nasa with the department of defense budget

[noobsrtoast]

my question here, to anyone who knows the statistics, what exactly could nasa do with that kind of budget, i know they can produce roughly 3 grams of antimatter per year(200 billion for one gram of antimatter), but what else, if you know of something please post, i am eager to learn of all the accomplishments that could be made

for anyone wondering the total budget for the u.s military per year is around 664 billion dollars 

Edited February 29, 2016 by noobsrtoast

[Shpaget]

I don't know where you got your animatter figure, but CERN has something to say about it.

Yes, the article is a bit dated, but the ballpark is still applicable.

Quote

Even if CERN used its accelerators only for making antimatter, it could produce no more than about 1 billionth of a gram per year. To make 1 g of antimatter - the amount made by Vetra in the movie - would therefore take about 1 billion years.

The total amount of antimatter produced in CERN’s history is less than 10 nanograms - containing only enough energy to power a 60 W light bulb for 4 hours.

The cost of antimatter

The efficiency of antimatter production and storage is very low. About 1 billion times more energy is required to make antimatter than is finally contained in its mass. Using E = mc², we find that 1 gram of antimatter contains:

0.001 kg x (300,000,000 m/s)² = 90,000 GJ = 25 million kWh

Taking into account the low production efficiency, it would need 25 million billion kWh to make one single gram! Even at a discount price for electric power, this would cost more than a million billion Euros

http://angelsanddemons.web.cern.ch/antimatter/making-antimatter

And that's not even going into the containment issue.

[noobsrtoast]

1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

I don't know where you got your animatter figure, but CERN has something to say about it.

Yes, the article is a bit dated, but the ballpark is still applicable.

http://angelsanddemons.web.cern.ch/antimatter/making-antimatter

And that's not even going into the containment issue.

i dont know, i read somewhere that a gram of antimatter would cost 200 billion to produce, maybe i was reading about something else 

[Spaceception]

45 minutes ago, noobsrtoast said:

i dont know, i read somewhere that a gram of antimatter would cost 200 billion to produce, maybe i was reading about something else 

I think that's with specially designed atom-smashers, or maybe heading to Jupiter's radiation belts to pick it up.

Also, with the DoDs budget, we'd be able to colonize the Moon, Mars, Ceres, and Lagrange point pace stations, within a couple of decades, and launch Starships

Edited February 29, 2016 by Spaceception

[SargeRho]

3 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

I think that's with specially designed atom-smashers, or maybe heading to Jupiter's radiation belts to pick it up.

Also, with the DoDs budget, we'd be able to colonize the Moon, Mars, Ceres, and Lagrange point pace stations, within a couple of decades, and launch Starships

That's with current particle accelerators.

Saturn is probably the best bet for harvesting antimatter, due to its large rings. Particles smashing into it produce quite a bit of antimatter, in addition to its magnetic field capturing extrasolar antimatter..

[Spaceception]

1 minute ago, SargeRho said:

That's with current particle accelerators.

Saturn is probably the best bet for harvesting antimatter, due to its large rings. Particles smashing into it produce quite a bit of antimatter, in addition to its magnetic field capturing extrasolar antimatter..

Oooooh, I didn't know that, Saturn is even cooler now.

[Bill Phil]

Hmm....

Maybe Orions could be built, and I mean the real McCoy. Nuclear bomb powered spaceships. Mars in 4 weeks, Saturn in 7 months. Over a single lifetime we could potentially colonize, at least partially, each celestial body that can be, and with a cost of life less than the auto industry.

[RainDreamer]

Relevant Video:

 

[Shania_L]

Well, with my sceptical cap firmly in place I'd say that if you doubled NASA's budget they'd probably end up getting even less done, and waste 3x as much money on whatever it is they manage to spend so much on as it is.

But on the plus side you would get a lot more (extra shiny) powerpoint shows of stuff they could do if you only gave them a little bit more.

This is the way of public funded projects, noone has any incentive to keep stuff cheap and you know, get a return on investments. (or actually do what you set out to do.)

[GluttonyReaper]

SLS gets scrapped, all money goes to developing Untitled Space Craft.

[HebaruSan]

Buy treasury bills so they can continue paying for more stuff after the budget gets slashed again!

