This article only obliquely mentions in the last paragraphs, but there's a parallel Chinese program that recently brought back samples from the moon, and will attempt Mars sample return, launching in 2028,
Anyone wanting to be involved in the future of scientific research should probably start learning Mandarin. We're going the way of the Soviets, where political officers will quash any science that doesn't fit their ideology.
<a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/trump-planning-to-hand-veto-power-over-nih-grants-to-political-appointee/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/trump-planning-to-ha...
Do we really need to frame China’s succes here in terms of American decline? Do you think everyone outside the US views the moonlanding as a black page in history?
It’s fine to talk about a “race” if jingoism is the thing that gets most people on board with funding Nasa. But we ought to know better.
The Soviets launched the first satellite, put the first animal into space, launched the first lunar probe, got the first photographs of the dark side of the moon, put the first human in space, put the first woman in space, put the first craft with more than one crew member into space, did the first spacewalk, sent the first probe to Venus, got the first pictures of another planet, and launched the first space station.
The moon landing was fine and all, a moment of global historic import (and propaganda value, with the US putting their flag on it like they owned the damned thing) but that's still just one victory in a race that was otherwise entirely dominated by the Soviets, and on balance what the Soviets did was of greater scientific merit than anything the US would achieve for years. Americans didn't even care about space until Russia flew Sputnik over their heads.
That was a factor in the initial stages of the space race. But military and civilian launch technologies diverged once things really got going. The military switched to solid rocket launchers to improve safety and reliability but those couldn't be used as the core of human rated rockets.
As someone from the former USSR, I find that hard to imagine. Downright denial that the moon landings even happened, sure, but seeing them as a bad event? Not really likely.
Everyone under the age of 45 has a right to be pissed at the way things have gone. They inherited a shitshow that they never had any real power to stop or fix.
Boomers and Silents (and, to a lesser and understandable extent re: Challenger, Gen X) should be ashamed, though.
I get harangued every time I point the finger, but for Pete's sake, Millennials didn't do this. Millennials wanted to go to Space Camp. It has to be SOMEONE'S fault. SOMEONE take responsibility.
It's hard to imagine, since the moonlandings, if America kept its pace in space exploration, how far ahead of everyone else it would be, but also how far along everyone else would be. America was the catalyst for the impossible in that era, and then we decided to abandon it for... basically nothing. Enriching corporations, I guess?
People took issue with the cost of space exploration in context of "the good the money could do here on Earth", but then when we shifted resources that way, the money did absolutely no good here on Earth.
The US is still significantly ahead of everyone else in space. It’s just that NASA has become a shadow of its past self.
Maybe it’s better this way. There is a tendency of every organization, private or public, to rot and stagnate over time. But in the private sectors they die more quickly and give way to new entrants, which would help space exploration long term.
> It's hard to imagine, since the moonlandings, if America kept its pace in space exploration ...
The collapse of the USSR was the worst thing to happen to NASA.
I would suggest a watch of "We Stopped Dreaming" <a href="https://youtu.be/CbIZU8cQWXc" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/CbIZU8cQWXc
A less angry version (video and transcript of Neil DeGrasse Tyson testifying before the Senate's Science Committee on 7 March 2012) <a href="https://ifsa.my/articles/we-stopped-dreaming-by-neil-degrasse-tyson/" rel="nofollow">https://ifsa.my/articles/we-stopped-dreaming-by-neil-degrass...
Let’s be honest with one anther. We went to the Moon because we were at war with the Soviet Union. To think otherwise is delusion, leading some to suppose the only reason we’re not on Mars already is the absence of visionary leaders, or of political will, or of money. No. When you perceive your security to be at risk, money flows like rivers to protect us.
But there exists another driver of great ambitions, almost as potent as war. That’s the promise of wealth. Fully funded missions to Mars and beyond, commanded by astronauts who, today, are in middle school, would reboot America’s capacity to innovate as no other force in society can. What matters here are not spin-offs (although I could list a few: Accurate affordable Lasik surgery, Scratch resistant lenses, Cordless power tools, Tempurfoam, Cochlear implants, the drive to miniaturize of electronics…) but cultural shifts in how the electorate views the role of science and technology in our daily lives.
As the 1970s drew to a close, we stopped advancing a space frontier. The “tomorrow” articles faded. And we spent the next several decades coasting on the innovations conceived by earlier dreamers. They knew that seemingly impossible things were possible—the older among them had enabled, and the younger among them had witnessed the Apollo voyages to the Moon—the greatest adventure there ever was. If all you do is coast, eventually you slow down, while others catch up and pass you by.
