climate change is real and at least partially man-made though he still refuses to attribute most of climate change to human activity. In any case, I actually don't expect that he'll gut climate science budgets but we'll have to wait and see.

Unfortunately, news just broke that he is under investigation for illegal campaign finance contributions and for using an Air and Space museum he ran to benefit a company he had a financial interest in. He basically took a budget surplus at the museum and used it to fund a competition for a rocket racing league he was investing in. That surplus turned into a massive deficit and nearly bankrupted the museum.

 

[Gen.Mannerheim]

a budget surplus at the museum

Wait, a museum that was making money? Where was this unicorn located?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Oklahoma

 

[Gen.Mannerheim]

Oklahoma

That's even more amazing! Did this "air & space museum" have any exhibits outside of little Timmy's model plane collection?

*I make this joke out of experience, because there's a "Freedom Museum" in my town who's collection is made up of public sourced photos, copy & paste Wiki texts, and straight up store bought model planes and boats. The only actual artifacts in there is some old uniform memorabilia donated by some locals. This "museum" has a board of like 7 members...

 

[Cutlass]

That's even more amazing! Did this "air & space museum" have any exhibits outside of little Timmy's model plane collection?

*I make this joke out of experience, because there's a "Freedom Museum" in my town who's collection is made up of public sourced photos, copy & paste Wiki texts, and straight up store bought model planes and boats. The only actual artifacts in there is some old uniform memorabilia donated by some locals. This "museum" has a board of like 7 members...

Southerners like warplanes.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

That's even more amazing! Did this "air & space museum" have any exhibits outside of little Timmy's model plane collection?

*I make this joke out of experience, because there's a "Freedom Museum" in my town who's collection is made up of public sourced photos, copy & paste Wiki texts, and straight up store bought model planes and boats. The only actual artifacts in there is some old uniform memorabilia donated by some locals. This "museum" has a board of like 7 members...

Pretty sure it was this one.

Southerners like warplanes.

Not enough to fund education for their citizens to actually design the warplanes. I went to school with a guy who got a free ride to Missouri S&T paid for by the state of Oklahoma because they don't have an aerospace program at their public universities. Then of course there's the whole primary education funding issue but that's a whole other thing.

 

[Cutlass]

Pretty sure it was this one.


Not enough to fund education for their citizens to actually design the warplanes. I went to school with a guy who got a free ride to Missouri S&T paid for by the state of Oklahoma because they don't have an aerospace program at their public universities. Then of course there's the whole primary education funding issue but that's a whole other thing.

They don't fund education because the children of the wealthy shouldn't have to compete for jobs someday with the children of the peasants.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

So the Russians were trying to repair a space station in the 80's. One of their two cosmonauts on the station noticed that the other guy had a massive gash in his space suit. So they tore off a piece of metallic ducting and duct taped it over the gash. Then they went out and fixed the station. Then they came back to the station for a later mission to completely disassemble the propulsion system of the station and rebuild it to fix a leak.

Fearless men of steel.


On the other hand, there have been a shockingly high number of Soviet crews that just absolutely hating each other and/or suffered from pretty severe on-orbit depression. Also, the second female cosmonaut in space was more or less forced to put on a dress (or fancy outfit, the text is unclear) and serve dinner to her male companions when she first arrived at their space station. I'm not sure that forced is the right word, the fancy outfit/dress was her idea. But the men made a point of telling her that she was a woman first, cosmonaut second and expected, if not demanded, her to serve them. This was in '82, for reference.

She was also just another public relations ploy, as was the first female cosmonaut. She did do important work and experiments on the station* but the explicit reason was to beat the Americans (again) at something before female astronauts began flying on the shuttle. There was a 3-person all-female crew that went into training but it was cancelled after a new leader realized the propaganda value of such a flight was next to nil and decided to focus program resources on training 'real' cosmonauts.

There was a 20 year gap between the first and second female cosmonaut, then ten year gaps between the next two (and none since the forth in 2014).

*Unlike the first woman in space who was expected to do almost nothing and still failed. She allegedly (maybe apocryphally) fell asleep while she was performing observations and greatly angered the mission director who then helped block other female cosmonaut candidates from advancing to flight.

 

[red_elk]

From what I read, Tereshkova had sort of unexpected body reaction during the flight, she felt nausea and drowsiness and indeed even fell asleep at some point. This put her life and the mission at risk and was the reason why next female flights were postponed. Luckily, automatic landing worked properly.

About Savitskaya, I can imagine her male colleagues saying that she was a woman first, cosmonaut second. It was (and probably is) common in Russian work culture. But it only means that they recognize her special status and ready to grant her privileges. Saying the she had to serve them because she was a woman, I guess was possible if the rest of her crew were a-holes, but generally such behavior wasn't normal back then.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

From what I read, Tereshkova had sort of unexpected body reaction during the flight, she felt nausea and drowsiness and indeed even fell asleep at some point. This put her life and the mission at risk and was the reason why next female flights were postponed. Luckily, automatic landing worked properly.

About Savitskaya, I can imagine her male colleagues saying that she was a woman first, cosmonaut second. It was (and probably is) common in Russian work culture. But it only means that they recognize her special status and ready to grant her privileges. Saying the she had to serve them because she was a woman, I guess was possible if the rest of her crew were a-holes, but generally such behavior wasn't normal back then.

Right but the male cosmonauts had a ton of bad reactions as well from severe bone loss, depression, extreme nausea, lying about medical conditions that later led to emergencies to borderline insanity. Yet they kept on trying, they even re-flew some of the cosmonauts that had the worse reactions.

