Why would they bother?

Why bother using NASA a civilian, largely open space agency when they could use y'know, the actual, specific, designed-for-task military space agencies that were designed, structured, and staffed PRECISELY for secretive military projects? Like DARPA, the Space Force, or the Dept of Defense programs.

I'm not saying the US doesn't have secret space launches, OBVIOUSLY they do.
What I'm mocking is the absolutely ridiculous assertion that the Chinese program is "open" to any degree, except very-calculated revelations...you know, like a military based program. From the bottom to the top. The ENTIRE Chinese program is purely secret, except for the shit they're trying to manipulate you with.

I get it, the concept of a major government program that's not secretive has to be incomprehensible to Chinese.

Obviously in 2026 most of the posts are going to be about how stupid Trump is just making meaningless goals for his own ego.

To be clear, he absolutely is.

Then again, I would point out that it seems pretty common that every president since the 1970s* has seen fit in the latter stages of their presidency to "talk big" on space commitments ... and then proceed to fund none of them.
Until I actually SEE $50bn flowing into NASA or space investment, I take ANY presidential assertions about expanding space programs as what they are: publicity bullshit.

*In fact the only one I can think of that didn't was Biden, but he was basically non compos mentis the last 12+ months anyway.

OK, OK we'll let Xi know you're earning your paycheck today.

The chinese space program is a fundamentally MILITARY program and thus its budgets, priorities, and developments are secret UNLESS there is deemed a value to public revelation.
The Chinese routinely withhold basic data that is generally shared across space agencies globally such as expected precise trajectories of vehicles and discarded stages.

Project 921, Shenlong, Or perhaps the 2007 ASAT test that was COMPLETELY unannounced and blew what, 3000+ of orbital debris?

Do you know what those TJS "communication" satellites are doing migrating into specific geostrategic orbits and then suddenly adjusting to park next to US or Euro satellites?

How's Yang Lewei feeling today?

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fundark.org%2F2019%2F01%2F29%2F...

What's chinese for "shut the fuck up, comrade"? I'm pretty sure you know it.

... But my request to the IT security mavens would be to extend your rigor beyond the employees to the programs that directly contradict your rules themselves.

I am told strictly: NEVER click on a blind link, yet I get constant emails from departments - including IT! - that are LINKS to training videos, educational resources, mandatory bullshit that when if don't click on it, I get stern warnings that I'm not doing mandatory things. (Oh, and all external email urls are replaced with unparseable 200-character strings that supposedly route the link through "URL defense" or some such.)

Or how about all the consultants? I work for an EU multinational and we have at least 3 REGULATORY-required systems that I have to log into to comply with EU bureaucracy that are myCompany.kpmg.com or whatever - and then I'm supposed to give that EXTERNAL pop-up my *corporate* user and password while it authenticates through our corporate cellphones.

I'm reasonably savvy, I believe, but when policy & security rules contradict, which am I supposed to follow? I can tell you that corporate IT doesn't appreciate being shown it's own use of blind links.

Absurd generalizations? Wut?

On what basis? It's unquestionable that the political left in the US has both:
- fought nuclear tooth and nail since the 1970s
- is clearly the most concerned (panty-wetting fear in other words) with climate change.

There is no sane person that can dispute those assertions, gaslighter.

"ignoring the fact that your tech isn't actually the only fossil fuel alternative out there" I said LITERALLY NOTHING about that. Nothing. Are you asserting that expanded nuclear WOULDN'T have reduced hydrocarbon emissions substantially, or... are you just afraid to admit that?

I think wind and solar are great; they weren't meaningfully part of the conversation 45 years ago, which is what I rather specifically referenced.

I feel like you might not be getting enough oxygen. I made a single irrefutable assertion and you go off on irrelevancies as if they matter.

I don't know if you're a russian bot or some deluded idiot, but it amuses me to do a breakdown of your post.

NATO turned what was originally intended to be a mostly peaceful show of force like the temporary invasion of Georgia into a war of attrition.

First of all the "peaceful show of force" "temporary" invasion of Georgia involved a few hundred dead in the first two days, and another 5000+ civilians killed in the ethnic cleansing after that, all for a land-grab to seize control of territory covering half of Georgia's coastline that Putin wanted.

Secondly, the "peaceful show of force" "temporary" invasion of Ukraine involved hundreds dead, ballistic and cruise missile attacks on all of Ukraine's largest cities, and Putin publicly admitting the goal of overthrowing the Ukrainian government... and that's just within the first 36 hours. Within two and a half months Russian officials began admitting the intent to permanently annex parts of Ukraine, proceeding with a constitutional amendment a few months later claiming to annex vast territories that Russian had not remotely taken control of, and which Russia is not remotely capable of capturing. Donetsk alone has a population of over a million, two million if you include the metro-area. Russia spent months and many thousand of lives to capture, and later lose, villages in the range of low tens of thousands.

Remember WWI when the lines were pretty much static for years and then suddenly it was all over?

Yes, I remember. As I recall it wasn't exactly "sudden". As I recall... Russian casualties were around five million killed, wounded, or captured, the Russian economy was collapsing, Russia was running out of food, and Russian literally lost it's own capital to civilian rebellion. A few months later the Russian government collapsed and surrendered vast territories including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, parts of Poland and Ukraine to Germany and its allies (known as the Central Powers). Right about that point the U.S. joined the war reinvigorating the Allied Powers. Germany&friends knew they couldn't win a protracted war. They attempted a quick win, and, in short, they failed. The Allied powers steadily beat them down, with the allies eventually breaking through the lines and progressively liberating territory. With the Allies steadily advancing and the war obviously lost, German forces began rebelling and Germany surrendered.

