NASA Doomsday Prophesy

Excellent!

It looks like I should be able to outlive this prediction of doom (just like the last one when I was a kid in the 1970s and the end of the Mayan calendar) so I can sit back and have a good laugh at those profits, too, when it fails to pass.

As for our occupation of the Space Station, what's our exit plan?

Oh, and you wrote, "You just can't make this stuff up." I think NASA has just proven you wrong.

If this nonsense becomes the basis for a slew of new mandates and executive orders, we won't be laughing for long.

Didn't NASA once spend $250 000 (in that order), on a screwdriver?

Remember those world-wide famines in the 1980s that killed off hundreds of millions of people - the famines predicted by Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich in his bestselling book 'The Population Bomb'?

Remember them?

Yeah, me neither.

From the link:

"To avoid an apocalypse, the scientists urge economic equality, stark decreases in consumption, and the fairer distribution of resources."

I also remember hearing that we were going to all freeze to death.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

I agree!

Bull....just what are we going to run out of? Food? energy? People? Water? Raw materials? I guess that's when the machines will take over.....lol

We may got get to find out.

...only the UN can save us from this disaster.

The least we could do is raise minimum wage.

...and by the way, $70 mil is much cheaper than the space shuttle which cost about $1.5 bil per flight....

It's not the only way.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/01/31/private-space-plane-poised-for-big-test-flight/

Biden was just talking about sending US troops to former Soviet states, to ease fears over Russian movement into Crimea.

Would you want to be a US astronaut sitting on the ISS?

is stupidity 'green energy'.

There may be a government grant in there somewhere to find out.

Maybe we should rework that a little.

"Green energy" isn't stupid, and neither is research into alternative energy; but dumping billions into private companies with nothing but fake promises...that's stupid.

I would suggest that if "green energy" was a viable and promising research path, you wouldn't need to subsidize it nor mandate it.

to develop it, you would.

But the money that was spent to develop it, the develop did go far........ unfortunately because it was such a disaster, I lost interest and stopped researching it and is only my opinion.

I disagree, if a company felt there was the promise of profit to develop it, they'd invest their own money to develop it.

I do not believe one company has the resources to take on that venture by its self.

The initial risk is too high. Because its not just developing one item. there is a complement of items that would have to be developed. because true development is long term investment because it contains trial and error.

it all depends on the market forces, if the profit potential is big enough money to fund it will be found.

That is what drives it.........

here's an example.

We went to the moon....... could that risk have been done by a private enterprise....... no.

Did it pay off, some would say, no not directly.........not just going to the moon it didn't........ but the derivative it paid off conservatively 10 fold.... just to get there.....with new materials development, communications, technology development, That then created a synergy that complimented each industry........... in my opinion.

much of that technology would have had to be developed for the launch of satellites. if private enterprise had been allowed to launch satellites then much of that research would have been done privately.

Maybe so, but a huge percentage of our research has been for military applications, with other uses springing from that research.

Government, along with how it uses our money, is not always, nor does it have to be, a bad thing.

When they are spending my money on research that tells me that wealth inequality will destroy civilization....Lucy, we hab a prollem!!!!

That was my Ricky Ricardo imitation.

sure, if one could have found a enterprising company that was willing to take that risk........ That is where I believe we disagree....... you think there would be, I do not.

Three problems I see with 'Private industry should have been allowed to launch satellites and develop the technologies.'

1) The technologies would have been locked under patent, copyright and trademark protection, preventing its quick spread to other sectors of the marketplace where it would have been most useful.

2) Private launching of satellites would likely have led to a large number of 'launch accidents' which would have sent a new satellite into a collision bath with a competitor's satellite.

3) Manned launches would never have happened as no company wanted the bad PR of being the first to have a man die in space.

4) At the time, there was no money to be made by launching into space. It took government to do it first, and now all kinds of cool stuff involves satellites.

Private industry requires a fairly quick payback on investment.

