[HN Gopher] Proposed NOAA Budget Kills Program Designed to Preve...
___________________________________________________________________
Proposed NOAA Budget Kills Program Designed to Prevent Satellite
Collisions
Author : bikenaga
Score : 277 points
Date : 2025-07-12 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (skyandtelescope.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (skyandtelescope.org)
| tomrod wrote:
| I get the desire to reduce government spending. It looks like
| sticker shock seeing budgets in the billions and trillions.
|
| This type of program has high value per dollar spent. It's an
| asset, not a waste. The first order, second order, and even third
| order effects are very large.
|
| Let us get/return to more reasonable principles for doing these
| budget evaluations and requests.
| nwatson wrote:
| Someone will propose privatization of said program with
| insurance fees covering the reformulated collision-prevention
| service. Of course, privatization will leave out crucial
| aspects, lead to failures, increasing untraceable space debris
| from which nobody will be safe, and eventually bankruptcy of
| said privatized program, with no way back. As is happening in
| other parts of government.
| staplers wrote:
| Privatized profits, socialized costs
| yapyap wrote:
| 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.
| slater wrote:
| Surely you jest! /s
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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.
| tetris11 wrote:
| so, _Planetes_ then
| sho_hn wrote:
| I get this reference!
|
| Even as an anime grump, I liked this one.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| A fantastic show
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| 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
| alistairSH wrote:
| It was never about reducing spending. It was always about the
| grift. See also the BBB - massive benefits to the donor class,
| and a shit sandwich for the rest of us.
| conartist6 wrote:
| But people who send things to space are often liberal. For
| example they often have attended college and believe in
| science.
|
| The political intent behind a new dark age makes sense if you
| think of the goal as being to destroy competent institutions
| which represent a real threat to an anti-science, post-truth
| administration
| tomrod wrote:
| > 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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _One uses science as a tool_
|
| This requires a base rate of literacy and critical thinking
| that a lot of Americans, unfortunately, lack.
| tomrod wrote:
| Not the majority. A bit less than 20%, the remaining
| support coming from people who think politics is a tribal
| engagement like watching a sports team. Or those that
| listen to bags of hot wind like Yarvin, Rogan, or Thiel.
| conartist6 wrote:
| People want and need to learn about science from sources
| they trust because actually parsing through a scientific
| paper critically (as a peer reviewer would do) is very
| hard and is likely only to leave you with more questions
| while providing an incredibly narrow kind of knowledge.
|
| What interests me is the politics of it. A paper in a
| vacuum is nothing. How do people really convince each
| other of the importance of one argument or observation
| over another? How do those arguments grow to the scale of
| a whole society? Science at the scale of society doesn't
| happen in the language of scientific papers, but rather
| in rhetoric: in appeals to what the Greeks categorized as
| Ethos (Emotion), Pathos (Authority), and Logos (Logic).
|
| At its most brilliant this is "Schroedinger's cat," which
| in two words encodes in our collective consciousness an
| appeal to logic which entreats us through contradiction
| to consider a philosophically meaningful set of ideas
| about the nature of reality. (shoutout:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTXTPe3wahc)
| justinrubek wrote:
| > One doesn't believe in science. One uses science as a
| tool to rest hypotheses, using real world evidence to
| understand reality and truth.
|
| Yes, this is precisely that which they do not believe in.
| Plug your ears, bury your head in the sand, and whatever
| you do, do not use cause and effect, data, or evidence to
| backup your claims and positions. That is the platform upon
| which they stand.
| Eextra953 wrote:
| I agree with your statement. What I am always trying to
| understand is where does this lead us and how can we get
| back to belief in the scientific method? Removing
| cause/effect/data leaves all decisions to emotion and
| short term rewards. I don't think this will end well,
| especially against a background of countries and cultures
| that do believe in science and collaboration.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's been systematically undermined for decades through
| cultivated conspiracy culture, with digressions into
| wellness woo and evangelical movements of all kinds.
|
| The pitch is the usual anti-intellectual narrative: "How
| dare these people, with their fancy educations, look down
| on you and patronise you. Everyone's opinions are equally
| valuable. They're probably in it for the money."
|
| It's been very organised, and both science and academia
| have completely failed to respond to it.
|
| You can give science a pass because most scientists
| struggle to understand how craven politics and propaganda
| are.
|
| Academia should have known better. Hannah Arendt
| described it far ahead of time. But somehow plain anti-
| authoritarianism became less _sexy_ , and certainly less
| of a career move, than Continental Philosophy and
| Critical Theory, which have turned out to be largely
| impotent when faced with full-on fascism.
| xpe wrote:
| >> 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.
