NASA’s civil servant workforce has varied in size over the years, peaking during the Apollo program. During the 1990s, the Clinton administration reduced the workforce by 25% over five years, a process that some claim laid the groundwork for the shuttle Columbia disaster. This budget proposes to slash NASA’s workforce by nearly 1/3 in a single year via involuntary layoffs, resulting in the agency’s smallest workforce since fiscal year 1960, before NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Johnson Space Center, and Stennis Space Center even existed.
In pretty pictures:
No. SpaceX doesn’t make up for this. China does both, massive public spending and multiple space launch companies.
Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP or SSP), the concept of gathering solar power in space using solar power satellites (SPS) to send it back to Earth, may sound like science fiction, but it is getting closer to reality.
China plans to build a 1km-wide solar array in the geostationary orbit about 36,000km above Earth.
At this distance from atmospheric interferences such as day-night cycles and changing weather, the array will constantly gather solar energy, anticipated to surpass terrestrial photovoltaic systems by more than tenfold in efficiency.
Once collected, this energy will be transformed into microwaves and transmitted to a ground-based collector station.
Colloquially known as a powersat, this was suggested by O’Neill back in the 70s. It could have been done with tech that within reach in about a decade, but, of course, America did no such thing. The space shuttle cost way too much to launch, funding had dried up to do things better and cheaper and space was no longer a priority.
China’s following O’Neill’s playbook, weirdly enough. They’re doing what the US decided not to do. To put it bluntly, if humanity has a future in space, it will be Chinese, not American. This isn’t primarily about colonization, though some people will live in space for a time, it is about putting manufacturing, refining and mining into space so we can re-wild the Earth, and avoid the resource trap.
It’s not a sure thing, by any means, but given that Earth is limited and space is much less limited, it’s the only way out of the limited resource trap. China either succeeds (and it’s them or no one, because there is a ticking clock) or we face inevitable civilization collapse. Once that occurs, having already mined all the easily accessible resources, there is unlikely to be a second chance at a future in space, or even a particularly high tech society.
Anyway, as usual, the future happens in China, and America has given up. AI is bullshit, even if it works, American capitalists want it so they can put a third of the workforce out of work. Meanwhile China builds civilian robots, automates entire factories and ports, has flying cars and drones galore and is actually working towards a real future in space.
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Feral Finster
The british said much the same about germany on the eve of WWI. British strategy was simple – rather than try to win by outcompeting germany, far cheaper and easier to simply smash germany up, while sitting back behind the North Sea.
Cynical, and it worked.
As a maritime power, expect the United States to use its rings of islands around China to do the same.
Ian Welsh
They’ll try. But Britain still had a larger fleet than Germany. The US’s fleet is smaller, though more tonnage, but even that won’t be true soon, plus China is ahead in both missiles and drones.
Nope. Won’t work. But they can try and get their asses kicked.
Feral Finster
All the US has to do is to hold its island chains and lob missiles in. The shipping is secondary, although the US also doesn’t actually have to approach China, just keep China bottled up, while China has to break out (again, this is similar to germany in WWI and WWII).
It will be massively wasteful and destructive. The rulers of the US could not care less, for they are full-blown Game Of Thrones sociopaths.
Ian Welsh
Won’t work. China has massive amphibious assault capacity, designed precisely for taking islands against opposition. It also has missiles, non nuclear, which can reach the US.
Plus, the Chinese drone, missile and navy forces are optimized for winning that specific war. The US won’t even be able to get supplies to those islands. Anything that tries will eat sufficient missiles and drones to overwhelm its defenses. If necessary, the Chinese can just throw enough missiles to exhaust a carrier task force group’s defenses.
No, sorry, it’s over. If the US tries to use military force against China, it will lose, and after the first month, it won’t even be close, because they can’t manufacture enough missiles or other weapons, especially w/o Chinese supplies and by the time they get that sorted out, China will be so far ahead even Americans won’t think they can win.
Americans just can’t understand this, can they? You’ve lost. It’s over. This is 99.9% probability. Financial powers never win war against industrial ones. Never.
Bill H.
I’d say we should not only cut NASA funding, we should do away with it altogether. NASA is not even trying to do anything that we did not do 70 years ago. It once put man on the Moon, and now it cannot even out an unmanned lander there. We’re simply doing the same things over and over again, cluttering near space with satellites of dubious value, and pretending that they are not mundane.
Feral Finster
Taking that as given, the US will not hesitate to go nuclear. Sucks for us, but our lives are a sacrifice that the rulers are prepared to make.