I don't think that was the case, international satellites were just being launched and showing their usefulness over subsea cables and terrestrial microwave links. AT&T and others were well aware of the benefits they would bring, but the government owned a launch monopoly so they had to rely on NASA's ability to pry ICBM's away from the military to launch them.

Yes, because the launch platform investment was already developed..... by ??????/

Military weapons development. but the technologies were developed by the manufacturers, not the federal government for the most part, while under contract to the government. for good or evil warfare always drives technological leaps. but that was not general research, it was specific directed research to fit a specific purpose.

Again that we here we disagree.

It may look like that on the outside of that, at least for the most part............. but having worked in the defense industry. The private industry does the development and the government pays for it. I have felt that it was a gravy train............... and if the private industry (company) is audited by the budgeting committee, people really begin to sweat......

The biggest misconception, "if you build it, they will come" does not apply here. Need drives development.

oh, no argument there, but again it wasn't research for the sake or research, it was directed research to solve a specific problem. Did the companies sandbag their billing, oh hell yes they did! that is how government funded research works and the very reason why the government has no business in the research business.

Did the companies sandbag their billing, oh hell yes they did!

no disagreement there........

We're kind of straying here, but personally, I don't have a problem with my tax dollars being used for solid research.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off

Here's another that is probably worthy of it's own thread.

http://www.livescience.com/43133-darpa-open-source-catalog.html

the technologies are under patent now anyway, nothing different.

I would argue that accidents would have been fewer because the company's money would have been on the line and accidents cost a LOT of money. they would have taken their time and done it as right as they possibly could instead of rushing to launch ahead of the russians. The space race was not about useful utility. any rocket that could launch a manned capsule could launch a city buster thermonuclear weapon. in fact all of the rockets with the exception of the Saturn were actually repurposed ICBM's. So it was really a means of showcasing our ability to put a 100MT nuke in red square routinely and reliably. They knew that, we knew that. It was the elephant in the room that nobody talked about. They had more ICBM's, but their reliability was much lower than ours so we assumed that only 60% of them would actually fly if the button was pushed. Ours was a bit better, probably 75-80% would fly, so on the whole we were evenly matched despite the "missile gap".

I didn't want to go too 'conspiracy theorist' right from the start, because I would be speculating on 'corporate secrets.' If a company was going to have a 'launch accident' to knock out a competitor's satellite, why would they send up an expensive, working satellite? They could sent up the equivalent of a rock with a single, battery operated radio beacon on it so it would look like a satellite that had been damaged by the launch, not the satellite killer it really is.

Correct. Green energy shouldn't be subsidized or mandated.

But I think government spending on research, is a good thing.

I'm not gonna throw out the baby with the bath water; there's no denying the benefits that have been derived from government funded research. The discoveries that have been made, have spun off into thousands of successful private ventures, and been an overall boon to society.

On the other hand...funding private companies, bailouts, mandates to help certain industries and hurt others...all of that is bad.

Exactly, government should be researching the things that do not have immediate short-term gains, businesses can and will research the 'short return' projects in their chase after the Almighty Dollar.

Any business that needs to be bailed out because it is 'too big to fail' needs to either broken up so the 'failing' parts can die while the 'strong' parts survive; or else it should be federalized as a Public Good to be managed for the best interests of the nation.

"Only two things are infinite: the universe and humad stubidity, and I'm not so sure about the universe."

-Albert Einstein

you got the quote backwards....

To avoid an apocalypse, the scientists urge economic equality, stark decreases in consumption, and the fairer distribution of resources

HAHAHAHA! Yea, thats gonna happen!!!

I urge everybody to send me your excess money so I can immediately distribute it to my poor creditors!

Woohoo! ...another disaster averted....

I would, but I can't tell the difference between 'excess' money and real money.

Does the excess money have 'Monopoly' stamped on it ?

No problem just give me your credit card and I'll decide what is excess!

Government can't redistribute resources. Their to busy using it to fund study, after study, after study of the same things. Hoping to prove it wrong.

We'll have to wait till it's published to find out what's in it.