I'm skeptical that space exploration in particular was meaningfully responsible for the list of consumer-facing technologies Tyson mentioned in his speech. If anything, I think that technological development created to serve Earth-based demand also has benefits for making space exploration cheaper and easier - computers have gotten way cheaper and way more powerful since the Apollo Guidance Computer, which has obviously affected the entire world in countless ways but also means that we can computerize every aspect of space launches, generally for good.
> I'm skeptical that space exploration in particular was meaningfully responsible for the list of consumer-facing technologies Tyson mentioned in his speech.
It clearly was, at least in several examples. It looks like he's getting it right from NASA:
Apollo program was canceled during Nixon's presidency while the Cold War was very much still active (though slowing down a little from detente). A few years later Reagan won on a platform of re-accelerating the Cold War with swelling military budgets and deficit spending, but without commiserate increases to space exploration and science.
The Space Race was a unique and limited phase coming out of the atomic age when public support for scientific research was at an all time high. With the Kennedy and Johnson administrations willing to fund programs left and right to improve education and research with long term aims. The Soviets were also at the apogee of their scientific capability, and Khrushchev did great PR for all their achievements which unnerved Americans and provided the Cold War justification for new domestic programs.
Once the Brezhnev age of stagnation and lopsided USSR military spending set in, the new Cold War 2.0 became about numbers of delivery vehicles and NATO conventional deterrence, not space and science. By then the US had clear technological dominance that seemed insurmountable in the new world of microchips and computers in which the Soviets couldn't compete. Which allowed Reagan to boost military budgets and deficit spending while simultaneously beginning the Republican "starve the beast" strategy to cut taxes and non-military domestic programs.
All of this is to point out that Cold War = Space Race/Apollo is looking back with rose colored glasses. We could just as easily see federal space and science spending getting further slashed every year while churning out warheads, delivery vehicles and conventional arms ever faster (and seems more likely based on late Cold War trends).
President Nixon cancelled NASA manned deep space exploration programs due to rising costs from the Space Shuttle program and the Vietnam War. It wasn't politically sustainable to keep funding everything. With the benefit of hindsight one could argue that we should have withdrawn sooner from Vietnam and cancelled the Space Shuttle program.
>What view do you have on the trajectory of the U.S.?
What view do you have of what programs have been cut from Chinese government budgets? Can you link to some of the HN discussions around them so I can also see people commenting on the internal policy decisions that the Chinese government has made available for people to openly comment on?
And ironically the US very much considers itself to be in a race with China including in space, it's just run by such thundering morons that most of the moves they make advance China's interests more than theirs. Now the cancellation of Mars Sample Return isn't that big an issue in terms of strategic benefit or decline narratives, nor is it a particularly massive surprise (the program's issues are longer term than just current administration cuts). But there is a certain irony in some of the people most interested in scorekeeping with China (and for that matter Mars!) being the ones likely to ensure China pulls off the sample return first.
It's the other way around. He's framing America's decline in terms of Chinese success.
The Chinese rise is also remarkable in its own terms, but it's not the subject of discussion here. The subject here is how the US is under cutting its former preeminence in science.
> Do we really need to frame China’s succes here in terms of American decline?
They are co-occurring facts in the same area and the only reason China’s success is relevant in this discussion is because it is co-occurring with and in the same field as the American decline that is (unlike the tangential Chinese angle) directly relevant to the story here.
So, in this specific case, if we are going to mention China at all, the answer is yes. Not because the two things are so linked that they ALWAYS need to be discussed together, but because that is the relevant nexus between the present subject and China at all.
This doesn’t actually represent an American decline in space exploration, though.
The NASA/ESA Mars sample return was poorly designed, they basically attached a half baked idea to the Perseverance mission in the hopes that having the mission “underway” would make it easier to fund the rest of the mission. That meant Perseverance was just putting things in tubes and leaving them sealed on the ground at random places around Mars. So that meant they would need to devise another system to go collect them, another system to store and launch them, and another system to return them to Earth. That’s a ridiculous process. The costs exploded, the gambit failed.
China’s was much better planned, having the rover and launch vehicle land together, fully funded from the beginning. However, it’s also much simpler, there’s no picking and choosing what to sample from a wide area, it’s just whatever is available to the lander wherever it happens to land.
And this would not have been the only future mission to deep space. The US is going to land a fleet of drones on Mars. They’re launching a nuclear powered drone to Titan.
The US has led the world in reusable rocket development, satellite constellations, and crewed LEO operations.
The big picture is clear. This one mission doesn’t really say much about the space program in general.
