Proposed NOAA Budget Kills Program Designed to Prevent Satellite Collisions

Yep, keenly aware of that, but if we’re building a new future that’s resilient to modern structural collapse and civilizational crises, then part of that is changing the structure of the UN, dues/fees, and its functions. There’s a lot to discuss there once enough folks have accepted the era of US Hegemony is over.

I sort of wonder when the UN is getting thrown out of New York by the current administration.

And they can just pull out of it whenever and frame the UN as a boogeyman like with the WHO.

Indirectly is great unless you don't live in the US/SR in which case it's in your backyard. Indirect fighting hasn't been so great for Afghanis.

Yep.

It is so weird to live in a world where the progressive movement is a better supporter of Chesterton's fence than the allegedly conservative GOP and even the corporate/neoliberal wing of the controlled opposition.

We’re watching the fire sale of America, like was imposed on Russia in the 90s, and resulted in one of the largest declines in life expectancy in the country’s history. I expect the same to happen here, including its eventual culmination in the rise of a Putin-like figure from the security state apparatus, after we similarly suffer a decade or more of internal collapse and humiliation.

It seems very similar to how a clique bought up a lot of Russia and became their oligarchs. It's another transfer of wealth to the rich and/or Trump's cronies. The destruction of public goods, research, education, and the climate is extremely sad.

> Someone will propose privatization of said program

Someone would if given the time and infrastructure. This, on the other hand, is more DOGE-style idiocy.

Privatized profits, socialized costs

so, Planetes then

Orrrr said privatized thing will start out relatively cheaper than the norm and eventually end up costing way more than what the government was originally spending when it was still part of the government since the private company eventually outpriced everyone with their cheap prices and then when they finally got their monopoly scaled up their prices as much as they feasibly could and then some.

The privatization of this data has always been the plan, IIRC that's why the first Trump administration pulled some of these efforts out of the military

Sure. Great.

But that explanation isn't being offered by the powers-that-be. So there's no point trying to rationalize it post-hoc.

There's no evidence that this is anything more than yet another round of ideologically-fueled maladministration.

Understand the first part perfectly. Yes, a small portion of newspace involves [or will involve) spacecraft that don't spend most of their life orbiting in nice predictable arcs above ground stations with occasional also predictable small station keeping or conjunction avoidance adjustments, and it stands to reason that the most advanced and classified US SDA capability has access to better sensor data and models.

But that seems like a very poor argument for removing a system which might be approaching obsolescence in military terms but is still relied on for a rapidly increasing number of civil satellites to make rapidly increasing conjunction avoidance manoeuvres (and is also relatively inexpensive). Anything that makes them less aware threatens defence and critical civil government infrastructure too, and the private sector doesn't exactly seem to be embracing it as an exciting opportunity - look at the quote from Slingshot! Plus if anything the changes taking place would seem to be a reason to invest more in orbital traffic control with regulation to make it more like the FAA. You don't have to give away the classified tracking tech if you're barking out move orders rather than simply sharing predictions so operators come to their own conclusions about conjunction risk, and likewise orders and requirements for operators to broadcast position and intent are a much better way of dealing with a future of private servicing missions and space megastructures than "let them buy their own tracking data and make their own decisions"

I work in a related area too. NOAA and others in the space game are great partners. I don't agree with the fundamentals of your assessment, seems post hoc ergo propter hoc.

> But people who send things to space are often liberal

I literally do not care if someone feels more liberal or conservative in their heart of hearts. There is more that unites people than the pissantry propaganda that plays to divide us.

Rather, like you, I hate waste, which this budget, through underfunding, will create. Probably also like you, I also strongly dislike know-nothing propaganda, especially regarding things about which I am well informed.

Post-truth millieu is a lie. Truth is more adaptive to long term survival.

> For example they often have attended college and believe in science.

One doesn't believe in science. One uses science as a tool to test hypotheses, using real world evidence to understand reality and truth.

For certain industries, there are reasonable arguments to be made to keep domestic and support via price controls.

Food at a high level, yes. Pork specifically, no.

(I know you didn't mean literal pork, but thinking through the spectrum here).

> I don't understand the desire to reduce government spending. It's all super high return on investment.

"Return on investment" (ROI) is only the start of the conversation. ROI is only part of the context. Think of it as a 3-tuple: (ROI, Target, TimeHorizon). One has to define all three for it to be clear. By "Target" I mean the target population and/or impact area. By "TimeHorizon" I mean the period of time over which the ROI is calculated.

This entire comment is intended to be completely non-ideological. Bring your own values and preferred ways of organizing society. (I'm not going to change your deep-seated values, anyway.) But to be intellectually honest, we have to say what we mean.

Even truth-seeking libertarians who prefer market-based approaches understand that many market-based mechanisms are sometimes not well suited for servicing to "hard to reach" customers. Practically, this might mean geographically remote. Generally, it means having a set of characteristics that make them sufficiently out of the parameter space that a market will serve. Some examples include: rural broadband and low-income urban areas that need medical services.

It depends what your investment strategy is. If your goal is to be a rising tide that lifts all boats, then government spending is a good idea. But some people would rather all boats not be lifted. They'd just like to lift some boats, but sink others. Still, other people would prefer to sink as many boats as possible while being in control of the remaining boats that float. For people who fit into those later categories, government spending is not a good ROI.

As Timothy Snyder put it, authoritarian political capital is based on creating a "reservoir of fear" that the authoritarian can draw upon whenever he needs legitimacy or a mandate to enact cruel and inhumane policies. The reservoir of fear is created by making groups desperate, and you don't make them desperate by meeting their needs through funding government assistance programs.

Instead what you do as an authoritarian is you "other" and arrest their neighbors, take away their health care, allow their homes to be flooded, take away their information channels, prevent them from going to school, make sure they're unemployed, make food more scarce... make them desperate enough, blame their desperation on the "others" and they'll be happy to enact whatever cruelties you ask them to on the "others" if they think it'll lessen their misery, or at the very least bring more misery to the "others".

It can be, when it's invested in butter rather than guns.

Yes, military investments have paid off in new technologies (e.g., Arpanet) but as a whole only reward the owners of the Military Industrial Complex.

The vast majority of the government budget is entitlements and military. I'm sure there are other things that could be cut and there is always room for more efficiency but it's always gonna be a drop in the bucket compared to entitlements and military.

That said, regulations that make the economy less dynamic and slow stuff down have a high opportunity cost. While it's bureaucrats that write the implementation details and enforce them, it's congress who requires it to happen with AFAIK often little regard to how it would be executed in practice.

iirc Starlink satellites sit in a low orbit so they'll burn up/down pretty fast.

> hope all that stuff we bought with $36T was worth it

No need for past tense. We’re currently in the most intense—the biggest, most beautiful, one might say—phase of deficit accumulation in American history.

A sizeable chunk, probably around half, of what we bought with that $36T was net worth for people like Bezos and the Kochs.

They will worry about the deficits again once democrats are in power.