The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharri of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics. - See more at: http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2014/03/nasa-funded-study-industrial-civilisation-headed-for-irreversible-collapse-nafeez-ahmed-environment-theguardiancom.html#sthash.W34ywI0O.dpuf

http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2014/03/nasa-funded-study-industrial-civilisation-headed-for-irreversible-collapse-nafeez-ahmed-environment-theguardiancom.html

NASA paid for it, and these guys did the study. I don't know who told them ahead of time what to make the results, but I can guess.

http://www.sesync.org/project/linking-local-consumption-to-global-environmental-impacts

Lots of excitement over it:

https://www.google.com/search?q=NASA+funded+study+predicts+impending+collapse&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

A HANDY is cheaper than the real thing.

and always will be..

AFAICS, its out of our control anyhow. Always has been. Not likely to change. Zzzzzz.

I vote for, "predictions of delusional cardboard sign-carrying oracles on street corners."

Who needs them?

We've got NASA. Apparently this "study" is based on computer models...where have I heard that before?

...and ties into the fall of the Roman empire, which they blame on elitists using up all of the resources.

Translation: Rich people are destroying the planet, and government can set things straight.

What fun!

I think the takeaway would be, that anyone that comes out in favor of smaller government, wants all of civilization to end.

WOW, "Elites" and "Masses".

I was worried that they were going to call us "Alpha", "Beta", "Gamma", "Delta" and "Epsilon".

I think Yellowstone will kill us all long before the Elites have a chance to steal everything else we have left.

"Translation: Rich people are destroying the planet, and government can set things straight."

Is it just me, or does that sound like the mating cry of the Extremest Left-Winger?

I don't know, but I do know that I depend on people with, (extra), money, for my own existence.

The only rich people I don't like, are thieves, and government cronies....oops, I repeated myself.

Many others are predicting similar..read all about it!

Here's the url...... http://pro.bonnerandpartners.com/0214BINEOD/LBINQ309?h=true

Who can argue with that!!!

The collapse of the US empire, due to government stupidity and accumulation of debt, that is backed up with facts, is a whole different story.

I'd read it, but I'm probably already aware of most of what's in it.

That is a pretty clear sign.....cats know everything....

In related news....

"I really want kids to walk away with a sense of delightful doom," O'Brien said. "You don't want to live your life in fear. By getting kids and adults engaged in this, I think we can affect the political climate of the future."

http://climate.nasa.gov/news/1049

Negative waves, always with the negative waves.

Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?

We don't have to worry about global warming anymore...?

Please go ahead. Throw in a little worry for me too, if it helps you.

I really wish I hadn't stumbled upon that link.

You do realize that that's the genuine NASA site, and they are talking about making doom fun for kids, in order to push a political agenda?

Even I was shocked by such a brazen admission.

I plan to live out the relatively short remainder of my life in sublime ignorance of the impending doom mankind is brining to the planet.

Why worry, you could fall into a wormhole any day and disappear.

I sold all my wordily possessions when the hole in the ozone was going to fry us all

It was Y2K for me. Still haven't recovered.

The Millennium bug is exactly how these things should happen. -

A (real) danger is identified.

The whole industry reacts proactively spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars rewriting code so that the bug does not happen and does not cause "the end of the world". On the actual millennium little or nothing happens because they put the work in.

Of course the world reacts .. "There was no bug, you scared us over nothing, now we're annoyed.."

Rule 1 : People are stupid. Applies to everybody. (Of course the panic was caused by the media over-reacting and deliberately trying to create a sense of fear.)

No one knows how big the bug or its effects would have been if no work had been done to stop it, but the engineers had begun preparing maybe 5 years before. A lot of work was done and a lot of obsolete hardware and software was replaced. The millennium bug probably wouldn't have crashed that many machines directly but it would have created all kinds of uncontrolled states in software and some of them could have been very dangerous.

