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$422m per launch vs under $100m per launch. Just imagine how many schools, bridges, cancer treatments, or who knows what else that money could be better spent
by mabbo 9y ago
$422m per launch vs under $100m per launch.
Just imagine how many schools, bridges, cancer treatments, or who knows what else that money could be better spent on.
- tehlike 9y agoprobably not much. that money is likely to be spent on elsewhere in military.
- linkregister 9y agoI'm pretty sure the military funds schools (University research funding, DARPA) and bridges (maybe in Afghanistan and Iraq). Cancer research is probably not a high priority, but traumatic brain injury treatment research and hearing loss mitigation are. So in between various clumsy bombings with 75% noncombatant casualties, the military occasionally spends money on things universally good for society & humanity.
- orik 9y agoThe U.S. Military is universally good for society & humanity. (Unless you're ISIS)
- pstuart 9y agoIndeed! They've brought peace and stability to Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. /s
- linkregister 9y agoTo be fair, the responsibility overwhelmingly lies with the civilian leaders of the military.
- jessaustin 9y agoIf the tool never works how its users expect, it might be appropriate to blame the tool.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nickik 9y agoIt might, but I think the US military is a great tool and does its actual job fantastically well. The only thing you can really blame them for is that they did not give a broad enough set of strategic options to civilians. That said the civilian government usually gives them nonsensical task that they simply can not do.
- pstuart 9y agoSometimes the military does a great job on hiding their inefficiencies too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-buries-evidence-of-125-billion-in-bureaucratic-waste/2016/12/05/e0668c76-9af6-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html?utm_term=.62c3bef1247e https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-burie...
- nickik 9y agoOh for sure. But relatively to other military they are quite good and even while they waste a lot they can mostly to their jobs. Other military are very expensive and very ineffective.
- jessaustin 9y agoIt's just that USA military never seem to win any wars... or honorably escape from any conflict... or actually accomplish anything they ever claimed to have set out to do. Even if we're generous and put Korea in the win column, that was a really long time ago.
- linkregister 9y agoThe tactical blunders resulting in the loss of noncombatant life are only so widespread because of the civilian leadership's priorities. It's rarely the fault of any one servicemember.
- jimbert 9y agoThe military has some funding for roads and bridges in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, but the heavy lifting is done by the Department of State. Most of the budget is on personnel and equipment.
- gozur88 9y agoOr on freeway overpasses in the middle of nowhere.
- jacquesm 9y agoJust imagine what you could do if you didn't do those launches at all.
- salesguy222 9y agohow dare you insinuate that we don't spend pork barrel funds on something porky! this is a very rich man's game, playing with the commoners' money. you best watch your tongue!!! :) :)
- sctb 9y agoWe've asked you many times to stop posting unsubstantively like this, so we've banned the account.
- salesguy222 9y agoHow am I still able to comment then? Unless I'm shadowbanned? Thanks for banning me. I hope anyone who cares realizes that my comments are substantive most of the time, and very pointed. Lol. Bye dude. It's been fun
- thomasmeeks 9y agoWe could not have GPS, and still be trying to fly planes over other countries. I'm a fan of cost reduction, but it is more nuanced than this.
- jacquesm 9y agoSure, there is plenty of dual purpose stuff. Think of the Hubble as a Keyhole pointing the other way. But in general money spent on defense is spent in ways that make me wonder if we could not do something more useful with it. And a world with GPS could be more annoying than a world with say better education. And then you might end up launching those GPS satellites anyway, but from a different bucket and a little later. Piggy-backing stuff onto the military budget that is dual use is a nice fig leaf but it does not reduce the component spent on the remainder: weapons of all sorts, kinds and shapes.
- kuschku 9y agoAnd now imagine how many schools could have been already built, as just under $100m was a price Arianespace had offered for over a decade for the same launches. SpaceX’ concept is about going below $50m in the next years per launch.
- thmsths 9y agoIsn't the price offered by Arianespace subsidized though? I could imagine that the EU is ok to subsidize to get market share in the private market but wouldn't be too happy to subsidize the US department of defense.
- nickik 9y agoThe price is not subsidized to a huge degree. What they do is pay a lot for the development and infrastructure. The Arian 6 will get like 3 Billion and many of its parts have a history of development by government investment. Arianespace might come close to competing on price, but they can't compete on cost.
- kuschku 9y agoOnly development is subsidized, ongoing costs are not. The US could have easily contracted to Arianespace for these flights (especially as Arianespace is already a project of a close ally), and could have saved around 300 million USD for every single launch, of which there were thousands over the time frame that this was possible. We’re seriously talking about dozens to hundreds of billions USD that could have been saved.
- douche 9y agoYeah, that's a couple of F-35s...