More seriously, NASA does what it's told, broadly speaking. It's up to the US Congress and President to determine the mission. They said to do planetary science on a shoestring budget, so we've had Cassini, Juno, Curiosity, Opportunity, Rosetta, New Horizons, and Dawn, plus any others I'm forgetting. It's fun to moan about how we don't have a Mars colony yet, but a drastic change in budget would almost certainly be linked to some grand new overriding priority, rather than completing old laundry lists that we're currently ignoring out of apathy. The only two things that come to mind at the moment are an impending dinosaur-killer asteroid impact and an alien invasion.

According to a very simpleminded google search, the ISS cost about $150B. Now, that may not include for example the cost of running the shuttle that was used to build much of it. But it's probably not too far off to ballpark it at around 4 ISSes per year.

Maybe they could at least fix the reaction wheels on Kepler?

Edited February 29, 2016 by HebaruSan
I knew I was forgetting the obvious one!

[Bill Phil]

2 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

Buy treasury bills so they can continue paying for more stuff after the budget gets slashed again!

More seriously, NASA does what it's told, broadly speaking. It's up to the US Congress and President to determine the mission. They said to do planetary science on a shoestring budget, so we've had Cassini, Juno, Curiosity, Opportunity, Rosetta, New Horizons, and Dawn, plus any others I'm forgetting. It's fun to moan about how we don't have a Mars colony yet, but a drastic change in budget would almost certainly be linked to some grand new overriding priority, rather than completing old laundry lists that we're currently ignoring out of apathy. The only two things that come to mind at the moment are an impending dinosaur-killer asteroid impact and an alien invasion.

According to a very simpleminded google search, the ISS cost about $150B. Now, that may not include for example the cost of running the shuttle that was used to build much of it. But it's probably not too far off to ballpark it at around 4 ISSes per year.

Maybe they could at least fix the reaction wheels on Kepler?

Even with the current budget we could have boots on the ground on Mars by now. And a base, and a few lunar bases, and at least a larger number of probes orbiting planets.

It would require nuking our way to space, though.

[YNM]

If NASA had the budget of DoD, probably all the thing that comes with Space Shuttle would into realm. Or, if it happens just now, instant DIRECT / Ares / SLS, and SpaceX will be beating Roscosmos hard...

[NuclearNut]

A ton more proper space research, and a ton less military development.  It would likely be for the better, ending with us on multiple planets and having the ability to exploit resources far outside of the reach of other nations, but it would also damage are national defense in the short term, assuming most defense money is transferred to the NASA budget.

[noobsrtoast]

On 29/02/2016 at 3:08 AM, Spaceception said:

I think that's with specially designed atom-smashers, or maybe heading to Jupiter's radiation belts to pick it up.

Also, with the DoDs budget, we'd be able to colonize the Moon, Mars, Ceres, and Lagrange point pace stations, within a couple of decades, and launch Starships

right?

[Nibb31]

Realistically?

You would have to explain to the american taxpayers why 1/3 of their taxes are going into space exploration, when most of them think that NASA's main purpose is to keep the American public away from the alien artifacts that they brought back from the faked Moon landings.

It would probably end in a civil war with the National Guard patrolling the streets. Or you'd be kicked out by a coup d'Etat instigated by the military-industrial complex.

[AngelLestat]

I am not sure what NASA could do, but I am sure that if that money is given to Elon Musk instead NASA, he will accomplish 5 to 10 times more.
So NASA would do 36 times the things they do, and elon musk would do around to 250 times the amount of things that NASA does now.
This mean, launch an proxima centauri probe in 40 years with many of other interplanetary missions.

[SinBad]

eh, Elon Musk is cool and all, and is doing cool things on a tight budget. but very little of what he is doing is new tech. yes there are rockets landing vertically and all sorts of fancy stuff, but that's control software, not revolutionary new hardware. at its heart is tried and true existing technologies that don't require large sums of money to develop from scratch like NASA has had to do with just about every single new model of lifter they have launched. not to mention the hideously expensive super computers NASA did most of its simulations with is beaten by most modern PCs for less than two thousand dollars. R+D used to be much more expensive than it is now (at one point they actually had to pay for stuff to be built before they could see if it worked) and NASA hasn't done much of it since it got cheap because they haven't been able to invest in new research infrastructure. give modern NASA money that it can spread around to R+D organizations and we would see some revolutionary technologies.