The focus of the millennium bug work was on aircraft and ground control systems, telephone networks, military networks, critical infrastructure, banking networks, PC's, internet infrastructure, business networks, and so on. The real danger was software or hardware built in the 60's and 70's (and much later) that had been built without considering long term lifespan or the potential problems with two digit dates rolling over- that was all still running in one form or another in 95 or 97. (some of it is probably even still be out there today)

I never believed Y2K was a huge deal. I always believed that in a worse case scenario, any sensitive things that would have been affected, could just be reset to to 1980 or something, until the problem was fixed, or just modernizing our systems.

In this case, a (real) danger has not been identified, the government is borrowing money to create these scare studies, and will borrow trillions more to implement the control that they will tell us is necessary to prevent the end of the world.

This is nothing more than a socialist agenda on steroids. There have always been rich and poor, and inequality has never collapsed civilization....including the Roman Empire. Contrary to their argument that rich people were behind the fall of Rome, it was government.

Fortunately, we can see how this all turns out, when government becomes the great equalizer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/world/americas/venezuela-faces-shortages-in-grocery-staples.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The university where I was an undergraduate was involved in Y2K, it was a real problem and serious. The thing you have to remember is that big networks and big companies have millions of lines of code floating around and some of that code can be very delicate. We're not talking about single pieces of software running in isolation but large conglomerations running in vast connected systems, and on many networks no one person anywhere probably ever really understood it all. The thing that made the millennium bug special was that software that had run reliably for decades could suddenly change its behaviour, fall over or tear databases to shreds. A lot of software does calculations based on dates - so the two digit systems would have rolled back from 1999 to 1900.

Like I said the thing is that its impossible to know what would have happened if no actions had been taken but something somewhere would have happened.

One of the biggest areas where these older kinds of systems were used is in financial systems and bill payments and many of those systems would have totally messed up without being corrected. I.e. bill payment for electricity, telephones, banking systems, wage payments, insurance - the kinds of companies that tended to be old fashioned, ultra cautious, and ultra conservative tended to be most at risk.

Ah...so the Y2K risk was primarily to private industry, and they fixed it. Cool.

Okay, I believe you that there were real risks involved with Y2K, but that in no way implies that global warming and wealth inequality are going to send the entire planet into collapse.

The direct quote that I posted from the NASA site, had the guy saying that this was about making doom fun, and affecting future political thought.

NASA has some very real problems, and it's not global warming or rich people.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57596053-83/nasa-falls-short-on-its-cloud-computing-security/

http://www.westernjournalism.com/obama-lets-china-steal-top-secret-nasa-technology/

Socialism is the offspring of Marxism...there have been recent reports as to how cash-paying patients are moved up in the queue ahead of NH patients at UK health providers. Sign that the much-vaunted NH has financial troubles ?

But now that we have Obamacare (which is based heavily on Romneycare, but set up for a nationwide reach instead of just Mitt's home state) we can work to fix it and turn it into something that works right. The old system, NoCare, couldn't be fixed at all, how do you fix 'nothing'?

It would be nice if we could have gone the European way and tried Socialized health care right off the bad, but the problem is that it's not the American Way to do things like 'those dirty, godless Commies' And anything with the word 'social' in it (aside from 'social studies' in grade school, which is just a PC way of labeling 'American History,' so it sounds like we're trying to give the kids a global outlook) makes way too many people thing immediately of Socialism and 'those dirty ruskies.' Now that I think of it, in those areas where anything 'social' is immediately communist, the schools don't have 'Social Studies,' they have 'American History' classes.

Is it going to change? Healthcare Providers are now have guarantee that they would lose money.

One thing is, preventive care is the best way to reduce costs....... this was implement by a large number of insurers...... I don't know how complete its now.

That is actually a very huge lie. If you needed lifesaving care and could not afford it, the hospitals were REQUIRED to give it to you regardless of your ability to pay. and the federal government and the state medicaid funds would get stuck with the bill. Do you seriously think all these illegals who decided to have an anchor baby so they could stay and suck on the governmental teat PAID for the labor and delivery? Seriously?

I heard that also............ and it is true, ...... The biggest thing is prevention.

how do you fix 'nothing'? Divide by zero. If that doesn't do it, add 0 and multiply.

