You could also look at the same ISS mission with another contractor: Boeing got paid twice as much and then failed to bring the astronauts back in Starliner. So obviously NASA is overpaying some contractors, but that's probably only part of the story of where all that money is going. For 90 billion NASA would have delivered multiple Moon landings in the 70s - with inferior tech at that, and having to figure it all out for the first time. Don't underestimate how difficult it was.

* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026596462...

NASA had their budget cut, but when you look more into it a lot of that never went into spaceflight to begin with.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43864972

Points: 13

# Comments: 1

News organizations have in recent years started selling so-called "contributor" positions. Anyone with enough money can be a journalist and influence public opinion. And NYT and similar outlets are not trustworthy sources either way, they sneak edit articles when they get caught spreading misinformation but regularly don't disclose what was actually changed. Basically rewriting their reporting as the narrative changes.

Communism is usually also not discussed enough. In the Weimar Republic in the 30s it was inevitable that either Communists or Nazis would come to power. The mainstream parties had completely failed the country so the people were desperate and sought refuge in radical ideologies. It was either or, there was no alternative.

I think people who're into economics can usually tell what he tries to say. But in terms of communicating it to the wider public its a total failure because he simply says what he thinks and tries to dumb it down for common people. Which is of course bound to fail, it sounds silly to them because they have never been told anything like it. The usual PR is to spin the strategy and essentially lie to the public. Trump talks about all the things he's actually doing without any filter which sounds insane and scary to people.

If you're worried about inflation now, probably better they didn't tell you what they did in 2020:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGMBASE

The excessive treatment made them see themselves as freedom fighters. Of course, that's not what people are taught in school in Britain or France, it's an inconvenient narrative.

Everyone agrees the build quality used to be better (my grandpa already said this about appliances from his youth). But one thing I almost never see discussed is the power consumption of these old devices. Older CPUs often double as room heaters. Modern ones, especially the Apple M-series, have become a lot more efficient. So while I agree that modern laptops suck in many ways, I would do the math to see if it's actually cheaper to buy and use an older computer. Maybe not if you're in Qatar or Russia but some countries have extremely high electricity costs.

India has a lot of other issues, I grant you that the socialist ideology probably had a positive influence in some ways other than economics, particularly socially. But no offense, if you've ever walked the streets Trivandrum and other cities you know there are much more pressing issues.

I'm not a materials scientist so I can't comment on this specific topic but based on my experience with pop science reporting errors and misinformation often come in multiples. The author has a "Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing". RIKEN's press release is already written for a general audience and in English, so there isn't a good reason not to read the original source instead.

Btw, for some historic context this part of India used to be extremely rich in the past by global standards, centuries ago. They became rich with international trade. Modern India is nowhere close to its wealthy past, the subcontinent as a whole produced the largest percentage of the world's GDP during Late Antiquity, surpassing China and all others!

>Exploiting and lying about the monumental efforts of a pioneering industry for cheap political points

I don't know what this means. When someone tells a blatant lie, it would be easy to quote them for a start. What 'monumental effort' was lied about? If it's about Boeing then I have to say I too think the company is doing a terrible job and if anyone is lying about the effort it's them, there have been numerous whistleblowers who came out and talked about the coverups at Boeing.

Also in that alternative timeline, I wonder what that would do to Americans psychologically. If China and Russia had already beat the US in space, the decline would be extremely obvious. To the rest of the world as well.

The fact that many believe all these companies thrive despite the leadership is fascinating. I've heard this same take over and over.

One can't keep hiring the right people and make the right decisions without understanding how things work. Bezos is an extremely skilled manager yet his space company, which has actually been around longer than SpaceX as well, amounted to nothing like it. We could write it off to pure luck maybe, if Musk weren't a serial entrepreneur.

There must be some sort of psychological phenomenon explaining this irrational way of viewing his achievements. I feel like that often when people talk about Musk they aren't even talking about him but some sort of fictional character that seems to exist purely in the imagination of certain people. And it's never those who actually worked with him.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43185909