 

 

on a side note, the shuttle is not a great example. it was built with air force money under the stipulation that the design be able to launch into a northerly polar orbit and land back in US territory before completing a full orbit. basically they wanted a surveillance and weapons platform to use against Russia. in its entire service history, the shuttle never flew this flight path. imagine what they could have done if they were trying to build an orbiter instead of a bomber/spy-plane.

[Nibb31]

2 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

I am not sure what NASA could do, but I am sure that if that money is given to Elon Musk instead NASA, he will accomplish 5 to 10 times more.
So NASA would do 36 times the things they do, and elon musk would do around to 250 times the amount of things that NASA does now.
This mean, launch an proxima centauri probe in 40 years with many of other interplanetary missions.

*yawn*

Give anyone taxpayer money, and you will end up with the same amount of bureaucracy that NASA has. Otherwise, it's just confiscation of national property, and you end up in a federal prison for treason or with a revolution on your hands.

[YNM]

14 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

*yawn*

Give anyone taxpayer money, and you will end up with the same amount of bureaucracy that NASA has. Otherwise, it's just confiscation of national property, and you end up in a federal prison for treason or with a revolution on your hands.

When you're handling everyone's money, it becomes everyone's discretion - doesn't quite hold for Federal Reserve, though...

[AngelLestat]

Answering again the OP question, they would be able to do a lot of things with that money, but they will become a bit more inefficient than today.
But well, all solar system is open after that, submarine to enceladus or europa, venus-mars manned mission, asteroids, balloons to titan and jupiter, etc.
Then new type of airplanes and different techs.

5 hours ago, SinBad said:

eh, Elon Musk is cool and all, and is doing cool things on a tight budget. but very little of what he is doing is new tech.

If what Elon does is not new tech, then nothing it is.
Tesla:  a big part of the whole car is new tech from their own hundreds of patents, from transmissions to inverters, special fuses or even an AI auto drive software that is continually learning.
Then you have hyperloop in development..  crossfeed for falcon heavy, a new special escape system for dragon v2, new methane engines, etc.
But maybe you are refering to really revolutionary tech that will change human history as the laser or the transistor..
Well in that case reusable rockets should enter in that revolutionary tech..  because before they achieve the first steps, many on the industry said that was impossible..
There you have all the new tech to make that possible as fins, legs, software (that also counts as new tech of course), special structure levels and engines able to throttle.
All those developments with almost no money in comparison with nasa developments.

Quote

give modern NASA money that it can spread around to R+D organizations and we would see some revolutionary technologies.

What you call modern nasa?  Because I dont see nothing of efficiency in modern nasa.

3 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Give anyone taxpayer money, and you will end up with the same amount of bureaucracy that NASA has. Otherwise, it's just confiscation of national property, and you end up in a federal prison for treason or with a revolution on your hands.

You will have more bureaucracy that is true.. but not so much.
After all, part of the spacex´s money comes from taxpayers.. or not?

If you said that nasa spent so much money due "efficiency control" of nasa budget and achievements, then the whole arguments fall.

Edited March 2, 2016 by AngelLestat

[kerbiloid]

They could produce 3 g of antimatter per year and sell it, getting more money.

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, AngelLestat said:

Answering again the OP question, they would be able to do a lot of things with that money, but they will become a bit more inefficient than today.
But well, all solar system is open after that, submarine to enceladus or europa, venus-mars manned mission, asteroids, balloons to titan and jupiter, etc.
Then new type of airplanes and different techs.

If what Elon does is not new tech, then nothing it is.
Tesla:  a big part of the whole car is new tech from their own hundreds of patents, from transmissions to inverters, special fuses or even an AI auto drive software that is continually learning.
Then you have hyperloop in development..  crossfeed for falcon heavy, a new special escape system for dragon v2, new methane engines, etc.
But maybe you are refering to really revolutionary tech that will change human history as the laser or the transistor..
Well in that case reusable rockets should enter in that revolutionary tech..  because before they achieve the first steps, many on the industry said that was impossible..
There you have all the new tech to make that possible as fins, legs, software (that also counts as new tech of course), special structure levels and engines able to throttle.
All those developments with almost no money in comparison with nasa developments.

What you call modern nasa?  Because I dont see nothing of efficiency in modern nasa.