That’s not quite true - Perseverance has tubes for every tube (10) it left behind. The tubes left behind are the backups in case something happened to Perseverance- the main tubes are on board and can be collected all at once when from the rover.
In the future of news, we'll have only OANN, Breitbart, Newsmax, and whatever that "newspaper" is that the Moonies run. Washington Times?
I am sure this is nothing to be concerned about whatsoever.
best thing as always - simply do not read the news. take care of yourself and your family, reading the news is futile. been quite some time since "news people" reported on actual news
Is there any reason to think that their "ideology" is contradictory to scientific findings or is this just the traditional instinct to see all foreigners as mustache-twirling villains?
They have suppressed reporting of the deaths and missing from Kyirong Valley and Gyirong Port landslide. Surviving relatives living outside the area would appreciate information but the Chinese Government would prefer that everyone just move along.
She was forced to stop posting her content after a Vice article outed her as bisexual, so the authorities used their blanket decency law to drag her in for an interrogation and guidance session, effectively ending her channel.
The suppression I'm talking about is the CCP rejecting that gay people exist in fact, and censoring anyone that dares to be too visibly gay.
The reason is money. The US has the world reserve currency which basically means infinite money. This will soon end and China will have the world reserve currency.
Its also close to impossible to immigrate to China. I've checked it out myself since I'm really impressed by the work Huawei is doing with high density wireless nnetworks. HK was an easier (still difficult) path, but I haven't checked again since it changed hands.
It will not end soon nor will China "have the world reserve currency". The primary reason is China doesn't want that "reserve currency" because they have to run structural deficits to support it, which is counter to their export-oriented economy.
A reserve currency is just a currency that central banks and other important institutions hold in "reserve". The Euro is a reserve currency, as is the Yen, Pound, and others. The American dollar is the primary one, and that usage will ebb and flow over time, but it's arguable that no longer being the primary one is a good thing as it will make American exports more competitive among other things. I don't think I agree but folks have very reasonable and competing takes on this.
The world also isn't going to adopt a Chinese currency as a reserve currency either because China would have to make liberalizing economic reforms which would run counter to the control that the CCP has over the country (why people keep forgetting that China is run by an authoritarian group is beyond me but whatever) and so they won't make those reforms and the world just won't adopt that currency.
US has/had the best schools in the world.
US provides/provided remarkable academic independence (tenure, etc).
US provides/provided the best expected economic return to foreign scientists.
As we dismantle those components via xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, funding cuts, and so on, trends will change. Already I see a substantial uptick in my PhD/Academic friends moving to Europe as we cede our historic advantages.
If, in say 15 years, China provides better schools, or better economic returns, or (perhaps unlikely) better independence, or all 3, then scientists will go there.
China is labeled an authoritarian regime while the US is labeled a liberal democracy, are you saying the behavioural standard for a liberal democracy is the behaviour of an authoritarian regime?
Oh, no! How did it happen that a country founded by religious fanatics and capitalism supporters (and who literally killed almost all natives) is run by religious nut jobs and billionaire sociopaths?
I don’t understand the point you are trying to make. Is it that since the person didn’t find the page they were looking for, they must be a Chinese plant?
It's a bit of a poor example as well, because there was a long time when people were importing Australian baby formula into China because they didn't trust the food safety standards there.
We also inverted the food pyramid recently since the whole thing reeked of big sugar/grain lobby, it can take a while for research to percolate above propoganda, and I'm not above suspecting the new pyramid of having its bias'
Big Bread vs Big Cow. Both are needed for pizza so maybe we can swap the pyramid for a rectangular "office tower" shape and call it a truce. Good opportunity for Big Pizza.
There's so much fad diet marketing and propaganda out there, but the Mediterranean diet is one of the few that's actually backed by a decent amount of real scientific research as being healthy for most people.
Download the CSV and search for things like "Latinx" or "Black" or "equity" or "URM" (URM = non-white)
>CHS: Large: Collaborative Research: Gender-Inclusive Open Source through Gender-Inclusive Tools
>This work will harness foundational gender research to provide theory-based yet practical solutions, towards addressing the underrepresentation of women in OSS communities.
>The AGEP Florida Alliance Model: Improving Minority Women Success in STEM Faculty Careers
>The research team is also investigating ways that URM women in STEM build skills, knowledge and competencies to successfully enter and persist in faculty careers.
>STEM Leadership, Equity, and Advancement for Faculty
>The NSF ADVANCE program is designed to foster gender equity through a focus on the identification and elimination of organizational barriers
Most of these are pure racism and absolutely deserved to be revoked.
Taxpayer money being used for race-based and gender-based "research".