That's what's happening here. Russia has most of Donbas plus a buffer zone in some other regions that directly border Russia. Ukraine is throwing men at the front lines for Russia to kill but is running out. Territory held is largely irrelevant compared to the number of men killed and weapons destroyed.

So much to unpack there, but it's amusing how you cite "territory held is largely irrelevant" given that the tide has turned and Ukrainians are now the ones breaking through lines and liberating territory from Russian occupation. It's not much yet, but all the map trackers show the reversal. Russia is now officially loosing more territory than they gain. Russia WAS slowly gaining small bits of land, largely through sending meat waves of untrained ill equipped soldiers at Ukrainian lines until the Ukrainians ran out of ammo and had to fall back. However now 7 out of 10 Russians killed are killed by drones. The "no man's land" between the two sides is now many kilometers wide. Any Russian trying to advance gets hit by a drone. Russia has also losing on average 1 air defense system every day, and rapidly depleting. Russian supply lines are getting pummeled by drones. Russian refineries are getting pummeled by drones, with progressively worsening fuel shortages for both the military and for the increasingly rebellious population. Cheap advanced Ukrainian drones are taking out expensive crappy Russian drones, including Russian's new jet-drones. Practically every country on earth is asking Ukraine for their military drone tech, the Russians can't remotely match it. Russian's economy is also fucked, but that topic pretty needs a separate book to cover.

Interesting side notes on weapons destroyed. Russia is destroying it's aircraft almost as fast as Ukraine is, between incompetence and maintenance failures and friendly fire shooting down their own aircraft. Also the nation that is the biggest donor of tanks to Ukraine is... Russia. Ukraine captured countless Russian tanks intact because the Russian military is so abysmal incompetent and corrupt. And as I mentioned, Russian air defense units are depleting. The war is now approaching 5 years, longer than the entirety of WW1. Ukraine is a small fraction of Russia's size, and Russian is literally losing and headed towards another soviet-union-style collapse. The biggest shock to the world of this entire war is just how worthless Putin has made Russian military, through systemic corruption and systemic incompetence.

Polls show the Ukrainian population isn't interested in surrendering. They are defending their homes. It's simple, the war will end when all the soldiers go home. When Russian soldiers go back to their homes in Russia, and when Ukrainian soldiers go back to their homes in the currently occupied parts of Ukraine. Although that's not likely to happen until Putin either expires or is overthrown. Not only is he fanatical enough to drive his country to collapse in the attempt, he knows if he did end the war in failure he'd get killed or overthrown for it.

Anyway, pointless reply to a bot or a useful idiot. But maybe some random passer-by will find some bits interesting. I don't know about the rest of the world, but mainstream US news rarely mentions the Ukraine war anymore, and certainly not in any detail.

-

If only the people crying about the imminent doom of climate change weren't exactly the same group that INSISTED we abandon nuclear 45y ago.

The *exact* same idea with the *exact* same complaints from the Left, the UCS, all the progressive crybabies...can reasonably be seen as having ended the Soviet Union by ramming it financially into its own contradictions.
Is that ACTUALLY what you guys at the Paul Robeson bookstore are all still salty about? That the guys you insisted all along were the "good guys" turned out not to be?

Anyway, the idea that defense = escalation hasn't been a thing since MAD was largely abandoned in the 1990s. Welcome to the post cold-war era, comrade.

...and it is genuinely an efficiency gain: now I can completely avoid 2 shit product families from only 1 vendor.

That's great!

"The US is escalating"?
That's a rather specious viewpoint, isn't it? Or did you intend to lie by omission?

The Soviets/Russians have had space based weapons platforms in orbit since the 1960s
The Chinese have had weapons aloft for at least 10y.
Honestly, if the US *doesn't* have functional, effective orbital weapons already up there, they're fucking incompetent.

And, if investors don't like it, they can walk away, can't they?
Isn't that how the free market works? Convince people to invest in you, great. If you're an asshole or do stupid things, they take their $ away.

Look, I get it, slashdot despises Musk for many, many things (some even have to do with actual business or technology). But this is up to investors and their choices.

SpaceX IPO $160 today $162. Not really compelling unless one believes in their mission.
Tesla 1y was $442, now is $385. Not very compelling.
 

...would somehow also cause Slashdot to seethe in fury.

You guys are hilarious.

Who says I'm NOT outraged by that? Why the simplistic binary?

Personally, I believe that anyone getting a dime of government $ should be banned from voting / donating politically due to conflict of interest.
This includes the welfare poor BUT ALSO the management (c-suites, I'd guess) of ANY company with
- federal contracts
- using public resources (ie oil companies on federal lands)
- in-law tax benefits.

I also believe corporations should have escalating tax rates for owned dwellings; that is, like people they can have that single homestead property, but the next is full-tax, the next 150% tax, the next 200% etc.

Make no mistake, yes, I do object to LONG TERM free ride programs for the poor as an alternative to sorting their lives out. But I'm even MORE aggressive about taxation of corporations that want to enjoy the upside of capitalism but be fully socialist on the downsides. "Too big to fail" is bullshit; capitalism REQUIRES companies to die like forests need fires.

So....no answer, confirmed.
I have read about UBI, extensively, because its advocates never tire of begging for other people's money.

I mean...the people who have for decades fought long and hard to inform people about the catastrophic threats facing corals should be DELIGHTED that there is a serious, significant prospect of improving their survival.
This is, very clearly, a pure, intrinsic good.

Right?

Because if they're not delighted then one might question whether they really were that concerned about the corals themselves in the first place. One might even speculate that 'teh coRalz are DyIng!" was really about just a useful poster-child for an ideology or something less salutary....