Where Do We Draw The Line?

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Originally Posted by honedright

Yeah, but all the Russians had to do was worry about delivering a payload to the U.S. not the moon. I'm not knocking the technological achievement of landing on the moon, but isn't that kinda like swatting a fly with an atom bomb? We could have used a cheaper way to intimidate them. And we're still funding NASA well beyond that purpose.

And, there's really nothing in Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution that provides congress the power to collect taxes for the purpose of intimidating the enemy, unless you really stretch it.

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Until we started working on going to the moon, all our rockets blew up on the pad.

Sputnik scared the hell out of us. The Russians could orbit a payload and we could not.

I can't believe the conspiracy idiots that believe the moon shot was faked.

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Originally Posted by honedright

Products such as?

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You have got to be kidding right?

if you do a little research you will find all kinds of products from industrial and medical applications into electronics, probably hundreds, maybe thousands of items. Also the Govt does all kinds of research. They have National labs, Medical institutes. Some of the most cutting edge items have come from the Govt directly and I don't mean Govt funded by private entities. The military has their own research and development labs, the list goes on and on.

Did you know the first heart valve replacement operation in the U.S was done at the Nation Institutes of Health.

I don't want to dis anyone here but anyone who says the Govt serves no useful purpose must live under a rock somewhere.

As far as private research and development goes yes once developed, private industry got them for free and then improved. The hard part was coming up with the concept in the first place. However, You know what would happen if you got an I-phone and took it apart and came out with your own vastly improved model? Either Apple would hire you or you would be sued out of existence by them.

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

As far as private research and development goes yes once developed, private industry got them for free and then improved. The hard part was coming up with the concept in the first place.

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It's a little bit different, the concepts are easy. The issue is the huge costs of investment in basic research before you have a product you can sell. Most businesses and venture capitalists don't like to gamble with that amount of money (now patenting 'improvements' once there is a working technology is a whole other story). And that's where comes the US government and first of all the 'defense' spending.
Some of it goes into contracts some of it goes into government research facilities, but at the end of the day it's both a lot of money, and a very large chunk of the budget.
And the money the private industry is willing to invest in research has been declining for decades.
It's not hard to compare the innovations of Bell Labs, IBM, Xerox with those of Apple, or Facebook and you can get an idea of what's going on.

One more example - everybody built networks in the 1960s, but the difference between arpanet and everybody else was that the former had the backing and the resources of the federal government of US and the priority of a defense project. Just like the Manhattan project 20 years earlier.

And speaking of nukes and drawing lines, isn't it time for the nuclear weapons industry to be privatized?

And speaking of the Nuclear Weapons Industry I still want to know why I can't go out and buy a Thermonuclear Device. I mean, it's a weapon and an arm right? isn't that covered under the 2nd amendment? I only want a little one to play with. Talk about a nanny state.

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

And speaking of the Nuclear Weapons Industry I still want to know why I can't go out and buy a Thermonuclear Device. I mean, it's a weapon and an arm right? isn't that covered under the 2nd amendment? I only want a little one to play with. Talk about a nanny state.

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The difference is a Nuke is a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

I don't think a $200 tax stamp will cover that. You might have a problem getting the Chief of Police to sign off on it as well.

Texas still has the monopoly on Nuke assembly.

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

And speaking of the Nuclear Weapons Industry I still want to know why I can't go out and buy a Thermonuclear Device. I mean, it's a weapon and an arm right? isn't that covered under the 2nd amendment? I only want a little one to play with. Talk about a nanny state.

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Thanks, just spewed coffee all over my keyboard reading that. Strangely enough, it almost makes sense in the context of this thread.

Bob

Speaking of NASA, the federal government, and "the" space program...
The U.S. government’s secret space program has decided to give NASA two telescopes as big as, and even more powerful than, the Hubble Space Telescope.

Hmm.... I haven't gotten to use this one in awhile:


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