• StalinStan [none/use name]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Once again I am begging china to use their moon rover to push over our flag, and challenge us to space battlebots.

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]
    ·
    4 months ago

    DOD can whoopsie daisy and lose a couple billion dollars out their pocket and they just keep getting more without any consequences. Scientific missions have to halt everything because a screw costs $40 over budget. Whitey not even on the moon anymore.

    • barrbaric [he/him]
      ·
      4 months ago

      The Pentagon had over 2 trillion dollars unaccounted for in the early 2000s but we can't have nationalized health care because it would be too expensive.

    • buckykat [none/use name]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Boeing's whole space division is cooked if they have to admit they need a ride home on a Dragon or a Soyuz but it's not a Columbia situation where there's no real feasible solution.

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]
        ·
        4 months ago

        next time we equip our astronauts with cyanide pills in case to resist brainwashing by the communist slavasino brains

    • Munrock ☭@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      4 months ago

      Imagine it getting to the point where they have to ask Russia to send a Soyuz up there, or China to send a Shenzhou*. I have a feeling they'd rather de-orbit the ISS with two corpses on board.

      *Wolf Amendment

    • Runcible [none/use name]
      ·
      4 months ago

      NASA was funded as a way to launder the reputation of rocket propulsion research, which has some other purposes than space travel

      • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
        ·
        4 months ago

        What probably makes things worse is I can't imagine NASA gets to build much institutional knowledge, between sections of it getting privatized and the robotics division is probably just a resume builder for people who want to make apps where you feed in a picture of your dog and the app tells you what kind of carpet it is.

    • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
      ·
      4 months ago

      NASA sucks without being able to "hire" engineers from a certain central European country who were working for a particular type of right wing government and their rocket program during the 1940s.

      Things are realy different when you can't just jump start your technological race against your biggest enemy by just "referencing" from others lol.

      • fox [comrade/them]
        ·
        4 months ago

        Perfidious orientals illegally invade far side of moon with unreviewed lander technology, refuse to then donate to honest Americans the moon rocks stolen from the surface

        • buckykat [none/use name]
          ·
          4 months ago

          NASA literally couldn't touch the moon rocks China brought back even if China gave us some, because of the 2011 Wolf Amendment signed into law by Obama.

          • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]
            ·
            4 months ago

            The Wolf Amendment is a law passed by the United States Congress in 2011, named after then–United States Representative Frank Wolf, that prohibits the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from using government funds to engage in direct, bilateral cooperation with the Chinese government and China-affiliated organizations from its activities without explicit authorization from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Congress.

            wtf-am-i-reading

            • DengistDonnieDarko [he/him]
              ·
              4 months ago

              when I'm in a shooting myself in the foot out of racist spite competition and my opponent is the US Congress: :x

          • fox [comrade/them]
            ·
            4 months ago

            No no, they actually made a request for a unilateral trade.

            You give me your space rocks trade-offer you get nothing in return

  • Rojo27 [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Capitalist efficiency doing its thing once againdoug-clap

    • BeamBrain [he/him]
      ·
      4 months ago

      I expect the usual suspects will point to this as an example of why everything should be privatized.

      • Egon
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        deleted by creator

        • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          4 months ago

          I can't say I understand their move here either. Outside of all the fuckiness of the satellite cloud model, it also just doesn't work? It can't really scale up beyond a certain point, and it's also just future space junk. Why they wouldn't simply provide actual infrastructure is beyond me.

    • buckykat [none/use name]
      ·
      4 months ago

      China's next step in space isn't a Mars mission but a permanent moon base. Scouting locations for it is one of the purposes of the the Chang'e missions.