You are right, the cosmonauts were trying to show their female colleague that she had achieved special status. They just did it in a frightfully backward way. I am not sure this behavior wasn't normal - remember, these were people who grew up in the 40's. I can believe that in the 80's that those born in the 60's or afterwards weren't so blatantly sexist but I have a hard time believing the same about the greatest generation.

And that's statement would apply to Americans as well, I don't see that as a uniquely Russian attitude for people of that age. The Americans didn't even bother flying women for the first 20 years of spaceflight and the early female shuttle astronauts were still treated by the public (and to a much lesser degree NASA itself) as somewhat inferior or otherwise special.


Anyways, the Soviet space station program went from militaristic, propaganda-heavy farce to some of the most important achievements that mankind has ever pulled off in space. The work they did was truly incredible. They showed, through toilsome trial and error how to build and maintain the kind of systems humanity needs if we are ever to leave this planet.

Edit: I just realized there was a movie made about Salyut 7 but Netflix doesn't have it. They do have a movie about Gagarin called Gagarin (at least the American release is called that, I think it came out in 2014). Do you know if it is any good?

 

[red_elk]

You are right, the cosmonauts were trying to show their female colleague that she had achieved special status. They just did it in a frightfully backward way. I am not sure this behavior wasn't normal - remember, these were people who grew up in the 40's. I can believe that in the 80's that those born in the 60's or afterwards weren't so blatantly sexist but I have a hard time believing the same about the greatest generation.

And that's statement would apply to Americans as well, I don't see that as a uniquely Russian attitude for people of that age. The Americans didn't even bother flying women for the first 20 years of spaceflight and the early female shuttle astronauts were still treated by the public (and to a much lesser degree NASA itself) as somewhat inferior or otherwise special.

I don't dispute the whole sexism thing, I agree that it existed back then and probably exists now. Just when people say "you are a woman first", the implication is not that she must serve men, but rather the opposite, that men are willing to give her assistance in some circumstances. Still kind of sexist, but much less rude.

By the way, I tried to google story about Savitskaya and her dress in Russian, didn't find anything. There are stories though, that she participated in first experiment involving sex in space
But there are no official comments about that, so all these might be city legends.

Edit: I just realized there was a movie made about Salyut 7 but Netflix doesn't have it. They do have a movie about Gagarin called Gagarin (at least the American release is called that, I think it came out in 2014). Do you know if it is any good?

Can't say anything about "Gagarin", I missed it somehow. Probably will watch it later. And the movie about Salyut-7 had quite bad reviews, so I skipped it too.

The movie I can recommend is "Spacewalk", about Leonov flight.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6673840/

Spoiler :

The actors are very good and the plot contains real issues the cosmonauts encountered during the flight. Some of them were over-dramatized IMO, but I liked the movie anyway. For example, in the movie they barely survived after the landing because rescue team was unable to find them in taiga for a few days. In reality they were also lost for a while, but IIRC they were not at such great risk.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The dress thing is from a book I'm reading called Leaving Earth about the world's various space station programs. The way the author wrote the story makes it seem as though maybe she was joking but it's unclear. In any case she did stay in the capsule after her two colleagues had already entered the space station in order to do her hair and fuss over her appearance. And according to herself, the actual first words that the space station occupants said to her was 'get to work' as they handed her an apron, then she served dinner. But she got along with them fine and did important work on her first and second spaceflights.

Also, I'm pretty sure she was married when she flew to the space station so I doubt she cheated on her husband and risked a massive scandal.

In 1995, Savitskaya gave an interview to Baltimore Sun journalist Clara Germani. She recalled encountering some sexism from her male crewmates and that upon entering Salyut 7 for the first time, Valentin Lebedev presented her with an apron and told her "to get to work". She stated that "I was quickly able to establish a working, professional relationship with them."

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Svetlana_Savitskaya.html

 

[red_elk]

Just read about the apron, Berezovoy says they indeed presented it as a gift during the dinner, along with flowers in bio-box
He is kinda acknowledging that was inappropriate joke. And he says Svetlana didn't accept both gifts, flowers because they were part of experiment and she proposed apron to be used by everybody.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Man they had a lot of difficulty getting things to grow in space. I haven't read the whole book but so far they've only had a few half-success. They did get one species of weed to go through a full life cycle and develop viable seeds which they were able to grow on the ground but everything else either dies or produces sterile seeds. Given that they are currently growing stuff on the ISS I am pretty sure they figured out how to make things grow reliably and I can't wait to read about how they did it. I just got to the section where they finally abandoned Salyut 7 to begin building Mir after having spent so much effort on keeping Salyut 7 running.

Interestingly, they tried a centrifuge system to grow things in simulated gravity but it didn't work. Unfortunately the book doesn't diagnose why it didn't work or why they didn't try follow-on experiments. Though maybe they did and I haven't read that section yet.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The Eurorockot had its final flight yesterday. This was a Russian SS-19 ICBM converted into a small satellite launcher by a Russian/German consortium. The vehicle has been replaced by the all-European Vega launcher for ESA missions. The Russians say they will still launch the all-Russian Rockot variant but there are currently no missions on the books.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

http://spacenews.com/new-shepard-reaches-space-on-eighth-test-flight/

Blue Origin debuted their new New Shepard rocket and capsule. They made some tweaks to this one to improve reliability and operability (i.e. made it cheaper to launch and less likely to blow up). They plan on launching it unmanned a few more times but expect to begin launching tourists this year. Contrast that to Virgin Galactic which began selling tickets a decade ago but still isn't sure when they'll begin flying tourists.

This flight did carry some research payloads from German universities and NASA as well as a wireless communications system that will allow tourists to live stream their launch from inside the capsule.

 

[Broken_Erika]

That is one odd looking rocket, very.....polygonal-looking from that pic.