Piwin -> RE: Black Hole eats sun (May 19 2022 14:02:04)
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An interesting read is The innovation delusion: how our obsession with the new has disrupted the work that matters most by Vin Diesel and Kurt Russel (ok, it's actually Lee Vinsel and Andrew Russel, but it should be Vin Diesel and Kurt Russel just for the sex appeal ^^). In a nutshell, they argue that the balance between innovation and maintenance/upkeep is completely out of whack, which then has detrimental effects on infrastructure, the economy and our societies at large. It's not directly applicable to space exploration, but you can extrapolate some ideas from it. I'm not sure that exploration has anything to do with human nature, but if it does, it may be worth stating that it's not the only aspect of human nature. Perhaps the point would be that it may be misguided to think the solution will necessarily come from exploration, and that it is just one component of a larger system. It then becomes a question of balance. That being the case, I would personally be in favour of pouring more money into space agencies, as I think they are currently cruelly underfunded, but I can see how someone would argue the other way. Unfortunately, I don't think that's where the big money will be going though. The key word in the space sector these days seems to be "commercialisation" and the next step would essentially be to saturate LEO with commercial satellites. It's not all bad of course, and in fact there are a lot of benefits, but in essence to me it seems that we're heading less towards Star Trek and more towards an even crappier version of Ready Player One. On a side note, I think the cost overrun on the James Webb Telescope (about double the price tag NASA had estimated when the building started back in 2009) shouldn't be overlooked. No matter how excited we are and how supportive we are of the project, that kind of overrun goes beyond what can be reasonably expected. It points to deeper issues. So I think that devilhand at least had a point on that. It's just that the conclusion shouldn't be "this was too expensive therefore let's scrap space research", but rather "this was too expensive so let's examine what went wrong to make sure it doesn't happen again". Some of those costs were unavoidable (like those related to covid restrictions. The space sector got caught up in that just like everyone else and it was impossible to anticipate), but others probably were avoidable. Ultimately it's the US taxpayer's money so I'm not affected by it. But if CNES or ESA had that kind of overrun, I wouldn't be too happy about it (I guess the European equivalent of a clusterfuck project is ExoMars. Same deal, some things were unavoidable (like covid or the war in Ukraine and Roscosmos pulling out of the project), but other things could have been avoided and just fall under the heading "shoddy management"). Dunno. It's normal to include contingency funds in the overall budget and it's also normal that that contingency be relatively higher for cutting-edge projects. But we're usually talking something like 5-10%. I don't think anyone would consider a contingency of 100% of the estimated cost-at-completion to be reasonable, and that's essentially what NASA would've had to have to cover James Webb without going over budget.
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