Child Donated His Piggy Bank to NASA Got a Call From an Astronaut | Hacker News Reader

Child Donated His Piggy Bank to NASA Got a Call From an Astronaut

theatlantic.com

115 pointsRichardCM33 comments

"To realize that dream, however, he needs NASA to have a fully functioning space program when he's an adult"

Or, you know, he could get a job with SpaceX or Virgin Galactic or any of a few other companies (or the additional companies that will be founded once this becomes obviously economically viable) who eventually are going to need a manned presence in space for any number of reasons. Some of them will probably even be doing asteroid mining, or similar other cutting-edge tasks.

The fault in your logic lies at "once this becomes obviously economically viable". If and when it becomes economically viable. And even if there is "asteroid mining" during his lifetime, what makes you think that it'll be a manned mission?

NASA's space program has nothing to do with profit, it has to do with knowledge. And that can never be replaced by private companies.

The FAA doesn't fly airplanes, either. NASA's role will change once commercial manned space access is part of the environment.

NASA's role isn't flying billionaires around planets for profit. That can happen through private companies just like its happening with planes now. Knowledge and exploration is NASA's game. No private company cares for those, so funding will come by the state. Its more effective then to fund NASA, than some private company that stands to make profit by doing it.

> NASA's space program has nothing to do with profit, it has to do with knowledge. And that can never be replaced by private companies.

Why not?

Because NASA's mission is not to turn a profit.

Yes, but that doesn't say anything about companies.

Because long term research requires immense levels of upfront spending with no requirement to turn a profit.

IBM, Bell and Xerox are pretty well known for their research efforts.

> it has to do with knowledge. And that can never be replaced by private companies.

Many voyages of discovery were financed by private companies. For example, the Terra Nova Expedition was half financed privately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_Expedition#Finance

and:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Expedition#Finance

The error in your logic is the casual assumption that knowledge can not be profitable. Hopefully the mere act of stating it is enough to show how untrue that is? And that's why there were private discovery expeditions, per WalterBright's point.

once this becomes obviously economically viable

There's the rub. Right now, SpaceX's biggest customer is NASA. Hopefully, space travel will become economically viable when this kid is an adult. It isn't there yet. It would be shortsighted to de-fund NASA before this happens.

He's 8.

Either space is going to become economically viable within his lifetime and there will be private actors that can take him on, or we're going to shut down NASA as a waste of time, because that is what it will be. The part that takes astronauts, anyhow; a desultory automated probe launching system may be left in place so politicians can pretend to people like us that it hasn't been shut down (and keep the pork network in place), but it will be shut down. (Indeed... by this metric... observe that we are about halfway there today! This is less forward-looking projection than an extrapolation of existing trends... for all the sound and fury about NASA's reduced capacity since the space shuttles were retired, very little has been done about it. And you can't launch astronauts on words.)

Merely having the government writing checks does not mean you get to forget about cost/benefit analysis [1]. If space can not provide benefits proportional to the costs incurred, it's not right or effective regardless of who writes the checks. It will be crowded out by other programs that do provide benefits proportional to costs. (Probably social security or similar wealth transfers.)

(My judgment is firmly on the side that it can indeed provide such benefits. It all comes down to atoms and energy in the end, and space can provide us with plenty of atoms that are rare on Earth (platinum, etc) and is simply awash with energy.)

[1]: It's probably impossible to overstate how much better off we'd be as a civilization and culture right now if more people realized this. You can not escape from cost/benefit analysis; attempting to do so merely virtually guarantees that you'll make bad choices. And lo....

I'm very much with you on the cost-benefit of space. I think with every dollar, we have to ask, "Why not invest this in education?" and "Why not have the public fund this?"

For the former, I don't have great answers, and I struggle with it a lot. With the latter, there is an answer - neither public nor private equity markets have a long enough time horizon to sustain high risk investments for such a long time frame. (Especially if it's, "How do save the species in 200 years?" types of questions rather than space tourism) If it's important enough, we can't count on benevolent philanthropists.

This is the stuff that dreams are made of. This kid will no doubt remember this for the rest of their life. If this would have happened to me when I was a kid I would have went nuts.

I am pretty sure China is going to get the claim to that "last person on the moon" this decade, at least with our insane ratio of war spending vs education and research spending.

Perhaps it's just the moon isn't that interesting. It's just the closest rock to throw stuff at.

For anyone interested here is a link to the petition, i couldn't find one in the article.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/increase-nasa-fund...

We need more of this. Challenging children to greatness is what keeps things interesting.

Can you recommend any books?

Harold and the Purple Crayon

http://www.amazon.com/Harold-Purple-Crayon-Anniversary-Editi...

They should send his money back. As a total percentage of tax dollars NASA's budget has fallen, but in inflation adjusted dollars has remained pretty consistent for the past 30 years.

I've been extreme sad to see program after program cut from NASA, but just looking at the numbers it seems like more of a management issue than a budget issue - double the workforce with an inflation adjusted-only budget increase?

There have been a handful of years when NASA recived less in nominal dollars than the previous year (but not the majority), but like every government program, a budget cut isn't a reduction in funds, rather a decrease in the rate of increase for the program.

Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

You are aware inflation isn't a constant across all sectors of the economy correct? A better comparison would be to look at the Producer Price Index for the relevant industries.

Additionally, NASA is legally obligated to use several subcontractor's who's prices have far outpaced inflation.

Additionally, NASA is legally obligated to use several subcontractor's who's prices have far outpaced inflation.

Are you claiming this is a feature? This kid gave NASA his piggy bank as a donation. If NASA were to be rated alongside other charities by whoever - givewell, charity navigator - how well do you suppose it would look?

No I'm not claiming it's a feature. It's a result of private enterprises lobbying for contracts, and the end result is legally mandated inefficiency.

"legally mandated inefficiency" is "corruption" in 3 words, right?

I was using inflation as a simple proxy for this discussion.

My impression of the situation is that NASA directors are complaining that funding is in danger but at the same time increasing expenses on things which provide suboptimal returns. A kid falls for the bureaucratic script (a decrease in the rate of increase counts as a decrease in the budget) and sends what amounts to a significant portion of his personal net worth to help the floundering organization - which only has a _mere_ $18B this year (a revenue that would put it in the Fortune 150). In return, NASA has an astronaut call him (very cool), but taking the money from a kid is sleazy politics (imho).

Meanwhile, companies like SpaceX, are spending across 10 years what NASA spends in 3 weeks. Of course what they are doing is at a vastly smaller scope, but their impact (and public perception), seems to be disproportionate to the investment. (Interestingly, about half of SpaceX's money has come from NASA.)

I've signed the petition in my support of this young man who's trying to make a positive difference. That difference, however, doesn't come from budget increases, but from effective use of those resources.

I applaud this. This is the spirit we need to succeed in space.

Awesome call. Props to both the kid, and his new favorite astronaut!

Alternatively, teach this little man chinese.

Or Hindi.

Hm, he's 8, so he can take Farsi lessons as well too.

Really cool. You're never too young to chase your dream.

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