|
| The first quote is a shorthand. The second quote is
| accurate, technically, except that perhaps the author is
| misunderstanding the first quote. When many people write
| "person P believes in science", you can accurately
| translate that to "person P sees the value in science as a
| tool for truth-seeking."
| tetha wrote:
| > This type of program has high value per dollar spent. It's an
| asset, not a waste. The first order, second order, and even
| third order effects are very large.
|
| This might also be a program in which the goals of a privatized
| for-profit company are rather bad in the broader context. If
| you pay me millions to track and possibly control your
| satellite in orbit so it doesn't collide... I'll invest in
| rocket companies to launch more satellites. Even if they are
| very silly satellites.
|
| After all, if they collide, the debris will most likely miss
| the shareholders, and then you get more satellites to get
| contracts for.
|
| And who cares if some of those invaluable scientific systems
| with year-long plans get knocked out?
| moralestapia wrote:
| >This type of program has high value per dollar spent.
|
| Care to elaborate?
|
| What's the value that comes back?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| If you save a billion dollar satellite every decade, and it
| costs $50 million year, you come out ahead. And that's not
| even counting the negative externalities of unintended
| conjunctions. Kessler Syndrome is the boggieman of course,
| but even a few thousand pieces of debris from a single
| conjunction makes life harder for everyone who operates in
| space.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Has this ever happened?
| cco wrote:
| Yes it has.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Source? Google doesn't give me anything.
| Bootvis wrote:
| There is a Wikipedia page:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_collision
| mschuster91 wrote:
| There was a collision between two comm satellites about
| 16 years back [1], and that was with satellites that we
| _could_ track and theoretically control - with the debris
| collision of 2005 [2], that makes two events.
|
| We've been _lucky_ that this is the only publicly known
| satellite to collide with another satellite, other than
| satellites that got shot down as a demonstration of
| power.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision
|
| [2] https://www.space.com/969-china-space-debris-collide-
| orbit.h...
| notahacker wrote:
| Satellites make conjunction avoidance manoeuvres on a
| regular basis; about 275 Starlink satellites need to move
| every day. A non-trivial proportion of those would result
| in a collision otherwise. Satellites orbit at multiple km
| per second and manoeuvre to adjust orbit much more
| slowly, so they need advance warning.
|
| Satellite operators obtain much their space situational
| awareness data directly or indirectly from US govt
| sources. The fact that collisions are presently
| infrequent because satellite operators act on that data
| isn't a particularly good reason to eliminate much of it
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| measles was extinct in the US until the antibaxers gained
| enough momentum
| andsoitis wrote:
| > If you save a billion dollar satellite every decade, and
| it costs $50 million year, you come out ahead.
|
| Why should the (US) taxpayer foot the bill rather than the
| companies who operate and profit from the satellites?
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| the government already needs to track satellites to
| prevent its own from getting hit, and to track foreign
| spy satellites. IMO it would be reasonably for Congress
| to pass a law to allow the FAA to charge private
| companies who launch satellites in the US, but killing
| the program is just very dumb
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Would you argue that every road should be a toll road,
| too?
| epistasis wrote:
| I don't understand the desire to reduce government spending.
| It's all super high return on investment. Except political pork
| like price supports for large industrial farmers in the
| Midwest. ;-)
| tomrod wrote:
| 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).
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Would something like mandating a significant amount of
| ethanol (from corn) in gasoline be an effective way to so
| this?
| tomrod wrote:
| No.
|
| Subsidizing production of next gen/green energy
| production and grid operations, yes.
| DamonHD wrote:
| By about 30x to 100x per acre (PV vs ethanol)...
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10.1073/pnas.2501605122
| tomrod wrote:
| Hear hear.
| pstuart wrote:
| 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.
| laverya wrote:
| Yeah except for arpanet, GPS, satellites in general, jet
| engines, composites, computers, and everything that came
| from there... What has military r&d ever done for us?
| convolvatron wrote:
| this is not at all simple. part of that causality is that
| fundamental research money was channeled through the
| military, because that was politically acceptable. is
| there a particularly good reason why DOE and DOD funding
| of university research is higher than NSF?
|
| and its pretty easily to cleave off defense spending for
| basic research performed by universities from the more
| applied R&D that defense contractors do, much of that
| from the black budget. this is a place where every
| visitor leaves shaking their heads at the overt
| corruption and waste. but its necessary to have such
| programs in general to support our common goal of self-
| autonomy as a nation.
|
| so if we're going to serious as a democratic political
| body about trying to get the most value from our tax
| money, we can't really can't fixate on reductionist
| statements that assert that defense or social support
| money is an unalloyed bad or good. we really need better
| transparency and to actually dig into the details.
