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> What NASA is doing is like an office worker blowing half their salary on lottery tickets while putting the other half in a pension fund. If the lottery money

by bnralt 2y ago

> What NASA is doing is like an office worker blowing half their salary on lottery tickets while putting the other half in a pension fund. If the lottery money comes through, then there was really no need for the pension fund. But without the lottery win, there’s not enough money in the pension account to retire on. The two strategies don't make sense together. I don't think this analogy works, and it reflects a bigger issue with the essay. Unlike a pension fund, gateway and lunar landings don't actually seem to do anything or move us forward. Like many of NASA's human spaceflight programs (and a decent amount of its unmanned spaceflight programs), they seem to be doing something just to be doing it. So a better analogy might be using half of your money to buy lottery tickets, and setting the other half on fire. Buying lottery tickets might not be a great way to spend money, but it's at least possible you'll get some return from it.

idlewords 2y ago
Personally, I agree with you that the whole program is useless. The point I'm trying to make with this analogy is that the effort is internally incoherent even if you grant the premise that moon landings and building Gateway are desirable outcomes.
- danpalmer 2y ago
  They've essentially hedged, but in a way that gets the worst of both worlds rather than the best.
- davedx 2y ago
  What do you think is useful for NASA to do? Do you think any form of spaceflight is useful?
  - idlewords 2y ago
    I'm a big fan of space exploration and would love to see a robotic exploration program on the scale of our current human space flight endeavors, sending rovers and landers all over the solar system, along with a major space telescope every 3 years or so (instead of once a decade). I feel like we're squandering an amazing chance to explore space by getting stuck on sending people instead of leveraging the enormous progress in microelectronics, robotics, and autonomy of the last 60 years.
    - playingonline 2y ago
      If we did want to become a spacefaring, world-hopping, intergalactic, etc., species in the long term, we wouldn't be sending humans into space right now, because robots are easier to keep alive and do more science with. That was the overall point I got from this and why not mars, which seems true for now. But, even though putting humans on the rockets makes them cost more, it also garners more funding. I don't know, maybe we could convince all American schoolchildren to aspire to be robot programmers rather than astronauts. But typing this out, it seems like: a) you could ask congress to fund robotic exploration, which maybe citizens care about and support, but if they don't then... b) you could instead set up a giant human space program that wastes tens of billions of dollars to do nothing, then quietly siphon off a few billion here or there for JPL or SpaceX to do valuable unmanned research. Maybe the former is possible, and you're fighting the good fight, but most voters don't read long blog posts comparing manned vs unmanned space exploration, and really when it comes to space are only excited by people standing on the moon. I do hope you convince more people, but fortunately whatever monstrosity we have now is at least a nice jobs program.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - thisaccount546 2y ago
    The weird thing about NASA's budget when you look at it[1] is that funding allocation appears to be inversely proportional to the benefit. Human spaceflight is the largest chunk, at 44.9% of the budget. Aeronautics and technology are at the bottom, with technology being allocated 4.9% of the budget, and aeronautics 3.5%. There were good reasons why people were interested in sending people into space in the early days of space exploration. Before automated systems were sufficiently developed, manned programs looked like the best choice. But once automated systems became sufficiently advanced, it was clear that they were the way to go. You can see this when it comes