"fostering gender equity" is not even science, trying to equate these grants with something like researching fundamental physics or chemistry is disingenuous.
>to promote the progress of science, to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare, and to secure the national defense
Equity and diversity initiatives are almost always blatantly racist and discriminatory by definition. They are also rife with ethnic favoritism and ingroup collusion.
Giving taxpayer money to people to "foster gender equity" by definition means you are giving money to try and advantage one group of people based on immutable characteristics (gender).
I find it telling that many of the people who lampoon these cuts make a point to never actually talk about the specific grants themselves, but like to keep the discussion at a higher level and discuss how "scientists" are going to leave in droves to go study in Europe instead of the USA.
>Examining Undergraduate Research Experiences of Latinx STEM Students in Research Intensive HSIs and Emerging-HSIs
>[this project] will undertake a comparative study of undergraduate research experiences for Latinx students at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) using an asset-based framework and Chicana/Latina feminist epistemology and the "platicas methodology"
If you went on CNN and discussed how funding is being cut for "comparitive studies using feminist epistemolgy", the majority of Americans would be fine with it. In fact a huge portion of Americans would likely say that cutting these types of grants actually advances the NSF's mission statement by cutting out racist and divisive programs that center on specific ethnic groups.
You complained that they funded things that weren't science. I said "how it limits the scope of the agency to doing science." and you went off about how you don't like things.
The mission statement is not limited to doing science, which is the misrepresentation you tried to make.
The NSF's focus areas do include research on people and society, as well as development of new training and education initiatives (<a href="https://www.nsf.gov/focus-areas/education" rel="nofollow">https://www.nsf.gov/focus-areas/education) and fostering a robust STEM workforce (<a href="https://www.nsf.gov/focus-areas/workforce" rel="nofollow">https://www.nsf.gov/focus-areas/workforce). Not every grant issued by the NSF needs to be geared towards fundamental scientific research; the NSF's mission is broad, and intentionally so.
God forbid we figure out the best way for the smartest and most talented people of all backgrounds to contribute to science. Why take diamonds from the rough when you can just leave them there instead?
>Collaborative Research: Bounding global ice volumes over the last glacial cycle using reconstructions of Bering Strait flooding
Yeah classic woke stuff that
> TRTech-PGR: NSF BSF - Recombining Allelic Diversity via Genome Editing for Dissecting Complex Plant Traits
This would be funny if it wasn't happening in real life. Clearly they did "ctrl-f diversity" and didn't actually read what they were cancelling.
There is no possible scenario where the senate, even post-midterms, votes to convict. And if they did, which they will not, the vice-president stands waiting to give us more or the same, or maybe worse.
What’s the relevance of your point to this article? The program is extremely over budget and taking money from other projects. The previous administration sent NASA back to the drawing board on the project as well: <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/nasa-goes-back-to-drawing-board-on-mars-sample-return-mission/" rel="nofollow">https://www.courthousenews.com/nasa-goes-back-to-drawing-boa...
> NASA needs to rethink its goal of returning samples from the Martian surface to Earth, the agency’s administrator Bill Nelson said in a press call on Monday.
I think the defining moment is that IF China gets man back to the moon before the US, that will be the moment when it becomes too hard to ignore. That is the new political high ground.
The Chang’e missions plan for this in 2030 and they have hit every target to date. While the US is currently targeting 2028, it isn't inconceivable that it can slip by two years.
"Congratulations to China! They were the second nation to land on the Moon, just a few decades after the greatest nation in history landed there first, the United States of America.
We are not in a hurry now, because we already won that race many decades ago!
The Fake News Media is reporting that NASA completely lost the Moon race to China. A total disaster! Under my Administration, Space Force is winning BIG. Now, Beijing is supposedly up there doing who knows what. Fake flags, very low quality! The moon is ours, and Mars too (which the Moon is part of!). MAKE AMERICA SPACE AGAIN!
I think that would just end in people who had nothing to do with Apollo (having been children or born after) claiming that it didn't matter because America had been there decades ago, rather than looking inwards and considering what it says to have lost the means to go back.
Mandarin is high on my list, but its almost all for business and the people wouldn't be interested in me (different melanin). Whereas socially our Ukrainian and Russian refugees are way more interested in me, and there's potentially some business anyway.
More business in China though, tricky to prioritize since I'm doing any of this for the abundance of intimacy and the slavic people come with that, for me. I need to learn Mandarin and Russian.
at least Cantonese is no longer seriously a contender in my sphere. That was distracting
knowing what I know about the way sceptical doctors were threatened during covid, the ars article confirms the covid zealots still have a flock. ars was over when conde nast bought them, this proves it.