| toss1 wrote:
| Of course, nevermind that we may need to defend ourselves
| and/or our allies against exoansionist autocratic
| aggressors like Russia (see Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine,
| Baltics and explicit threats against Poland, Germany,
| England, & US), China (what happens to the tech industry
| every Taiwan goes up in smoke?), Iran, etc.
|
| Fukyima (sp?) was right about the end of history sort of
| happening when all countries of the world embrace liberal
| democracy, but he was very wrong that we are anywhere near
| that point.
|
| Until then, only strength will deter or oppose the
| aggressors.
| xpe wrote:
| > 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.
| kenjackson wrote:
| This is good. Although I'd make it a 4-tuple to make
| "target" clear. There are two aspects to target: "where is
| the impact on the return" and "where is the cost of the
| investment".
| ModernMech wrote:
| 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".
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Government is expensive because it does a lot.
|
| There is a lot of trouble with bureaucrats defending fiefdoms
| that would be better consolidated, but you can't fix that with
| an axe.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| 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.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The vast majority of the government budget is
| entitlements and military.
|
| The vast majority of the government budget is "entitlements
| and military" because donors have their pork classified as
| those things when they don't want it to be cut. A lot of
| entitlement programs are structured as handouts to the
| companies providing those services (e.g. drug and
| healthcare companies, or landlords) or vote buying of
| affluent retirees who don't actually need a government
| subsidy. And I'd like to see someone try to claim with a
| straight face that there is no waste in the military
| budget.
|
| But even within those budgets, _most_ of the waste and
| corruption isn 't a single program going to a single place.
| It's millions of programs that each waste millions of
| dollars and collectively waste trillions of dollars. And
| then it doesn't matter if you classify the program as
| military or entitlements or something else; what matters is
| if the program is worth the candle.
|
| The problem is that everybody will say that _their_ program
| is worth it, many them are lying, and it 's hard to tell
| who isn't.
|
| But the thing that's unambiguously true is that the amount
| of government revenue has been stable as a percentage of
| GDP for generations and has been growing in terms of real
| dollars per capita, and yet the amount of government
| _spending_ has outpaced _that_ by a huge and growing
| amount.
|
| Is DOGE making a hash of things? Maybe, but then let's do a
| better job instead of using it as an excuse to keep running
| reckless deficits until the largest item in the federal
| budget is _interest_.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _get the desire to reduce government spending_
|
| It should be incredibly clear that the motivation for these
| folks isn't reducing government spending (or cutting waste).
|
| The problem is the programme is at NOAA, and NOAA tells a story
| about the climate that some folks don't like. So they trash the
| messenger and his tools.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > I get the desire to reduce government spending. It looks like
| sticker shock seeing budgets in the billions and trillions.
|
| This is an international issue being funded by the US taxpayer
| regardless of their own utilization of said services.
|
| Programs like these need to exist, but services like starlink
| should be the ones footing the bill. The military and weather
| services would need larger budgets to fund their portion of
| this effort so some of it would come back to "general taxes"
| but a much smaller amount.
|
| Meanwhile, All those other groups and nations with launch
| capabilities and a vested intrest in NOT having issues could be
| contributing too.
|
| > Let us get/return to more reasonable principles for doing
| these budget evaluations and requests.
|
| These efforts need to be funded with a tax to support them, and
| not all be drawn from the same general fund. It would make the
| arguments about "taxes" and "spending" much more reasonable.
| ourmandave wrote:
| What about a Universal Service Fund, like the FCC has for
| telecom?
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/general/universal-service-fund
|
| Star Link and other companies can charge back their customers
| what they pay into the fund.
|
| Like how AT&T hits me for the Fed USF, the 20 States Fund,
| and state and local taxes.
|
| https://www.att.com/legal/terms.otherWirelessFeeSchedule.htm.
| ..
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I've worked as a related subject matter expert in a few
| countries. I can think of a possible reasonable justification
| for this.
|
| In recent years, the operating environment in orbital space has
| changed rapidly, and it isn't just the number of objects. These
| changes are outside the design assumptions of traditional
| orbital traffic systems, degrading their effectiveness. In
| response to this reality, governments with significant space
| assets have been investing in orbital traffic systems that
| _are_ capable of dealing with the modern environment. However,
| these rely heavily on classified technology and capability to
| address the limitations of the older systems.
|
| An argument could be made that it no longer makes sense to fund
| a public system that is descending into obsolescence due to
| lack of capability and which can't be meaningfully fixed
| because that would require exposing classified technical
| capabilities that no one is willing to expose. In this
| scenario, the private sector is acting as an offramp from a
| system that had no future technically.
|
| Space has turned into an interesting place, in the curse sense.
| It isn't as simple as it used to be.