to reconnaissance satellites - both the U.S. (with the uncompleted Manned Orbital Laboratory) and the USSR (with Almaz, which was completed) began with the idea of having manned reconnaissance satellites, but as time progressed they realized autonomous ones were better. If we were sticking people in reconnaissance satellites just for the sake of sticking them in reconnaissance satellites today, it would obviously be farcical. But NASA’s manned space program has being doing the equivalent for decades - blowing a huge part of their budget on sending people into space just for the sake of sending them into space (by the 80’s this had reached the point where they had a program of sending teachers into space for the purpose of having them come back and tell students how cool it was to go to space). But since NASA has more open ended objectives than the military, it’s easier to hide the fact that this isn’t accomplishing much, or that these programs have diverted so much from many of NASA’s core objectives. [1]https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasa-budget https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasa-budget
    - usrbinbash 2y ago
      > There were good reasons why people were interested in sending people into space in the early days of space exploration. Before automated systems were sufficiently developed, manned programs looked like the best choice. But once automated systems became sufficiently advanced, it was clear that they were the way to go. This, and it never ceases to baffle me that there are people who still believe that there is some sort of actual, honest, technical reason to put people into things that go into space.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        To steelman the argument for human spaceflight: If launch becomes sufficiently cheap, then the cost of supporting humans in space also becomes cheap. The cost of developing space robots doesn't decline nearly as much. At some point, "why not robots in space?" has the answer "because on Earth there are plenty of applications where people are cheaper", and cheap space moves that argument to space as well. Note that this implies the overriding importance of reducing costs vs. just sending people expensively for symbolic reasons. The latter is as idiotic as it has ever been. I seriously doubt NASA as it is currently funded and constructed can deliver this.
kqr 2y ago
I'm confused by this analogy also. Is the article saying that NASA is spending money on things that are negative EV? When it comes to these space exploration things that sounds like a subjective value judgment rather than an objective cost/benefit type thing. Are they saying this sort of lottery has positive EV, just that the expectation is small? Then the Kelly-optimal course of action is indeed to split one's salary between it and the pension fund -- the exact ratio takes a more ambitious estimation of the EV, of course. But the idea to split money between safe, sure returns and moonshots is not a flawed idea at all.
mangecoeur 2y ago
From a purely engineering standpoint maybe, but that’s also not fully the point of these programs. Look at the suppliers and you will see money going to every state, spread across many regions. This is as much a public money stimulus program as anything else. You want to create skilled jobs, and also print money without devaluing it, what better than a huge billion dollar high tech program.
- eru 2y ago
  You are mixing things up. There's one part of the government that's spending this money, but they can't print money. They have to borrow it (or collect it as taxes). There's another part of the government, the Fed, that can print money. But by and large, they don't 'spend' it. And they are bound by an inflation target. If inflation goes above target, the Fed sells assets from its balance sheet to remove money from circulation. Borrowing or taxation just shuffles money around. If it has any impact on total nominal spending, that's nullified by the Fed adjusting the money supply to hit their inflation target. You are right, that the point of many government programs seems to be to distribute the pork. But that pork comes from current and future tax payers.

