wow.. musk is awesome indeed.. hes going to surpass bill gates one day, yet hes the modern tony stark imo
Billions of tax dollars spent on science and research are a good thing and this nation needs far, far more of it.
Well they've gotten us to the moon and farther with less computational power than your cell phone has so....
That was 50+years ago. The waste factor was a lot different back then than now. Not as many entities had their hands in the government pie back then. And I still find it amazing that we did it without the use of what we find almost impossible to do without in today's world. Those computers were slow, no power and unreliable. There wasn't even a decent calculator available. The adding machines weren't much more than glorified cash registers. We can do a lot more than we think we can.
That's bullshit. There were just as many hands in the pie back then which is what caused the buildup of the military industrial complex, which wasn't all bad. Many, many things come out of the government pouring money into research whether it be for space or defense. NASA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies http://www.informationweek.com/government/mobile/10-space-technologies-that-help-on-earth/240151059 Plus DARPA has given us things like the internet and they're working on robotics that interface with the brain which will be awesome for prosthetics in the future.
Call it what you will. I was there. And you are right about the MIC. It was present but now it's been evolving and growing for 50 more years. Technologies are not bad, How they're utilized can be. I'm not convinced that the internet turned out to be such a great thing. It's great if you're in the intel biz though. (PRISM) I can't help but think that private corps like SpaceX would have made much more progress without the waste, sidetracks and politics that NASA had to deal with.
I have to agree with Wiskas on this one as well. When you compare what the civilian sector is capable of with a set amount of money to what the government can accomplish, it is pretty mind boggling. Compare the US Postal Service to UPS, for instance. Although the USPS receives no funding from the government, it is forced to adhere to several very strict guidelines regarding how they operate and what they do. They are essentially bound by the government to operate a specific way. Think back to all of the arguments that have been had about closing down under-utilized post offices. Due to the union's disagreement with cutting offices and losing jobs, the politicians that give back to the unions prevented it. Thus, the USPS has suffered. It's the bureaucracy that has ran them into the ground, to where they are no longer a sustainable or up-to-date entity that will lead us into the future. ~Will Courtier~
If you want to see a cool documentary with a big emphasis on Musk, check out "Revenge of the Electric Car". It's on Netflix streaming too. The guy is a hard worker and does some really great stuff.