I think that the scientific community really doesn't care about who will bring the samples back, but simply wheter someone will do it and share them with the world
The NASA/ESA MSR was of substantially higher quality, mind you. The M2020 rover specifically picked up samples of high scientific value to be returned. The Chinese return mission will only return what it finds from its direct landing site.
Also they’re no where near each other. These Chinese rover cannot get there.
Also also, if China were to create a new mission to collect them, they would see their costs balloon to unsustainable levels as well, as the issue is how the mission is designed. The samples are all over the place and would need a rover specifically designed to collect them and return them to a launcher.
The US Mars sample return project was always half baked in the hopes that doing something would garner funding for the rest of the mission.
Not true - only ten samples were dropped off at a “depot” close to each other. The rest are on-board Perseverance and can be picked up all at once, which was always the primary plan.
Interesting question. Article VIII of the Outer Space Treaty [1] states:
> A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body. Ownership of objects launched into outer space, including objects landed or constructed on a celestial body, and of their component parts, is not affected by their presence in outer space or on a celestial body or by their return to the Earth. Such objects or component parts found beyond the limits of the State Party to the Treaty on whose registry they are carried shall be returned to that State Party, which shall, upon request, furnish identifying data prior to their return.
It is clear, then, that the sample containers are still the property of the US, and that if the Chinese brought them back to Earth, they would be required to give them to the US.
They should do that anyways, plus their own, and then they can be like, “when America couldn’t afford it, we stepped in for them because were good people” and it would be strictly a PR win. As long as America didn’t just destroy the sample out of spite later, they could also act nicely and maybe we’re could all get along better.
Right - because the best engineering is done in a high stakes big bang of upmost complexity rather than iterative improvement?
Not only are political officers making science decisions, but nasa lost its way in the depths of over engineered missions due to requiring a senator to be bribed by the quantity of home stage work.
The way things look, everyone in Trump's orbit is just grifting off the government directly or using it to their personal advantage, including his own children. He literally said "Every time my kids invest in a stock, they have inside information."
peri-cl · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-3" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-3
reaperducer · · focus · HN ↗
No need to. Mars delivers:
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/arts/who-owns-this-chunk-of-mars-jeanine-pirro-says-america-does-now.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/arts/who-owns-this-chunk-...
notabee · · focus · HN ↗
MadrasThorn · · focus · HN ↗
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walrus01 · · focus · HN ↗
autoexec · · focus · HN ↗
walrus01 · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://thegoodshirts.com/products/hello-i-am-fleeing-the-american-century-of-humiliation-hat" rel="nofollow">https://thegoodshirts.com/products/hello-i-am-fleeing-the-am...
autoexec · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="http://www.img.chinafoodsltd.com/Uploads/Zlkkkl/Picture/2021/11/22/s619b04a3c6518.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.img.chinafoodsltd.com/Uploads/Zlkkkl/Picture/2021...
<a href="https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2026/06/08/monster-uses-coca-cola-network-to-expand-energy-drinks-globally/" rel="nofollow">https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2026/06/08/monster-use...
Fraterkes · · focus · HN ↗
It’s fine to talk about a “race” if jingoism is the thing that gets most people on board with funding Nasa. But we ought to know better.
anamexis · · focus · HN ↗
Former Soviet people might...
krapp · · focus · HN ↗
The moon landing was fine and all, a moment of global historic import (and propaganda value, with the US putting their flag on it like they owned the damned thing) but that's still just one victory in a race that was otherwise entirely dominated by the Soviets, and on balance what the Soviets did was of greater scientific merit than anything the US would achieve for years. Americans didn't even care about space until Russia flew Sputnik over their heads.
drfloyd51 · · focus · HN ↗
Space? That was excellent marketing.
nradov · · focus · HN ↗
throw-the-towel · · focus · HN ↗
anamexis · · focus · HN ↗
lazide · · focus · HN ↗
They were the first to orbit, after all.
frmersdog · · focus · HN ↗
Boomers and Silents (and, to a lesser and understandable extent re: Challenger, Gen X) should be ashamed, though.
I get harangued every time I point the finger, but for Pete's sake, Millennials didn't do this. Millennials wanted to go to Space Camp. It has to be SOMEONE'S fault. SOMEONE take responsibility.
dclowd9901 · · focus · HN ↗
People took issue with the cost of space exploration in context of "the good the money could do here on Earth", but then when we shifted resources that way, the money did absolutely no good here on Earth.
gpt5 · · focus · HN ↗
Maybe it’s better this way. There is a tendency of every organization, private or public, to rot and stagnate over time. But in the private sectors they die more quickly and give way to new entrants, which would help space exploration long term.
cindyllm · · focus · HN ↗
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klipt · · focus · HN ↗
So things like curing AIDS don't count?
dclowd9901 · · focus · HN ↗
shagie · · focus · HN ↗
The collapse of the USSR was the worst thing to happen to NASA.
