Did we stop dreaming?

There is no short term 400% profitability margin in spaceflight.
Get back to your job cookie cutter peasant and make more mmoonneeyy today. Money is what makes the universe exist, not spaceflight or imagination or creativity.

Two years ago I was walking behind the president of the college I was at while in a conversation with some big wigs. There was a comment made about profit margins and what programs should be cut. A room with desks and lights is about all they wanted to fund. Anything that took supplies was being pooped on and up for the axe. Classes like sciences, arts, sports, even computers, etc, were the targets of the axe. This conversation wasn't in a closed room or anything. It was walking in the main hallway with students everywhere.

Grrrr. Yea, me too.
 
Yes, we have stopped dreaming.

But hey, at least the government is here to prevent such dangerous, irresponsible practices as having that curvy, suspended ramp that the astronauts walked down. Why a kid could literally fall through the cables and hurt himself.

This is what we've come to.
 
Brave New World. Nothing brave about it, IMHO. :(
 
Maybe it's just my speakers, but I could hardly understand the rantings through the background music. (noise?) They are good speakers, stereo with a separate base, I listen to music on them all the time. Maybe I'm just getting too old.

I did catch the rantings about the space program only costing a very small percentage of our tax dollar. Well that is true, but with a Socialist government, such as ours, we have hundreds of programs that also must be funded with small percentages of our tax dollars. Actually, our tax dollar can not be divided by the number of programs that must be funded, so we borrow from our Chinese brothers.

China also has space aspirations, and since we are so dependent on their financial largess, we do not want to offend them by staying ahead of them in space. We must slow down so they can catch up.

John
 
John Baker said:
Maybe it's just my speakers, but I could hardly understand the rantings through the background music. (noise?) They are good speakers, stereo with a separate base, I listen to music on them all the time. Maybe I'm just getting too old.
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The video description text on YouTube included a link to an "audio adjusted" version.

I saw it and thought about posting that video link instead of this one, but it sounded fine on three devices I played it on. (shrug)

I used the tags to embed the video here for convenience so you probably didn't see the full description text.

Grab the alternate link out of the description here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc
 
I just woke up, way earlier than I should be up, so I'll try again with the new version.

I have noticed though, if there is a lot going on audibly, it is much harder for me to understand what people are saying on television. Or, if say there is a group of woman, or perhaps a jackhammer operator nearby.

I hear through my headsets as well as, or even better than a lot of others, yet if there is a lot of conflicting sounds, I do start having problems. It really does have something to do with aging I think.

Thanks for the new version, I'll watch it in a bit.

John
 
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A chicken in every pot. An airplane in every garage. Pan Am to a station orbiting in L5. A base on the moon. Where is it all?
It's not so much that we stopped dreaming; we just stopped doing anything about it.
 
After WWII there was a lot of optimism in the U.S. We had just defeated evil on a global scale. The technologies that came out of, or were greatly improved during the war were mind boggling. Jets, rockets, guided missiles, nuclear power, radar, television. It was truly an amazing time. We had industry, our dollar was strong, we could dream, and actually do something about the dream because we could afford it.

Now we have pessimism, jealousy and demonization of success, and huge debt. We can no longer afford to dream, we now are just trying to exist it seems.
 
As long as voters keep voting for "me" and protection and expansion of their pocket books at others tax payers expense we cannot afford to dream.
 
silver-eagle said:
A chicken in every pot. An airplane in every garage. Pan Am to a station orbiting in L5. A base on the moon. Where is it all?
It's not so much that we stopped dreaming; we just stopped doing anything about it.
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Perhaps that is caused by our multitude of regulations, such a zoning laws, pyrotechnic laws, and a host of others, that keep people from tinkering in their garages, warehouses, or even university laboratories. By the time the bright idea makes it through the labyrinth, it's possessor either runs out of money or interest. In most cases, it never gets beyond the barroom napkin.

We have squashed our famous American Ingenuity with our even more famous regulatory agencies and processes.

John
 
silver-eagle said:
It's not so much that we stopped dreaming; we just stopped doing anything about it.
Click to expand...

I call that the sesame street 3 minute rule. There was a whole bunch of tv watching kids from when I grew up that have a 3 minute attention span then lost interest and moved onto the next subject. That closely matches the length of the sesame street 3 minute scenes. When I asked them if they watched that show, they said watched that show religiously.
You can't design a spacecraft and fly to the moon in 3 minutes.
 
John Baker said:
Perhaps that is caused by our multitude of regulations, such a zoning laws, pyrotechnic laws, and a host of others, that keep people from tinkering in their garages, warehouses, or even university laboratories. By the time the bright idea makes it through the labyrinth, it's possessor either runs out of money or interest. In most cases, it never gets beyond the barroom napkin.

We have squashed our famous American Ingenuity with our even more famous regulatory agencies and processes.

John
Click to expand...

Agreed.
 
fgcason said:
I call that the sesame street 3 minute rule. There was a whole bunch of tv watching kids from when I grew up that have a 3 minute attention span then lost interest and moved onto the next subject. That closely matches the length of the sesame street 3 minute scenes. When I asked them if they watched that show, they said watched that show religiously.
You can't design a spacecraft and fly to the moon in 3 minutes.
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With modern media, internet, I-phones, etc., I believe it is now much lower than three minutes.
 
Well, that time, I picked up a whole lot more of it, but the music was still distracting.

The gist of it seems to be we lack the funds for NASA to accomplish what it was originally set up to accomplish. I noticed the multitude of NASA employees working on, and cheering our assorted dreams. I'll bet most all of them are retired now, and NASA has to pay their retirement packages. As our economy grew, so did NASA's pay scale, along with their, probably generous, retirement offerings.

NASA, like most all government bureaucracies, can no longer accomplish it's mission simply because all of it's money goes to feeding the bureaucracy, not the projects.

NASA is just one example of why bureaucratisim can not work, it is not sustainable over the long haul.

John
 
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John Baker said:
Well, that time, I picked up a whole lot more of it, but the music was still distracting.
Click to expand...

Maybe the problem is that a lot of people can't seem to do anything without some damn crappy muzak going on.

Can't watch a sports replay or a sports show without crappy muzak

Can't even watch the news without crappy muzak.

Apparently people think that crappy muzak adds content and value.
 
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