Space flight happens because we want to study things from space. NASA is the "host" for principal investigators who often work outside of NASA. In fact, a major NOAA installation was constructed right across the street from NASA - Goddard (in Greenbelt, MD) to allow closer interaction between the two because their missions are so closely aligned.

The aeronautical and aerospace research NASA does isn't in a vacuum; it's meant to ultimately serve a useful cause, and that includes studying the planet. It does do wind tunnel research; it does explore other planets; it does advance optics, and thermal management, and fluid flow, and all the myriad pieces which go into spaceflight and airborne hardware requirements. And much of it happens to flow down to terrestrial uses.

And this is more about Ted Cruz, who doesn't believe that they do anything useful, in charge of their mission. Imagine if they put Aunt Jemima in charge of the Canadian strategic maple syrup reserve. Yeah, it's that crazy.

To the average American, NASA is just a huge portion of the budget (Billions! of dollars) spent to put some clown in orbit a couple of times a year. This is, in fact, exactly what they want based on their knowledge of what NASA does. All the technology gained by what NASA has learned over the decades by doing the hard and impossible things is entirely lost on Joe Sixpack. And, unfortunately, government / private interaction is not an efficient (in the economic sense) sense, so that the effects of cuts won't be felt where the average person lives for 20 years. It's our own damned fault for living in a country filled with morons.

I'm just as jazzed at the possibility of a nuclear-powered car, or solar or wind for that matter.

That's the "efficient" part of electrics - they run on whatever the current source of power generation is, which means that in 10 years (if every /. story from the last two decades can be believed), you may get to run your Bolt on nuclear fusion. The only differences from Doc's converted DeLorean is that (1) it won't be mounted to your car (2) it won't travel through time (except in the boring, linear, forward-only sense), and (3) it won't be nearly as cool looking.

So I can buy that 96kWh all-electric Mazda 5 off the shelf? Oh, no? Well, then it's not really the same thing is it. (And, damn, if I had to drive 40 mph on a highway to get that kind of mileage, I'd grow old and die before I got to my destination.)

You'd have to be nuts to try and wash an electric car.

...Molt?

Thank you, I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your servers.

No, not really. The vast majority of Division I schools lose money on athletics, none of the Division III schools cover their athletic expenses.

from http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

"Just 23 of 228 athletics departments at NCAA Division I public schools generated enough money on their own to cover their expenses in 2012. Of that group, 16 also received some type of subsidy — and 10 of those 16 athletics departments received more subsidy money in 2012 than they did in 2011."

Sports provides valuable marketing (for the top schools), and that has value, but don't kid yourself that sports is generating net revenue.

You want full employment? Outlaw computers. There'll be so many jobs we won't have enough people to fill them and you'll have an H1B program for computing exemption allowances every year.

Oops - the $5k actually covers the $3800 annual cost all by itself. (Though my "stop subsidizing baby making" comment stands. $200B is a lot of cash)

It's better to think of it as $32 Billion per year, since that's how the government functions, or a $7600 benefit for 2.7% of the population.

There are 29 million children in the US in families which have more than 2 children, or about 15 million 3rds/4ths/5ths, etc. Why don't we stop subsidizing them? Just the tax exemption on those large families would be $5000 of the $7600 needed to cover the cost. Heck stop subsidizing the second kid and you've covered the whole cost and have change to spare! Quit paying people to punch out babies altogether and, boom, there's $200 Billion a year (it's a $3000 refundable amount per child), you can put the extra $170B towards the debt so those kids won't pass on the burden to their kids.

Ted Knight's is the better quote here, " Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too."

That may be wrong, but not as far off as you think. Given a flat distribution of 0-70 year olds (to make the math easier), and 4 years of free college, with 1/2 the 12 graders going to college, it's closer to $2100 per person per year, which just under 1/4 of the in-state college tuition average of $9400/yr.

As for the mortgages, there are 13.6T in mortgages. Bailing out the banks was only a couple trillion (all told), but since 2000, we've spent approximately 8.3T on defense alone (not including DHS, CIA, NSA, etc), or 61% of the value of all the mortgages in the US. We could have still been #1 in global military spending for those years and, with the bank bailout funds, paid off close to 70% of all US mortgages.

Is that why it costs the government less than $10,000 per child for primary and secondary school, but private primary and secondary schools cost more than $20,000 per year?

If the "market" solved the problem, private elementary and high schools should cost LESS than public schools, not more than double.

Nothing is done for the convenience of the user. Why should the website be any different?

And, for the record, if you can't figure out the USPS website you're an idiot. All these idiosyncrasies have been around for as long as I can remember on their site, and yet we ship out stuff all the time with the system.

I feel like I've just been trolled by BH.

HP Workstation with a handle bolted to the top.