They published an official press release on this on the 22nd.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rocketlabcorp.com&#x2F;updates&#x2F;victus-haze&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rocketlabcorp.com&#x2F;updates&#x2F;victus-haze&#x2F;</a>

Also,the mission to rescue the Swift telescope made news this week.Soon I&#x27;ll be seeing a sign for a &quot;Joe&#x27;s Satellite Repair Service&quot; shop right next to the local autobody shop.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mos.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;space-news-deep-dive-saving-swift" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mos.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;space-news-deep-dive-saving-swif...</a>

What do you think NASA is? NASA is so expensive because it&#x27;s a jobs program. There&#x27;s no other reason for Boeing to have factories in so many states for building satellites.

The military budget is how the US enforces Bretton Woods. The jobs part is just a nice side-effect of any govt. spending.

Great. Can we change it to just be the non killing part for a few years until the bad project ideas fully die off?

The military budget is a jobs program that also keeps a (near bare minimum) level of industrial capacity afloat.Its why no politician left or right is really interested in cutting it. If you browse open contracts, you&#x27;ll see they that they overwhelmingly buy rather banal things and spend comparatively little on the &quot;killing people&quot; parts.

Funny how people complain about federal debt, when the people complaining benefitted the most from the system. It is your children who will be paying the interest, while the older folk enjoyed a heated economy with high government spending. Economics is just as fundemental as physics. There are conservation laws that cannot be violated. However you can make other people hold the bag.

Those numbers look way off. Are you making the common mistake of ignoring mandatory spending? In 2024 defense spending and net interest were each about 13% of federal spending.

You have a source to share for that framing of the tax spend?

Defense spending in the USA is double what is publicly publishedThere are all kinds of dark budgets and stuff spun off into &quot;civilian&quot; programs that actually aren&#x27;tThe published cost of Iran War is like $30 Billion when it is obviously over $100 Billion by experts and that doesn&#x27;t including replacing all the missilesTWENTY-ONE TRILLION DOLLARS since 9&#x2F;11 spent on defense 2001-2021* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ips-dc.org&#x2F;report-state-of-insecurity-cost-militarization-since-9-11&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ips-dc.org&#x2F;report-state-of-insecurity-cost-militariz...</a>imagine how much food clothing shelter for the US and WORLD that would buywe&#x27;d have humans on Mars already with that budget not even knowing now how to stop space-blindness and bone-loss

In 2024, the average American spent about $17,000 on taxes. Nearly $4000 of that went to the DoD, about $3500 went to interest on federal debt.I think it’s fun to think about it in this way. I personally spend hundreds of dollars a month on war.

Or hear me out, we improve life here on Earth...

No, not even close. The issue is simply exhaust velocity and reaction mass, that leads us into the tyranny of the rocket equation - in that you have to carry that reaction mass with you and accelerate that mass too. Even if you had magic infinite energy - e.g. it&#x27;s supplied externally by a laser or similar.Using the theorized maximum of 31km&#x2F;s exhaust velocity of project orion (much higher than any current high impulse propulsion technologies) you&#x27;d need to have thrown out something similar to 10^42 times the probe&#x27;s mass out the back at that 31km&#x2F;s velocity.That means to accelerate a 1kg probe to 1%c you&#x27;d need to start with a spacecraft holding a reaction mass equivalent to a few trillion suns worth of mass.Hardly seems worth it.It&#x27;s all about exhaust velocity - increase that and it scales down quickly. Using the theoretical max of 500km&#x2F;s of VASIMIR for example means it&#x27;s only 400x the mass of the probe of reaction mass - but that&#x27;s still theory and max thrust limits means it&#x27;ll take the order of millions of years to reach that sort of speed.