Are you suggesting that a national health care system would prohibit you from personally paying more for better health care? You don't want to pay for healthcare for people you don't know, right? Fine. That is what I refer to as calling a spade a spade.

I remember in a recent novel ( WWWake ) there was a conversation much like that in a Canadian hospital. A girl who was blind since birth but had functioning retinas, was going to have a device implanted that would correct the jumbled signals being send down the optic nerve. It was an experimental procedure and the conversation between her father (born American, but moved to Canada for his job) and hospital administration went something like this:

"I'm sorry, we can't help you."

"If it's a matter of money or insurance, I can pay for the whole procedure."

"It's not that. If it were an essential procedure, we would do it at no cost to you, but as a non-essential experiment, it simply cannot be done at a National hospital."

In the story the issue was resolved by the doctor who had invented the device offering to fly the family over to Japan where he could do the procedure himself.

Now I know very little about Canadian health care, being an American, but I've heard the gambit of stories from 'If you get sick you'll be waiting for months to see a doctor, with only the Candystripers (volunteer nurse's aides) to look after you,' to 'I was vacationing in Canada and broke my leg. I was afraid of what it would cost, since I was an American and hadn't paid into the National health care system. The hospital staff were professional and courtious, treated me quickly, and did not charge me at all.'

I think we need to hear from a Canadian native about how things really are up there.

that's as close to pure nonsense propaganda as i've ever heard.

I was in Calgary visiting relatives about 15 years ago when I was struck with a kidney stone. In the states, they would send you (at the time) for what is called an IVP with Contrast, which is a series of KUB (Kidney Ureter bladder) x rays (1 before and several after injecting contrast dye at regular intervals of about 15 minutes apart) in order to map how well urine was flowing from the kidney to the bladder and see any obstructions to the flow. In calgary they sent me for a single KUB without contrast, gave me a prescription for Vicodin and told me to gut it out until I got back to the states and hope i pass it in the interim. I paid next to nothing for the doctor visit, but didn't get much in the way of care either other than pain meds.

A few years later my father in law came down with Acute AML leukemia, With the exception of giving him a very comfortable bed and blood transfusions and pain meds, they didn't do much for him and didn't do ANYTHING in the way of Chemo. they merely waited for the leukemia to kill him, which 6 weeks later it did.

getting coverage is easy, getting care is another issue altogether.

they,medical care ,are good..honest...

a canadian who had his cataracts(one in each eye) fixed last year in both eyes within 7 weeks after a waiting period of 5 weeks after seeing the opthamologist for the first time...my costs...nothing outside of my regular taxes..

education,healthcare,military,infrastructure are all good uses of taxes imho

Thank you, it's hard to get unbiased information about socialized health care as it affects other countries while sitting in the US. And it's also hard to tell the good info from the political spin.

Add to that a segment of the population who refuse to support 'socialized ANYTHING' since 'that means the commies won,' and you can see why it's nearly impossible to get a calm, logical nationwide debate on health care reform.

It's funny that anyone who can afford it high tails it to the US for treatment, even members of the Canadian Government do it.

That is because, while it lasts, the US has one of the best medicals facilities and staff (doctors, nurses, etc.) in the world.

And, if you pay in cash you not only get excellent service, you get it fast and cheaper.

for now.... but those doctors will not work for journeyman plumber's wages and they are leaving the practice of medicine in DROVES. those that are left are in so much debt from getting their MD that they can't afford to leave, but they are no more happy about the situation as the ones that leave, so they are not going to go the extra mile to give good care, they cant afford to, they have to see a patient every 10 minutes for 12 hours a day to keep the lights on.

I saw that coming when I was finishing up premed. That's why I became an engineer. Quality of life is better.

I loved the subject matter, but I had a very hard time feeling empathetical toward patients who's life choices put them into cycles of chronic illness and there were so many examples for me to see while doing rounds in the hospital.

My girlfriend saw the other side of the equation while working as a paramedic. Some people really needed help. Others put themselves into their predicament, yet expected everyone else to fix it. Such a waste.