| counters wrote:
| 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.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| This isn't an explanation that _can_ be offered, at least
| politically. It invites questions that governments in
| several developed countries have clearly decided they don
| 't want as part of the public narrative influencing policy.
| This is the default choice when the real explanation is
| more complicated, obscure, or technical than will fit in a
| soundbite, which would be the case in the scenario I
| hypothesized.
|
| Governments rarely give genuine explanations for their
| actions and rarely need to. Much easier to use a plausible
| soundbite related to the current thing. Most people aren't
| paying attention anyway.
| counters wrote:
| > Governments rarely give genuine explanations for their
| actions and rarely need to.
|
| This is an absurdly cynical take. It certainly doesn't
| jive with how NOAA has historically operated - which has
| necessitated as much transparency as possible, because
| that is the only way it can engender the trust with the
| public necessary to steward life and property.
|
| The standards have historically been much higher, and we
| ought to strive for them to be higher still.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| > The standards have historically been much higher, and
| we ought to strive for them to be higher still.
|
| My take isn't cynical, it is what I've seen first hand.
| I've worked for the US government (and others) and NGOs
| off and on since Clinton was President. The standards
| were pretty mediocre when I first got involved and
| they've only become worse.
|
| The standards were probably higher before the 1990s. All
| of these organizations have a few true believers in the
| mission but those are the old guard. They've slowly been
| replaced by the equivalent of DMV bureaucrats, even in
| the more science-y parts of the government. People
| interested in doing science have known those
| organizations are not where you go to do science since
| long before the current administration, which has been a
| long, vicious spiral.
| notahacker wrote:
| 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"
| tomrod wrote:
| 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.
| browningstreet wrote:
| There's no plausible discussion of reducing spending when the
| added debt commensurate with that effort is as astronomical as
| it is.
|
| This is privatization and federal dismantling, and it's
| happening so fast and recklessly it will also show up as
| cultural and civil destruction too. He's wrecking America so
| that technocrats can buy it all up.
|
| There's no intended upside for citizens or for the society they
| make up. People die and his supporters shrug and defend. It's
| Microsoft's embrace, extend, extinguish as political policy,
| but reduced by hyperscaling to "eviscerate".
| tomrod wrote:
| 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.
| browningstreet wrote:
| One reason I'm not especially hopeful is that the
| resistance is mostly still focused on highlighting the
| breaches with no actual follow-up. There's no "Team
| Resistance".
|
| The socials are replete with incremental accounting of how
| each step aligns with Project 2025. No shit. So, many of
| his voters didn't read Project 2025, or if they did..
| they're not playing it forward to see what it looks like 10
| years in the future.
|
| But what feels true, too, is that the DNC hasn't read it
| either. Or if they have, they're not working against it. I
| know there are efforts in courts to deny some of these
| things, and that's commendable.. but there are no real
| social or political unities arising to play offense in the
| next political cycle.
|
| So we have very little defense, and almost no offense. And
| the referees are bought.
| tomrod wrote:
| Aye. Dominionism winning was not on my mid-2000s Bingo
| card. Maybe we have elections again and reject this march
| towards Gilead.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I earnestly believe the midterms are a significant
| barometer of how the next 20 years of America goes. We
| need change in the midterms and then the next
| Presidential election. They're still going to work hard
| to bend that further to their advantage. Cue the "we're
| barely 6 months in" violins...
|
| What's especially alarming is that they've learned they
| don't have to do anything in the dark. Epstein may be a
| small blip in that, but we'll see how the story goes in
| the coming weeks.
| slater wrote:
| More like, "we're barely 6 months in" and look at all the
| things they've fucked up. Like an ignorant, blind and
| deaf bull in a china shop
| fakedang wrote:
| What's the point though? Dems don't want to play the Reps
| game, even though the arena has changed. Dems are too
| dumb to realize that they're in a playing field that has
| no rules, where the referees in the judiciary are in the
| Rep camp, where some of the referees themselves (like Sam
| Alito) are treasonous Arnolds, while others (like
| Clarence Thomas) are corrupt af. The Dems have a very
| very slim chance of winning the Senate, zero chance of a
| supermajority in any future to bypass the filibuster and
| pass extensive reforms, and zero inclination to support
| wideranging policies instead of more identity politics.
|
| Yeah, it's not right to blame the Dems for this, but the
| Reps are responsible for this shitshow and far from
| redemption. The Dems are the only possible counterforce
| in the US (unlike most other countries), but they seem to
| be inclined to do jack shit to assume that role.
| efnx wrote:
| Maybe you should run, then? It is a government of the
| people, as they say.
| fakedang wrote:
| I'm a foreign national so can't exactly run. Fact of the
| matter is, I've profited quite a bit from Trump's
| shenanigans, but I can still see the disastrous longterm
| consequences of their policies, and as a foreign national
| who once contemplated moving to the US, won't be doing so
| at all.