I would suggest a watch of "We Stopped Dreaming" <a href="https://youtu.be/CbIZU8cQWXc" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/CbIZU8cQWXc
A less angry version (video and transcript of Neil DeGrasse Tyson testifying before the Senate's Science Committee on 7 March 2012) <a href="https://ifsa.my/articles/we-stopped-dreaming-by-neil-degrasse-tyson/" rel="nofollow">https://ifsa.my/articles/we-stopped-dreaming-by-neil-degrass...
JuniperMesos · · focus · HN ↗
autoexec · · focus · HN ↗
It clearly was, at least in several examples. It looks like he's getting it right from NASA:
<a href="https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff1996/43.html" rel="nofollow">https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff1996/43.html
<a href="https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff2003/hm_3.html" rel="nofollow">https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff2003/hm_3.html
<a href="https://spinoff.nasa.gov/node/9275" rel="nofollow">https://spinoff.nasa.gov/node/9275
<a href="https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Telescope-Mirror-Tech-Improves-Eye-Surgery" rel="nofollow">https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Telescope-Mirror-Tech-Improves-Eye-...
qlte · · focus · HN ↗
The Space Race was a unique and limited phase coming out of the atomic age when public support for scientific research was at an all time high. With the Kennedy and Johnson administrations willing to fund programs left and right to improve education and research with long term aims. The Soviets were also at the apogee of their scientific capability, and Khrushchev did great PR for all their achievements which unnerved Americans and provided the Cold War justification for new domestic programs.
Once the Brezhnev age of stagnation and lopsided USSR military spending set in, the new Cold War 2.0 became about numbers of delivery vehicles and NATO conventional deterrence, not space and science. By then the US had clear technological dominance that seemed insurmountable in the new world of microchips and computers in which the Soviets couldn't compete. Which allowed Reagan to boost military budgets and deficit spending while simultaneously beginning the Republican "starve the beast" strategy to cut taxes and non-military domestic programs.
All of this is to point out that Cold War = Space Race/Apollo is looking back with rose colored glasses. We could just as easily see federal space and science spending getting further slashed every year while churning out warheads, delivery vehicles and conventional arms ever faster (and seems more likely based on late Cold War trends).
nradov · · focus · HN ↗
lostlogin · · focus · HN ↗
What view do you have on the trajectory of the U.S.? Is America ascending or declining?
The success China is having isn’t something that’s occurring in isolation. There is a void and they are filling it.
drstewart · · focus · HN ↗
What view do you have of what programs have been cut from Chinese government budgets? Can you link to some of the HN discussions around them so I can also see people commenting on the internal policy decisions that the Chinese government has made available for people to openly comment on?
lostlogin · · focus · HN ↗
America was a bulwark against Chinese expansion, and that ended a while back, maybe with WTO entry?
International relations under this regime is a new poison, and is aiding some awful regimes.
notahacker · · focus · HN ↗
And ironically the US very much considers itself to be in a race with China including in space, it's just run by such thundering morons that most of the moves they make advance China's interests more than theirs. Now the cancellation of Mars Sample Return isn't that big an issue in terms of strategic benefit or decline narratives, nor is it a particularly massive surprise (the program's issues are longer term than just current administration cuts). But there is a certain irony in some of the people most interested in scorekeeping with China (and for that matter Mars!) being the ones likely to ensure China pulls off the sample return first.
SAI_Peregrinus · · focus · HN ↗
noir_lord · · focus · HN ↗
When your enemy is making a mistake don't interrupt them and all that jazz.
jfengel · · focus · HN ↗
The Chinese rise is also remarkable in its own terms, but it's not the subject of discussion here. The subject here is how the US is under cutting its former preeminence in science.
dragonwriter · · focus · HN ↗
They are co-occurring facts in the same area and the only reason China’s success is relevant in this discussion is because it is co-occurring with and in the same field as the American decline that is (unlike the tangential Chinese angle) directly relevant to the story here.
So, in this specific case, if we are going to mention China at all, the answer is yes. Not because the two things are so linked that they ALWAYS need to be discussed together, but because that is the relevant nexus between the present subject and China at all.