You will have more bureaucracy that is true.. but not so much.
After all, part of the spacex´s money comes from taxpayers.. or not?

If you said that nasa spent so much money due "efficiency control" of nasa budget and achievements, then the whole arguments fall.

Electric cars have been around for more than a century.

Crossfeed? The shuttle had very similar tech.

Reusable rockets? Could've been done in the 60s.

[fredinno]

 

6 hours ago, SinBad said:

eh, Elon Musk is cool and all, and is doing cool things on a tight budget. but very little of what he is doing is new tech. yes there are rockets landing vertically and all sorts of fancy stuff, but that's control software, not revolutionary new hardware. at its heart is tried and true existing technologies that don't require large sums of money to develop from scratch like NASA has had to do with just about every single new model of lifter they have launched. not to mention the hideously expensive super computers NASA did most of its simulations with is beaten by most modern PCs for less than two thousand dollars. R+D used to be much more expensive than it is now (at one point they actually had to pay for stuff to be built before they could see if it worked) and NASA hasn't done much of it since it got cheap because they haven't been able to invest in new research infrastructure. give modern NASA money that it can spread around to R+D organizations and we would see some revolutionary technologies.

 

 

on a side note, the shuttle is not a great example. it was built with air force money under the stipulation that the design be able to launch into a northerly polar orbit and land back in US territory before completing a full orbit. basically they wanted a surveillance and weapons platform to use against Russia. in its entire service history, the shuttle never flew this flight path. imagine what they could have done if they were trying to build an orbiter instead of a bomber/spy-plane.

Well, NASA still does a LOT of R+D work. It's a scientific organisation, it's just that its infrastructure could use clean-up and upgrades.

1 hour ago, AngelLestat said:

Answering again the OP question, they would be able to do a lot of things with that money, but they will become a bit more inefficient than today.
But well, all solar system is open after that, submarine to enceladus or europa, venus-mars manned mission, asteroids, balloons to titan and jupiter, etc.
Then new type of airplanes and different techs.

If what Elon does is not new tech, then nothing it is.
Tesla:  a big part of the whole car is new tech from their own hundreds of patents, from transmissions to inverters, special fuses or even an AI auto drive software that is continually learning.
Then you have hyperloop in development..  crossfeed for falcon heavy, a new special escape system for dragon v2, new methane engines, etc.
But maybe you are refering to really revolutionary tech that will change human history as the laser or the transistor..
Well in that case reusable rockets should enter in that revolutionary tech..  because before they achieve the first steps, many on the industry said that was impossible..
There you have all the new tech to make that possible as fins, legs, software (that also counts as new tech of course), special structure levels and engines able to throttle.
All those developments with almost no money in comparison with nasa developments.

What you call modern nasa?  Because I dont see nothing of efficiency in modern nasa.

You will have more bureaucracy that is true.. but not so much.
After all, part of the spacex´s money comes from taxpayers.. or not?

If you said that nasa spent so much money due "efficiency control" of nasa budget and achievements, then the whole arguments fall.

Nah, Elon does not do new tech for the most part- the only one you listed is Hyperloop, which is debatable whether it'd actually be cheaper, or if it's just being overoptimistic. Considering Elon himself hasn't picked it up to work on, I'd exclude that. SolarCity is a goner, so that leaves only stuff Elon has done with Tesla and SpaceX that are fundementally innovative, which is not much. Automatic Cars are being pursuited everywhere in the car industry. Electric Cars are age-old. Vertical Landings on Earth were accomplished back in the DC-X days, (though not on the scale of F9, an evolution of the DC-X landings is not innovative). Only the deep-cryo Lox is really innovative, and that really seems to be backfiring on SpaceX.

34 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

They could produce 3 g of antimatter per year and sell it, getting more money.

Nah, I doubt people need that much antimatter to study. I would just spend all the money on investments on Apple, Google, or another relatively secure company for investment stock. That way, you can make more money when the budget is cut inevitably.

[kunok]

Do we need to explain the difference between research and development?

Even if Nasa does not make a new Mars program with that budget of whatever fantastic idea we have, it still does lots of basic research, it will bring lots of improvements in aeronautic and space related environments, and then the private companies will use them in their designs, including space X. A private company making basic research is a very strange thing (funded by itself, being a contractor of a public research program is another thing).