|
| Instead, like all entities doing business in the US,
| foreign and otherwise, we'll just find novel ways to
| extract more from the US and send it elsewhere.
| tremon wrote:
| I earnestly believe the midterm elections will happen far
| too late to have any impact. Look at how much has already
| been dismantled in the first six months:
|
| - people are being disappeared in broad daylight, by
| masked mercenary squads and without due process
|
| - the military has already been deployed domestically
|
| - courts have been neutered/ignored
|
| - the supreme court generally rules in favour of the
| regime, and when it doesn't even the supreme court gets
| ignored
|
| - the first political adversaries have already been
| assassinated
|
| - the majority of the Senate is happily cheering on all
| of the above
|
| All three branches of government are already fully under
| control of this regime. Add to that the many agencies
| that have been gutted or clipped, and the dismantling of
| healthcare and social security. What do you think will be
| left of the US' institutions in 18 months?
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Who was assassinated?
| k099 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota
| _le...
| browningstreet wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| The Rosie O'Donnell thing today is another demonstration
| of his commitment to iterating against norms. He'll push
| and push until he finds a front that collapses in his
| favor. The whole idea of the unassailable rights of
| citizens will continue to be tested. The Democrats need a
| "no F'ing way" line to hold. An American born citizen
| should be an easy line to defend. We'll see what kind of
| pushback surfaces.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| The DNC is busy thinking about candidates whose turn it
| is next time, gender ratios, trans representation and
| paying $20 million for studies why they don't appeal to
| young men. They don't have time to think about policies
| that may benefit voters.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > But what feels true, too, is that the DNC hasn't read
| it either. Or if they have, they're not working against
| it
|
| The DNC are sheepdogs, _at best_. Their role is to
| shepherd any sort of leftist energy into safely neutered
| channels. And science in general has big 'leftist
| energy'.
|
| The campaign promises: "We'll end corporate donations!
| We'll end executive orders! We'll copper-fasten Roe!
| We'll end ICE! We'll stop the illegal forever wars! We'll
| legalize cannabis!" - have now devolved to, "vote for us
| and if you're lucky the Gestapo we funded won't raid your
| house in the middle of the night without a search warrant
| - or if they do, at least they won't be masked".
|
| So, no. We're not going to get much help from the guys
| that 'failed' [0] to stop a rapist insurrectionist con-
| man from taking the Presidency, and it's really pretty
| silly to have any hope in them whatsoever.
|
| 0 - https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/servants-of-the-
| mafia-s...
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Honestly, it would be better if they take a cycle to
| clean house and dedicate themselves to a couple things
| only. No niche groups hijacking the whole party. Jobs,
| economy, healthcare, taxes, debt. Everone with a
| different pet cause off the island otherwise you'll lose.
| My pet cause included as it isn't on that list. The
| hilarity will be that when the dnc flubs another election
| cycle doing the cleaning out, the gop winner will be
| stuck with the debt bomb they expected the opposition to
| inherit...
| danieldk wrote:
| 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.
| beezlewax wrote:
| It's also hard to fathom. I don't believe these people
| believe what they're doing is for the greater good or that
| climate change is a hoax. They have children and want them
| to grow up to what exactly?
| tremon wrote:
| They believe their wealth can shield their chilren from
| the bad effects of climate change. They think there will
| be enough of the world left in a functioning state to
| retain their current level of luxury, and don't care
| about the rest.
| toss1 wrote:
| They want them to grow up in their privileged bubble, and
| that is all. They literally DGAF if the rest of of us,
| i.e., the NPCs, all starve. Does anyone think Russian
| oligarchs care about the Russian peasants or "meat cans"
| they send to the Ukranian front? And they've already got
| their bunkers in New Zealand, Hawaii, or wherever if it
| all goes really sideways. Musk, Theil, Vance, and the
| rest of them care about us less than the NPSs in their
| FPS games, and we should regard them exactly the same
| way.
| apwell23 wrote:
| who exactly are 'trump's cronies' and how are they getting
| richer? thats what they kept saying about him in 2016. did
| he ( or his) actually get richer from his time in office ?