Gagarin1917 · · focus · HN ↗
The NASA/ESA Mars sample return was poorly designed, they basically attached a half baked idea to the Perseverance mission in the hopes that having the mission “underway” would make it easier to fund the rest of the mission. That meant Perseverance was just putting things in tubes and leaving them sealed on the ground at random places around Mars. So that meant they would need to devise another system to go collect them, another system to store and launch them, and another system to return them to Earth. That’s a ridiculous process. The costs exploded, the gambit failed.
China’s was much better planned, having the rover and launch vehicle land together, fully funded from the beginning. However, it’s also much simpler, there’s no picking and choosing what to sample from a wide area, it’s just whatever is available to the lander wherever it happens to land.
And this would not have been the only future mission to deep space. The US is going to land a fleet of drones on Mars. They’re launching a nuclear powered drone to Titan.
The US has led the world in reusable rocket development, satellite constellations, and crewed LEO operations.
The big picture is clear. This one mission doesn’t really say much about the space program in general.
NetMageSCW · · focus · HN ↗
Gagarin1917 · · focus · HN ↗
That alone is a separate multibillion dollar program just to do that.
gamblor956 · · focus · HN ↗
China also does this. We just don't hear about it because they also quash the reporting.
walrus01 · · focus · HN ↗
testing22321 · · focus · HN ↗
walrus01 · · focus · HN ↗
I am sure this is nothing to be concerned about whatsoever.
etc-hosts · · focus · HN ↗
bdangubic · · focus · HN ↗
throwaway27448 · · focus · HN ↗
drjasonharrison · · focus · HN ↗
jasonwatkinspdx · · focus · HN ↗
They absolutely enforce ideological positions in opposition to science, and very aggressively so.
There is no waffle room on this.
lazide · · focus · HN ↗
throwaway27448 · · focus · HN ↗
> she had reported security flaws in Tencent’s Sogou keyboard drivers to Western and transnational media.
ok, you got me, if by "science" you mean something completely different than academic research.
I can understand why westerners are uncomfortable with this. I can't find it in myself to care.
jasonwatkinspdx · · focus · HN ↗
The suppression I'm talking about is the CCP rejecting that gay people exist in fact, and censoring anyone that dares to be too visibly gay.
Gagarin1917 · · focus · HN ↗
These are smart people, they’re not going to make major life decisions based on simplistic takes from political opportunists.
trumpdong · · focus · HN ↗
r14c · · focus · HN ↗
ericmay · · focus · HN ↗
A reserve currency is just a currency that central banks and other important institutions hold in "reserve". The Euro is a reserve currency, as is the Yen, Pound, and others. The American dollar is the primary one, and that usage will ebb and flow over time, but it's arguable that no longer being the primary one is a good thing as it will make American exports more competitive among other things. I don't think I agree but folks have very reasonable and competing takes on this.
The world also isn't going to adopt a Chinese currency as a reserve currency either because China would have to make liberalizing economic reforms which would run counter to the control that the CCP has over the country (why people keep forgetting that China is run by an authoritarian group is beyond me but whatever) and so they won't make those reforms and the world just won't adopt that currency.
danny_codes · · focus · HN ↗
As we dismantle those components via xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, funding cuts, and so on, trends will change. Already I see a substantial uptick in my PhD/Academic friends moving to Europe as we cede our historic advantages.
If, in say 15 years, China provides better schools, or better economic returns, or (perhaps unlikely) better independence, or all 3, then scientists will go there.
anramon · · focus · HN ↗
lazide · · focus · HN ↗
TitaRusell · · focus · HN ↗
Unfortunately all across the West we see a new desire for fascism over individualism and liberty.
MentalM · · focus · HN ↗
drstewart · · focus · HN ↗
amarcheschi · · focus · HN ↗
The website wasn't available anymore
drstewart · · focus · HN ↗
morsch · · focus · HN ↗
justarobert · · focus · HN ↗
cowboylowrez · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
walrus01 · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-arch-drones-snipers-9.7351306" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-arch-drones-snipers-9.73...
Look, there's your safety, forget about the food safety, obviously the real priority is the snipers. I feel so safe already.
Rover222 · · focus · HN ↗
totallymike · · focus · HN ↗
drstewart · · focus · HN ↗
pjc50 · · focus · HN ↗
sellmesoap · · focus · HN ↗
FlowingRiver · · focus · HN ↗
MisterTea · · focus · HN ↗
iknowstuff · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1hpiuem/the_official_dietary_guidelines_of_denmark/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1hpiuem/the_officia...
