That's a strong dismissal with little evidence to back it up. I am not saying that I expect NASA to become a lean organization tomorrow, just that there incentives are all messed up.

Anyway, you might think that government organizations are always full of bloat but compare the SSA with your 401k and you will find they are vary low overhead. The problem with government organizations is they tend to make really big a stupid decisions for political reasons, aka if SSA had invested in a mix of stocks and bonds vs. US treasury bonds people would be talking about how over funded it was right now. Instead the SSA “surplus” was used to subsidize government borrowing and treated as yet another agency.

PS: I have 64 Karma on a 2 week old act that may suggest something about my activities. If you actually have something meaningful to say feel free to support your argument, but right now I am feeling trolled.

11 days, to be specific. All the trolls get some karma, I think you are marked as new accounts below 50 now? If you aren't a troll, don't repeat claims without answering people's points from a new account.

A link re the Shuttle: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/07/lunch-wi...

Bye.

"Tethers in space, break" for a long number of reasons. NASA has actually tried to use tethers in space several times and found a lot of surprisingly tough issues. One of the least obvious induced current, but read up on it as there is some really interesting engendering involved. So, from the perspective of someone who you want to ride in a tin can at the end of one of these you are really going to need to say, if these break the occupants survive due the ability for each half to reinter the atmosphere, be rescued or whatever.

Now run the numbers for a version of that a reasonable person would actually be willing to live in for a full year and perhaps he would be willing to discuss it. However, a moon base is probably both cheaper and safer.