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| 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.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the people
| who promoted neoliberalism in Russia saw how it ended in
| authoritarian oligarchy- supported by a religious
| nationalism which displaced science and progressive
| democratic values - and decided same would be a good
| outcome for them personally if rolled out across the rest
| of the West.
|
| This is dense, but stunningly prescient.
|
| https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/123031
| 0...
|
| While things are undoubtedly bad in the US, Trump's grip on
| everything - including personal health - is far more
| tenuous than Yeltsin's was. And (ironically) the US has
| more of a history of violent resistance and agitation for
| both worker rights and civil rights.
|
| The US has always been a soft economic dictatorship. But a
| lot of people still expect a functioning social contract,
| and they're going to become increasingly angry as that
| disappears.
|
| It's a much more complicated picture than the one in
| Russia, which has essentially been the same kind of violent
| autocratic monarchy for centuries, even as the set dressing
| around it changed.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| Your link looks very interesting. Thanks.
| watwut wrote:
| I dont think America will have Putin like figure. It howver
| may have Trump like figure and Vance like figure.
|
| Security state apparatus in Russia filled different role.
| These guys are true Putin equivalents.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| imo the US future probably looks more like Hungary than
| Russia. There is strong alliance being created between
| racism/nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and
| science-denial, led by people who don't believe any of
| this, but have discovered that these groups are a
| substantial plurality of the country and can be turned
| into single issue voters
| tomrod wrote:
| Neodark ages indeed.
| mattkevan wrote:
| I think it started out like that - the previous
| generation knew it was bullshit bud did whatever got them
| votes / viewers / attention or whatever, long term
| consequences be damned. Younger generations grew up in
| it, never exposed to anything else and think it's all
| true. Much scarier.
| ck2 wrote:
| It's not about reducing spending (they just added $3+ TRILLION
| this year out of four)
|
| It's about destroying science, not just current science but the
| future of science.
|
| By destroying all existing structure so that it will cost
| trillions to rebuild so impossible anytime soon.
|
| Including academia that seeds the science.
|
| They aren't "conservatives" they are "regressives".
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| "They aren't "conservatives" they are "regressives"."
|
| That's how I feel too. "Conservative" should mean "cautious
| and slow", not "destroy as quickly as possible"
| pstuart wrote:
| It would help if we had consensus on what Government is.
|
| Many (including myself) believe that Government _should_ be for
| "the common good", via a legal system, government investments
| in shared needs/resources, etc.
|
| The current admin believes that Government exists for only two
| reasons: personal enrichment and punishing perceived enemies.
| I'd love to be proven wrong but I don't see that happening.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| The fundamental problem is that the public
|
| 1. Wants to cut the budget so we don't go broke
|
| 2. Punishes anyone who talks about unsustainable retirement,
| disability, and healthcare entitlement programs.
|
| So, they get politicians who try to find a third way, even if
| it doesn't make a budgetary difference. To get out of this, the
| public (especially the boomer retiree population) needs to be
| more mature about the fiscal situation they put the country in
| and realize they are not living within their means.
| watwut wrote:
| Current big beautiful bill will:
|
| - Make debt larger and risk make usa go broke.
|
| - Cut retirement disability, and healthcare entitlement
| programs.
|
| It will however cut taxes for bilionaires and republicans
| love it.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| Part of the problem is you need to track all orbits for all
| constellations and free flyers as well as all orbital debris, and
| communicate across many communities of interest.
|
| It is more national security & military adjacent
|
| I'd stand up a joint agency for this requirement across DOD,
| NASA, NOAA, FAA, and Commercial Space/Newspace.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| Having a joint program across all those would cost far more
| money.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| The project managers and consultants to plan such a thing
| would probably cost several years of the current budget.
| nsriv wrote:
| Trying to save on a $55 million program by standing up a joint
| agency. I have truly heard it all now.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The US are by far not the only ones with satellites in orbit.
| Making it a UN body would make sense, just like the
| International Telecommunications Union coordinates telephone
| service and the International Postal Union coordinates
| international mail, and both are now UN bodies (despite
| predating the UN).
|
| I have a feeling that the current US administration would not
| back such an idea, so this will end up back with the DOD, maybe
| the Space Force. Despite the DOD saying quite clearly they
| would prefer NOAA to do it
| jowea wrote:
| It seems this is already a thing on some form https://www.uno
| osa.org/oosa/en/spaceobjectregister/index.htm...
| djoldman wrote:
| Here's the uncomfortable fact:
|
| If the US Federal Government spent ZERO money on anything except:
|
| 1. Social Security
|
| 2. Medicare & Medicaid
|
| 3. National Defense
|
| 4. Net Interest on the Public Debt
|
| 5. Income Security
|
| 6. Veterans Benefits & Services
|
| 7. Federal Civilian & Military Retirement and Disability
|
| ... the US would still have a sizable deficit.
|
| All the hoopla surrounding science spending, education, DEI, FDA,
| housing, foreign aid, disaster relief, etc., doesn't really
| address some huge issues if the goal is to reduce deficit
| spending.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if the goal is to reduce deficit spending_
|
| Red herring. It's not. It's never been. We're blowing out the
| deficit by trillions.
|
| The motivation isn't anything about the deficit. It's that NOAA
| counters the climate narrative a narrow band of idiots would
| prefer to believe.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Debt servicing is now more than 16% of our spending and
| growing.
|
| I hope all that stuff we bought with $36T was worth it!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Thankfully we're getting all this cool stuff. You know
| like... actually what are we getting?
| tomrod wrote:
| More debt!
| cco wrote:
| A sizeable chunk, probably around half, of what we bought
| with that $36T was net worth for people like Bezos and the
| Kochs.
| watwut wrote:
| They are making the deficit much larger. So, can we stop
| parroting these bad faith "debt worry" arguments?
