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In reply to the discussion: Huge Puerto Rico radio telescope collapses; many mourning [View all]Moostache
(9,895 posts)NASA has no currently viable or operating launch vehicles.
SETI is all but defunct and has no radio telescope to utilize at Arecibo.
FDA/CDC have been co-opted to political propaganda in service to an imbecile.
WHO membership was pulled and the USA dropped out.
Paris Accords were pulled out (though Biden has pledged to reverse these in his first 100 days...)
Science and rational thought are antithetical to "conservative thinking", at least as it has been narrowly redefined since Reagan - a constant dumbing down and least-common-denominator approach ever since the insane idea of "Star Wars Missile Defense" was first brought up back in the waning days of the Cold War. At least there was some strategic value to SDI in that it contributed to the USSR bankrupting itself to compete militarily against a vastly larger economy (something that our current leaders had better start understanding as the Chinese will very soon be in position to do the same to the USA).
A society that embraces basic research as a national emergency is one that can do anything - hell the entire space race and all that came from it was essentially Cold War propaganda in its reasoning, but the ancillary benefits and all the technology that it spawned also led to the current technological boom in no small measure too.
I cried the day that NASA shut down the shuttle not because the shuttle was a great financial boondoggle but because shutting it down without a replacement at the ready signaled an end to America's ambition and commitment to something beyond ourselves and beyond profits or money.
Today those same feelings are renewed.