Not when you pay cash.

Maybe not cheaper out of your pocket if you have a reasonable insurance plan, but you can get significant discounts over what the insurance carrier pays if you self-pay.

Doctors and hospitals and doctors love cash as it significantly reduces their paperwork overhead and they get right there.

Cash also puts you in control as far as what procedures you can get.

The point is that insurance increases the cost of health care significantly and insurance companies will also limit your choices of doctors and procedures.

I won't even get into lawyers and how that jacks up health care costs. Tort reform is DOA and only needs a toe tag when most of the lawmakers are or have been attorneys in their professional life.

I think either the Canadian or US system can work.

Canada has a system that most of it's 35,000,000,000 population pays into.

In the US, we have 12,000,000,000 illegals, and over 100,000,000,000 that receive government assistance. These people use the system, but don't pay into it.

Most of the people that have signed up for the ACA get government subsidies, so it is just another redistribution scheme with dwindling tax dollars.

I don't think any system will ever work, without the vast majority that use it, paying into it...private or socialized.

wow, how populations have grown!

And debt.

We have $17,000,000,000,000. Lets see Canada beat us at that!

We're set to be at $24,000,000,000,000 by 2020...they'll never catch up.

In all seriousness, whether it's socialized medicine or private, there is no system that can sustain 100% of the population using it, and 50% paying for it. It doesn't matter if it's medicine, education, infrastructure...all will fall.

Assuming that the majority of the population is working and paying, I think that free market capitalism/competition will always trump socialism.

We save Canada a heck of a lot of money on military expenditures also, which can't be included in the pool of ideas of why socialism is better than capitalism.

One day soon, they may just get to find out what it's like to be alone in their defense.

It can get expensive.

Canada has 35,000,000 people, not 35 billion. Same decimal error on US population.

I should just use the words. I try to use the zeros for impact, (especially on our debt), and forget to stop sometimes.

"We save Canada a heck of a lot of money on military expenditures also, which can't be included in the pool of ideas of why socialism is better than capitalism."

We save 'the free world' (meaning 'our allies' ) a heck of a lot on military expenditures, The last time I saw the statistic, we spend more on our military than the rest of the world COMBINED. And not just 101% of the rest of the world, not double the rest of the world, our military budget is TEN TIMES the combined military budgets of all other nations on the planet rolled together.

With that kind of overwhelming budget, why don't we:

A) cut back on the military spending just a little bit, and use the money to improve our schools, or fund Nationwide free healthcare, or,

B) try to take over the world, one nation at a time. Oh wait, Dubya already started that and Obama hasn't pulled back the troops yet, so I guess we ARE doing this.

If you pay in cash, you can eat tiger steaks for supper with ivory chopsticks.

Amish Communities does it all the time......... The hospital enjoys their business. and as far as living conditions and life styles, they are quite modest. And that is the reason they can do it.

So no, I don't see how it could reinforce this argument.

Well, talking to doctors (one of which is my business partner) is a good source for what the issues are.

1. The Affordable Health Care Act is a bad thing and few doctors like it. Talk to them if you want to know why.

2. We have a society that abuses the system (and themselves). First, they don't take care of themselves, then they expect someone else to fix it at no cost.

I am an average person with no health issues. I eat well, I am not overweight, I don't smoke, and drink lightly. I rarely need a doctor and not on prescription medications. When I do, I pay cash for the services I need.

Many others simply don't live that way, overweight, use the emergency room as their primary care physician, and expect a pill for every ache and pain. This is self-induced for the most part and an anchor on society.

Those people clog up the system for the few people that really need medical care and raise the cost of care.

However, the solution to these problems is sold to us as a national single-payer health care system to welcome all those who are responsible and irresponsible into the big tent at taxpayer's cost.

My primary care physician's plan is that if your lifestyle makes you sick, you should pay for it. If not, insurance should.

Unfortunately, all what you just said can change in an instant in a life changing medical episode............ and that is what insurance is for.