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| They will worry about the deficits again once democrats are
| in power.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Are they hoping satellites studying climate change get destroyed?
|
| Also let's not forget Sharpie Gate and how the petty Orange
| Emperor appointed a climate science denier to a top position in
| NOAA.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/12/912301325/longtime-climate-sc...
|
| Yet another systemic rat fucking so somebody can make a buck.
| It's only ever about the money.
| macintux wrote:
| During his first administration I was half-surprised he didn't
| nominate a flat earther to head NASA.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Clearly this should be funded by the countries and companies that
| own the debris and sattlites that need to be tracked.
|
| Which means Starling would probably pay for most of it.
|
| Then there are various spy satellites countries have that they
| dont want tracked? Or does the data from NOAA include spy
| satellites in strange orbits?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Which means Starling would probably pay for most of it_
|
| Then they'd switch to a user fee. Perhaps even at a profit,
| such that it's deficit reducing.
|
| That isn't what they're doing because that isn't what this is
| about.
| cantor_S_drug wrote:
| I mentioned this scenario before but I was downvoted. Can a
| rogue disgruntled state like Iran actually bring about
| destruction of satellites, say Starlink ones, to set off space
| debris chain reaction to pollute, poison the earth orbit for
| everyone. The thinking goes like if I can't have the advantage
| then no one else should.
| j-bos wrote:
| iirc Starlink satellites sit in a low orbit so they'll burn
| up/down pretty fast.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Assuming you mean "Starlink":
|
| Don't all Starlink satellites have a plan to deorbit
| responsibly; specifically, do nothing, which results in a
| relatively quick deorbitting?
|
| Starlink satellites are in low-Earth-orbit which can't
| accumulate much space debris, because everything deorbits
| naturally within a few years.
| maxlin wrote:
| If they just figured out a way to not 10x overspend while getting
| the same results ...
| water9 wrote:
| only works if everybody agrees and Noaa is not in charge of
| everybody
| hdb385 wrote:
| bothered
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Cool and normal.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| what next, osha? safety sure is a waste of time to these myopic
| tech idiots
| wnevets wrote:
| Defund ICE and use that money to stop satellites from crashing
| into each other
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Crash satellites into ICE!
| apwell23 wrote:
| Icrease H1B fees to 30k and quota to 3 million and use that
| money to stop satellites from crashing into each other.
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| Let's not overthink this. Anything long-term is toast.
| ccorcos wrote:
| Why isn't the free market capable of doing this? Seems odd to
| spend money just to spend money. There's plenty of incentive for
| other people to be doing this already...
| duxup wrote:
| I feel like this is like "free market should build roads thing"
| we fund roads so everyone has access and goods can move freely
| / more economic activity can take place without problems.
|
| What would the free market solution be here? Someone builds all
| the infrastructure to track all the satellites, and maybe more
| than one (if not you have a monopoly) person does it. Then they
| charge for it?
|
| But someone doesn't use it an now we have more space junk ...
|
| If anything a government organizing this and everyone utilizing
| it seems like it makes for more efficient / lower risk
| situation with satellites. Everyone just gets on with more
| important business.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| Usually I'd agree with you on this type of thing, but in this
| case I think the insurance industry could and should be
| picking this up.
|
| They're the bag holder here, and this system could be built
| for a marginal hit to their bottom line in exchange for a
| huge amount of de-risking across their entire supply chain.
| duxup wrote:
| I don't think the insurance industry is all that interested
| providing services or enhancing commerce. They'd have some
| very mixed motivations all at once if they tried doing
| this. Including anything technical.
| ccorcos wrote:
| Side story regarding roads: I was recently in Shelter
| Cove, CA and was thinking that the is road probably
| exceeds the entire economic value of the town... Why is
| this road even here? It turns out, they used to harvest
| tan oak bark for the tannins to tan leather in the late
| 1800s which was a huge industry back then. Lots of
| logging roads out there since then... Free markets do
| build a lot of roads!
|
| Insurance companies have the right incentive but they
| don't need to be the ones building it. Safer cars get
| cheaper insurance, so there's clear market pressure there
| without insurance companies having to build their own
| cars...