One idea that stuck out to me was an array of giant thin solar powered spinning metal Crookes radiometers magnets in a line to make a railgun-like launcher. Materially cheap to do.Related, but not exactly what I was thinking of: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.centauri-dreams.org&#x2F;2025&#x2F;08&#x2F;05&#x2F;a-rotating-probe-launcher-alternative-to-tars&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.centauri-dreams.org&#x2F;2025&#x2F;08&#x2F;05&#x2F;a-rotating-probe-...</a>
The original source I&#x27;m thinking of may be lost to time :( I&#x27;ll keep hunting.edit:found!<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=MDM1COWJ2Hc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=MDM1COWJ2Hc</a>

We have the physics but not the engineering. See the Breakthrough Starshot project for instance

I think the idea is tic-tac sized probes with nano circuitry (that doesn&#x27;t exist yet)accelerated by lasers so they don&#x27;t have to carry the power sourceObviously stopping is the problem, they can never stop but at some point no need

Per new Space Force regulations, we are using F for an adjusted speed of light. We are currently able to achieve 1.48F.

Can we really accelerate any probe to faster than 1% c? Or 2% c?

Durum-burum latency. In fact, internets slowed down compared to 2010s, and CDNs helped only to delay that.LEO orbit latency is nothing compared to what you lose to stuffing your link with useless web crap.

&gt; Can we swap the US Military and NASA budgets for just one year please?It would be nice.There is a pretty well known interview of Admiral Grace Hopper by David Letterman, where she talks about her famous &quot;nanosecond&quot; and explaining (to Generals) why it takes so long to get a message to a satellite. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=oE2uls6iIEU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=oE2uls6iIEU</a> (As an aside, Grace was a name she lived up to in a way few others could, if you have never seen that interview it is well worth a watch!)The valuable and well understood lesson is that latency is tyrannical, and unavoidable. The only real customer for &quot;data centers in space&quot; is spacex for war fighting. You don&#x27;t want that data, and it&#x27;s analysis going back around the world. You don&#x27;t want to put compute close to the front lines, and you certainly cant deploy it for the kinds of &quot;special operations&quot; that the US has been doing for the last two decades.Is there a civilian use? Maybe. Ships, oil platforms, and remote locations could all see a use for this, but it isnt going to be that impactful.Realistically, getting military spend back to more &quot;dual use&quot; applications would be great. We have a LONG history of this in the USA. Tons of Army core of engineers projects. The interstate highway system was born out of a need for better logistics. NASA was about missiles, space was incidental. The US computing industry&#x27;s foundations fell out of the navy code breaking efforts of WWII. The internet (ARPANET) was a DARPA project to start with. Spread Spectrum and its roots in Torpedos (navy again). GPS, the auto injector (epi pens).Most of these are far in the past, recently the biggest thing we have gotten out military investments is TOR (and one could argue its in decline).I think we don&#x27;t see as much coming out of the modern military because it is grossly mismanaged. It&#x27;s become reliant on private industry to &quot;innovate&quot; and that has a relentless focus on the bottom line.Yes it would be nice if we did that spending swap, but it will never happen realistically. I think a change of leadership, of intent could result in far less waste and much more benefit for the American public. We have proof we can, we just need to figure out how and make it happen.

Just more American tax dollars going to American defense contractors.

&gt; Or even what we fund Israel&#x27;s 2&#x2F;3 of all their weapons are bought by USAnd all of the money the US gives to Israel is earmarked for American products.

Being against military aid to Israel isn&#x27;t necessarily antisemitic.

anti-israel-warmongering != antisemite but nice tryUS has given Israel over $20 Billion directly since 2023 aloneSince 2023 NINETY THOUSAND TONS OF WEAPONSEnough alreadyIsrael has universal health care, let them buy build their own weasponsUS must only sell Iron-Dome ONLY, defense only, they are warmongers

The US gives Israel $3.8B a year (and 2&#x2F;3 of their weapons are _sold_ by the US not bought). The budget of Nasa is $25B.But by antisemite math and logic says we’ll get 10% light speed.

Can we swap the US Military and NASA budgets for just one year please?Just one yearIt would be AMAZINGOr even what we fund Israel&#x27;s 2&#x2F;3 of all their weapons are bought by USWe&#x27;d have 10% speed of light probes going outside of solar system alreadyWell at least Nancy Grace Roman L2 Telescope is launching, hope it goes perfectly

A US military exercise to launch a satellite on short notice