Except almost all work at NASA is done by private contractors. Likewise the development of military technology. The cultural failure extends through the whole aerospace industry except for a few small innovators, of whom SpaceX is the largest.

This isn't just mindless "private sector good, government bad". Most of the harm done to NASA is due to that mindless, unquestioning political belief that the private sector is more efficient... even at government funded programs.

The poster said "1961". There was a market for commercial satellite launches, there was clearly a value in weather satellites and Landsat type imaging. The military uses for space don't need explaining. So the NASA and Army development in the '50s and very early '60s did indeed create the technology that spawned a commercial space industry.

But during the '60s, the focus shifted from incremental, step-wise development of space technology to the all-in balls-to-the-wall development of Apollo. However, it's important to note that the purpose of Apollo was to develop a heavy lift launcher larger than the Soviets were capable of building and demonstrate it in a way the Soviets weren't capable of matching. It succeeded, and the Soviets pulled their heads in, and everyone signed the Outer Space Treaty. Job done. Last one to the bar buys the first round.

But Apollo wasn't about the myth of Apollo. "We chose to go to the moon in this decade..." blah blah. It was never an exploration program. (For example, only one astronaut amongst the dozen to walk on the moon, just one in the entire Apollo astronaut corps, was an actual geologist. And he only flew on the last ever mission.) Therefore Apollo can't be used to rebut Eepok's explore/commercialise/explore premise.

It's a standard part of the myth, but it's not true. The involvement of the USAF in the Shuttle design came at the request of (and lobbying by) NASA management in order to try to get defence funding for the Shuttle (and when that failed, to just make the Shuttle uncancellable. "National security!" It's part of the reason why the Shuttle (and now SLS) used SRBs, to keep ATK profitable, to preserve ICBM production knowledge.) The USAF initially bought into the bullshit being spread by NASA about the Shuttle's proposed capabilities ("launch once a week, cost under $100m per launch!"), but never enough to contribute funding. And then when the true limits and costs of the Shuttle became apparent, they pulled all involvement and funded the EELV upgrades.

The problems of the Shuttle were entirely of NASA's own making. Likewise "Freedom", now ISS. Likewise JWST. Likewise Constellation/SLS/Orion. Likewise their other failed programs. They, and their strongest supporters in Congress, keep repeating the same mistakes over and over and expecting a different result.

Adding procedures is easy, removing procedures is hard.

Adding procedures is usually like a bug-fix in a program, correcting for unintended behaviour or interaction in the other procedures. But reducing procedures is more like scrapping an entire code-base and starting with a blank sheet. Exciting, but much bigger and much riskier. (And more likely to go wrong and piss people off. See Slashdot Beta.)

Their community.

Each explorer of the next-valley-over was reared and fed and protected and trained by the rest of the tribe through mostly communal ownership of major resources. The explorer then returned with news of bounteous herds of Caribou (or clams or whatever) and gave that knowledge to the entire tribe to replay their tolerance for his youthful indulgence. They, in turn, shared the new wealth amongst the whole tribe. The idea that the explorer alone would claim rights to the new land/resource for himself and "sell" access to the others would be so foreign to the tribe they wouldn't understand what the words mean.

[Occasionally, one presumes, groups might break off from the main tribe and forge ahead into the new land, due to politics or ambition. But even then, the ownership of the new resource was shared amongst the break-away tribe.]

I would suggest that the current malaise at NASA extends through the Shuttle program. Operating a first generation prototype for over a quarter of a century? Hell, just flying the same five vehicles for a quarter of a century (not even replacing those that crashed) is hardly a sign of a place that will thrill an innovative young engineer. It's more like a railway museum than a space agency.

Because in finance they already used M to mean 1000, a la "Mille".

Example.

It's been seriously suggested. It would provide them with a secondary income stream, increase the number of "banks" in poorer neighbourhoods (which often have a post office but no bank branches, precisely where people often need physical rather than electronic banking), and would thus replace a lot of pay-day-loan/cheque-cashing/pawnshops which do flock to poorer neighbourhoods and charge extortionate fees/interest, thus saving those communities tens of billions of dollars a year. There's about 60 million Americans who lack access to financial services who could benefit from a Postal Bank.

And, of course, the USPS was a savings bank until the '60s.

Here's a report from the USPS Inspector General. (pdf)

But the current Postmaster General is apparently a classic CEO, an MBA idiot who advocates branch closers, service cuts and fee hikes to "save" the post office. And Obama, of course, is terrified to take on the large banks.

Kaatochacha was noting that "Cash-in-hand jobs" can't be read as "cash in hand-jobs done as a teenager", unlike the original comment.

[Which makes your "black economy" comment doubly unintentionally funny.]

I think you'll find it's more likely this.

Except, you know, the author of the book being discussed, who specifically did rank races by their superiority. (Whites are genetically predisposed to civilisation, blacks to tribal living, Chinese to business, etc.)

Instead of what you said, I think it's the opposite: Whenever people object to the abuse of their research to support a racist/ideological agenda, people like you scream "That's political correctness!" without even attempting to understand what the objections are.

There are places on Earth which are analogues of Mars, but easier to survive. Atacama, parts of Australia (say, Coober Pedy), the dry valleys in Antarctica. And doing the trip in a small caravan with too many people will provide the Mars rest of the experience for you.

Plus if you haven't explored the Earth, who are you to explore Mars. You wouldn't really be able to appreciate it, you wouldn't have the "eyes" to understand it.

"Whereas..."? "...if you tell me..."? "...I'd give you..."?

Huh, nothing, weird. It appears you think only of negative reinforcement. So if your employees double their productivity, you offer them no reward, only threats if they seek a reward.

This leaves them with three choices:

A) Automate a process, tell you. You increase their workload to compensate. Result: Same pay, same workload, plus responsibility for the automation process.
B) Automate a process, don't tell you. Result: Same pay, decreased workload, small risk of getting caught.
C) Don't automate the process. Result: Same pay, same workload, no risk, no extra responsibility.

Logically, employees would chose between B and C, depending on their assessment of the risk of getting caught versus the benefit in halving their workload. No employee capable of automating processes would choose A unless they hadn't personally met you yet.

Meta-result: No improvements in business productivity. Low morale.

A competent business includes,
D) Automate a process, tell management. Have the increase in productivity shared. Result: Increased pay for same workload or same pay for easier workload.

Meta-result: Incentive for all employees to improve business practices. Ongoing improvements. High morale.

[I knew a guy who worked on a production line for a couple of years, suggested a single change that saved his company $1m per month in avoided waste. At the end of the year they gave him a $100 Christmas hamper. Guess how many other suggestions he shared. (Just one.)]

If you hold polarised filters (such as glasses) in front of a black-light, does the glow dim completely? Likewise, does a room lit only by a black-light go black again when wearing polarised glasses.

As a control, you could set up a regular light which to you seems as bright as the black-light. As you pass the polarised filters past both, the regular light should dim only as much the darkness of the glasses, the black-light otoh should virtually extinguish. Ditto a room lit by one versus the other.

If so, congrats, Ultravioletman, I have no such superpowers and can only look on in envy (with my puny regular person eyes). Now go, go out and fight crime (or commit it, depending on your preference. Ooh, supervillain name: "The Ultra Violent".)

OTOH, at $60/yr for an unlimited C2, if you're running a project with public donations, you should be paying. Even if you're still not-for-profit, you're no longer an "individual". Surely that's a little different than my personal email server?