NASA Relativistic Interstellar Laser Launcher: We could do it NOW, for the cost of the NASA Climate Budget

Protests L. E. Joiner:

Yes, “government science” is to be regarded with a jaundiced eye, but you paint with too broad a brush. NASA has done some wonderful things, especially in the realm of astronomical and interplanetary research with telescopes, probes, rovers, and other space vehicles. I see this line of inquiry as an extension of that realm.

Even granting these “wonderful things” accomplished under NASA’s aegis, what you subjectively perceive as benefits accruing by way of spending power and other resources put into play “in the realm of astronomical and interplanetary research” by this agency over the decades, you must come to grips with the iron law of bureaucracy, which Dr. Jerry Pournelle put pretty pithily many years ago:

In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

Were that not enough, being the creature of the federal executive branch, NASA is wholly the tool of whatever creature currently flatulates into the big comfy chair behind the Resolute desk, and have we not yet ample appreciation of how the current occupant thereof has proven that any such imposition of malicious political priorities upon the sciences will invariably make of this and other agencies of the executive nothing more or less than engines of usurpation, duplicity, graft and corruption?

L. E. Joiner writes:

I would welcome a regimen that would enable us to undertake expensive interplanetary science (and any other kind) with no risk of bureaucratic ossification and with complete independence from political tentacles, but must confess that it is hard to see how to achieve this utopian system.
More broadly, the Founders really did not envision a fourth branch of government, an entrenched bureaucracy that essentially operates as a law unto itself. Conceivably a Convention of States (as Mark Levin has proposed) could rein it in with Amendments, requiring ‘sunsetting’ and new enabling legislation, but how that might affect quasi-autonomous agencies like NASA remains to be seen. Arguably the Federal government ought not to be involved in scientific research (or space exploration) at all, but it will be as long as we need a national defense, willy-nilly.

During the conflicts of the 20th Century, militarized technology came to widespread consideration as conferring perhaps the critical “edge” in strategic, operational, and tactical planning and execution. World War II has been spoken of as “the war of the boffins, and with good reason. Scientific advances manifest as functional “milspec” engineering made the difference between defeat (or disaster) and success (to one degree or another) time after time.
As World War II segued without effective interruption into the perpetual state of Cold War between the First World and the Second (i.e., the Soviet Empire and the other authoritarian Communist powers), the boffins were perceived – correctly – as military assets, with the West having the advantage in both economic power to “push” endeavors in STEM and in the commercialization of technologies “spun off” from military research & development. The glory days of NASA were an unintended (but politically very welcome) consequence of the extension and intensification of the “Boffins’ War.”
To the extent that “pure science” endeavors as well as scientific investigation manifestly applicable in the development of technology continue to prove vital to government’s only legitimate purpose – as the agency to which the citizenry delegate their unalienable individual human right to exert deadly force in retaliation against violent aggression (the “breaking things & killing people” function of the police power in civil society) – agencies such as NASA have defensible reason to exist.
But only to the extent that NASA operations result in “force multiplier” functions accruing to U.S. military capabilities. If there’s justification for “blue-sky” pure astrophysical research, it’s better that the work be funded by other means than tax revenues, and removed utterly from the purview of GS-whatever sphincters controlled by graft-sucking jacks-in-office and other enemies of our republic, emphasis on our “good Muslim schoolboy” Indonesian-in-Chief.

Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept.

— Frank Herbert (1984)

Writes Sparks (I’m paraphrasing):

[I just invited the banhammer.]

Let’s see what happens as this post undergoes moderation.
[Well, it went to moderation. And? .mod]

L. E. Joiner observes that

…it would be a stretch to find the funds for expensive space probes like Pluto-faring New Horizons ($700m) in the Defense Department budget, and it is hard to know where else they might come from—private Silicon Valley foundations? A Kickstarter campaign? I’d rather my tax dollars went to space exploration than most of the other frivolities never authorized by the Constitution.
Then, ‘pure’ academic science in general has become so firmly wedded to the teat of government (taxpayers’) grants that weaning would be traumatic. A biologist I know reacted in horror: “Who else would pay for research?” But it can be argued that a lot of the ‘research’ has little point other than the generation of resumé fodder and employment for post-docs who can’t find teaching jobs. Might be interesting to shut down the NSA and the NIH and see what happens. But this is a large topic for another day.

It would be a “stretch” because projects like the New Horizons probe are of no arguable military utility, which means that they don’t accrue to the “breaking things & killing people” function which is (as I and Thomas Paine have both observed) the only reason why we (the private citizenry) don’t simply kill the governmentally inclined out of hand as a public health measure.
To the extent that government is allowed to exist, the “goons with guns” role is the institution’s only real justification. Goshwowboyohboy “big science” – except as it facilitate better thing-breaking and people-killing in defense of the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic – ain’t something that we should ever entrust to the governing class and their myrmidons.
Simply because “that’s the way it’s been” since the Good War is no friggin’ reason whatsoever to continue throwing pelf and manpower down a succession of ratholes defined by professional grifters, grafters, thieves, power-trippers, sociopaths, psychopaths, and vacuities with Civil Service ratings.
The fact that “big science” researchers (like your biologist buddy) have become utterly dependent upon stolen money (and what the hell else is taxation but theft?) to pursue their investigations ought to clue you and everybody else reading here in on the fact that the perverse incentives imposed by the politicians’ command and control are no more healthy for the sciences than is trailer-cooked methamphetamine for the average high school student.
((Okay, enough with the Ritalin jokes already….))

Asks L. E. Joiner:

Any reason why my thoroughly innocuous comments are going to moderation? Aside from inspiring one ‘Sparks’ to vulgarity, I mean?

Durned if I know. I’ve been on “permanent double-secret probation” for more than a year myself.
I suspect it’s for the crime of eloquence.