|
| Pollution, kinds that suffer the "tragedy of the common",
| are a good example where regulation is necessary to
| prevent a race to the bottom. But that's a pretty simple
| and straightforward thing to democratically vote on
| without government spending.
|
| I think the solution is fairly simple: private companies
| build these capabilities and offer them as a service. The
| idea that there won't be a marketplace for this service
| seems misguided too. Adversarial militaries will want
| their own systems, likely contracted out to private
| companies, which will likely offer civilian use around
| the world...
| stego-tech wrote:
| Except they won't, because current business is about short-
| term gains at the expense of long-term sustainability.
| Companies cannot be trusted to act in their own best
| interests in the long term, and they'll just as soon exit
| an unprofitable market today than invest into making it
| profitable tomorrow.
| notahacker wrote:
| After launch, most of the stuff up there is self insured.
|
| Also, the US government and it's affiliated institutions
| already has networks of ground stations and the insurance
| industry doesnt.
| michael1999 wrote:
| The free market is famously unable to solve problems of diffuse
| risk and responsibility: air pollution, sea piracy, and in this
| case -- satellite collision avoidance.
| stego-tech wrote:
| This - among many other reasons - is why I'm increasingly
| throwing my opinions behind shoving these roles onto the United
| Nations instead of nation states or private companies. Global
| needs should have global support, such that the failure of one
| hegemony doesn't fuck up everything for the rest of humanity
|
| A UN program for weather forecasting and satellite tracking,
| complete with open data sources and REST APIs, would be a boon.
| Unfortunately, the current organizational structure makes that
| impossible due to the vested interests of the respective Security
| Council members. We're more likely to see the EU take up those
| mantles.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| Also the practicality of this is that most of the UN funding
| will come from the US. When a situation like this where US is
| cutting funding arises you get the same problem. Almost all
| finding will dry up overnight and they won't have sufficient
| funding to continue
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I sort of wonder when the UN is getting thrown out of New
| York by the current administration.
| chgs wrote:
| I have no doubt China would offer a far better location
| somewhere like Shanghai. The intelligence benefits of so
| many foreign diplomats and spies walking your street,
| drinking in your bars, paying your hookers, is
| incalculable.
| stego-tech wrote:
| 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.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| High hopes, those. The point of sabotaging US hegemony was
| not to hand power over to a monolithic, democratic,
| primarily Western institution, I'll tell you that much. I
| suspect that the Galts want their gulches (with Do Not
| Create Rapture as the template).
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| And they can just pull out of it whenever and frame the UN as
| a boogeyman like with the WHO.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Global needs should have global support, such that the
| failure of one hegemony doesn't fuck up everything for the rest
| of humanity
|
| While this is true, I suspect that putting the UN in charge of
| all global matters will cause them to _become_ such a hegemony.
|
| Until we have multiple planets (or equivalents), I think a
| multi-polar world with multiple superpowers capable and
| motivated to work on such things is important.
|
| Hopefully the superpowers will keep their fighting to
| "indirectly", like the USA and the USSR used to.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| 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.
| orbisvicis wrote:
| There's TraCSS, SST, RSSS. Each country needs to have their own
| satellite tracking program. There is international cooperation
| but do you really think the US is in charge? "Whoops", says the
| US as a small cubesat from another country collides with a
| Russian military space satellite. "Missed that one - my bad".
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I worked for the UN on more or less this in the 2000s. People
| have a naive perception of what the UN is like. It was one of
| the most openly dysfunctional, corrupt, and sclerotic
| organizations I have ever worked with or for.
|
| It has nothing to do with who is or isn't on the security
| council. That entire organization is full of the kinds of
| people who occupy the average government in the world, which is
| a very low standard of excellence. The UN has neither data
| infrastructure nor technical expertise to do something like
| this in any case.
|
| REST APIs? One of the big issues is that the data sources are
| measured in exabytes these days. That means there can only
| practically be a single copy. This creates an insurmountable
| hurdle: most countries contributing data want to keep their
| data in their country. This makes any use of that data
| computationally intractable because there is not enough
| bandwidth connect the disparate data sources together. Also,
| given this extreme (and mostly unnecessary) bandwidth
| consumption, now they have to severely restrict access to the
| data to keep the system usable, effectively making it no longer
| public.
|
| I've been to this particular rodeo several times. I have zero
| confidence it could deliver on the promise.
|
| It really would require someone with a singular vision, the
| technical expertise, and the courage to pull it off. A
| committee of bureaucrats isn't going to make it happen.
| ben_w wrote:
| I mean, that's _one_ way for Trump to punish Musk...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-12 23:00 UTC)