by bnralt 2y ago

idlewords 2y ago

Personally, I agree with you that the whole program is useless. The point I'm trying to make with this analogy is that the effort is internally incoherent even if you grant the premise that moon landings and building Gateway are desirable outcomes.

danpalmer 2y ago
They've essentially hedged, but in a way that gets the worst of both worlds rather than the best.
davedx 2y ago
What do you think is useful for NASA to do? Do you think any form of spaceflight is useful?
- idlewords 2y ago
  I'm a big fan of space exploration and would love to see a robotic exploration program on the scale of our current human space flight endeavors, sending rovers and landers all over the solar system, along with a major space telescope every 3 years or so (instead of once a decade). I feel like we're squandering an amazing chance to explore space by getting stuck on sending people instead of leveraging the enormous progress in microelectronics, robotics, and autonomy of the last 60 years.
  - playingonline 2y ago
    If we did want to become a spacefaring, world-hopping, intergalactic, etc., species in the long term, we wouldn't be sending humans into space right now, because robots are easier to keep alive and do more science with. That was the overall point I got from this and why not mars, which seems true for now. But, even though putting humans on the rockets makes them cost more, it also garners more funding. I don't know, maybe we could convince all American schoolchildren to aspire to be robot programmers rather than astronauts. But typing this out, it seems like: a) you could ask congress to fund robotic exploration, which maybe citizens care about and support, but if they don't then... b) you could instead set up a giant human space program that wastes tens of billions of dollars to do nothing, then quietly siphon off a few billion here or there for JPL or SpaceX to do valuable unmanned research. Maybe the former is possible, and you're fighting the good fight, but most voters don't read long blog posts comparing manned vs unmanned space exploration, and really when it comes to space are only excited by people standing on the moon. I do hope you convince more people, but fortunately whatever monstrosity we have now is at least a nice jobs program.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- thisaccount546 2y ago
  The weird thing about NASA's budget when you look at it[1] is that funding allocation appears to be inversely proportional to the benefit. Human spaceflight is the largest chunk, at 44.9% of the budget. Aeronautics and technology are at the bottom, with technology being allocated 4.9% of the budget, and aeronautics 3.5%. There were good reasons why people were interested in sending people into space in the early days of space exploration. Before automated systems were sufficiently developed, manned programs looked like the best choice. But once automated systems became sufficiently advanced, it was clear that they were the way to go. You can see this when it comes to reconnaissance satellites - both the U.S. (with the uncompleted Manned Orbital Laboratory) and the USSR (with Almaz, which was completed) began with the idea of having manned reconnaissance satellites, but as time progressed they realized autonomous ones were better. If we were sticking people in reconnaissance satellites just for the sake of sticking them in reconnaissance satellites today, it would obviously be farcical. But NASA’s manned space program has being doing the equivalent for decades - blowing a huge part of their budget on sending people into space just for the sake of sending them into space (by the 80’s this had reached the point where they had a program of sending teachers into space for the purpose of having them come back and tell students how cool it was to go to space). But since NASA has more open ended objectives than the military, it’s easier to hide the fact that this isn’t accomplishing much, or that these programs have diverted so much from many of NASA’s core objectives. [1]https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasa-budget https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasa-budget
  - usrbinbash 2y ago
    > There were good reasons why people were interested in sending people into space in the early days of space exploration. Before automated systems were sufficiently developed, manned programs looked like the best choice. But once automated systems became sufficiently advanced, it was clear that they were the way to go. This, and it never ceases to baffle me that there are people who still believe that there is some sort of actual, honest, technical reason to put people into things that go into space.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      To steelman the argument for human spaceflight: If launch becomes sufficiently cheap, then the cost of supporting humans in space also becomes cheap. The cost of developing space robots doesn't decline nearly as much. At some point, "why not robots in space?" has the answer "because on Earth there are plenty of applications where people are cheaper", and cheap space moves that argument to space as well. Note that this implies the overriding importance of reducing costs vs. just sending people expensively for symbolic reasons. The latter is as idiotic as it has ever been. I seriously doubt NASA as it is currently funded and constructed can deliver this.

kqr 2y ago

I'm confused by this analogy also. Is the article saying that NASA is spending money on things that are negative EV? When it comes to these space exploration things that sounds like a subjective value judgment rather than an objective cost/benefit type thing. Are they saying this sort of lottery has positive EV, just that the expectation is small? Then the Kelly-optimal course of action is indeed to split one's salary between it and the pension fund -- the exact ratio takes a more ambitious estimation of the EV, of course. But the idea to split money between safe, sure returns and moonshots is not a flawed idea at all.

mangecoeur 2y ago

From a purely engineering standpoint maybe, but that’s also not fully the point of these programs. Look at the suppliers and you will see money going to every state, spread across many regions. This is as much a public money stimulus program as anything else. You want to create skilled jobs, and also print money without devaluing it, what better than a huge billion dollar high tech program.

eru 2y ago
You are mixing things up. There's one part of the government that's spending this money, but they can't print money. They have to borrow it (or collect it as taxes). There's another part of the government, the Fed, that can print money. But by and large, they don't 'spend' it. And they are bound by an inflation target. If inflation goes above target, the Fed sells assets from its balance sheet to remove money from circulation. Borrowing or taxation just shuffles money around. If it has any impact on total nominal spending, that's nullified by the Fed adjusting the money supply to hit their inflation target. You are right, that the point of many government programs seems to be to distribute the pork. But that pork comes from current and future tax payers.