MisterTea · · focus · HN ↗
notabee · · focus · HN ↗
Dig1t · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://grantwitness.org/nsf" rel="nofollow">https://grantwitness.org/nsf
Download the CSV and search for things like "Latinx" or "Black" or "equity" or "URM" (URM = non-white)
>CHS: Large: Collaborative Research: Gender-Inclusive Open Source through Gender-Inclusive Tools
>This work will harness foundational gender research to provide theory-based yet practical solutions, towards addressing the underrepresentation of women in OSS communities.
>The AGEP Florida Alliance Model: Improving Minority Women Success in STEM Faculty Careers
>The research team is also investigating ways that URM women in STEM build skills, knowledge and competencies to successfully enter and persist in faculty careers.
>STEM Leadership, Equity, and Advancement for Faculty
>The NSF ADVANCE program is designed to foster gender equity through a focus on the identification and elimination of organizational barriers
Most of these are pure racism and absolutely deserved to be revoked.
samudrijan · · focus · HN ↗
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Dig1t · · focus · HN ↗
"fostering gender equity" is not even science, trying to equate these grants with something like researching fundamental physics or chemistry is disingenuous.
maxerickson · · focus · HN ↗
Dig1t · · focus · HN ↗
Equity and diversity initiatives are almost always blatantly racist and discriminatory by definition. They are also rife with ethnic favoritism and ingroup collusion.
Giving taxpayer money to people to "foster gender equity" by definition means you are giving money to try and advantage one group of people based on immutable characteristics (gender).
I find it telling that many of the people who lampoon these cuts make a point to never actually talk about the specific grants themselves, but like to keep the discussion at a higher level and discuss how "scientists" are going to leave in droves to go study in Europe instead of the USA.
>Examining Undergraduate Research Experiences of Latinx STEM Students in Research Intensive HSIs and Emerging-HSIs
>[this project] will undertake a comparative study of undergraduate research experiences for Latinx students at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) using an asset-based framework and Chicana/Latina feminist epistemology and the "platicas methodology"
If you went on CNN and discussed how funding is being cut for "comparitive studies using feminist epistemolgy", the majority of Americans would be fine with it. In fact a huge portion of Americans would likely say that cutting these types of grants actually advances the NSF's mission statement by cutting out racist and divisive programs that center on specific ethnic groups.
maxerickson · · focus · HN ↗
Dig1t · · focus · HN ↗
I am saying that most Americans would agree that these types of grants go directly against their mission statement.
maxerickson · · focus · HN ↗
The mission statement is not limited to doing science, which is the misrepresentation you tried to make.
brendoelfrendo · · focus · HN ↗
not_kurt_godel · · focus · HN ↗
sebzim4500 · · focus · HN ↗
Yeah classic woke stuff that
> TRTech-PGR: NSF BSF - Recombining Allelic Diversity via Genome Editing for Dissecting Complex Plant Traits
This would be funny if it wasn't happening in real life. Clearly they did "ctrl-f diversity" and didn't actually read what they were cancelling.
ourmandave · · focus · HN ↗
Steady as she goes, Mr. Sulu.
PaulDavisThe1st · · focus · HN ↗
fhdkweig · · focus · HN ↗
JackFr · · focus · HN ↗
dpkirchner · · focus · HN ↗
ourmandave · · focus · HN ↗
Stop rubber stamping stupidity like RFK, pass a war powers resolution, and reign in the vengeance based tariffs.
rayiner · · focus · HN ↗
> NASA needs to rethink its goal of returning samples from the Martian surface to Earth, the agency’s administrator Bill Nelson said in a press call on Monday.
Rover222 · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
Rover222 · · focus · HN ↗
And kicking people off of twitter and facebook for similar banned thoughts?
FlowingRiver · · focus · HN ↗
The Chang’e missions plan for this in 2030 and they have hit every target to date. While the US is currently targeting 2028, it isn't inconceivable that it can slip by two years.
Aeolun · · focus · HN ↗
tonyhart7 · · focus · HN ↗
lossolo · · focus · HN ↗
We are not in a hurry now, because we already won that race many decades ago!
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
President Donald J. TRUMP"
FlowingRiver · · focus · HN ↗
President Donald J Trump
MisterTea · · focus · HN ↗
joquarky · · focus · HN ↗
FlowingRiver · · focus · HN ↗
hgoel · · focus · HN ↗
GenerocUsername · · focus · HN ↗
FridayoLeary · · focus · HN ↗
shevy-java · · focus · HN ↗
Chinese speak English. I mean, you only need to watch youtube videos here.
yieldcrv · · focus · HN ↗
More business in China though, tricky to prioritize since I'm doing any of this for the abundance of intimacy and the slavic people come with that, for me. I need to learn Mandarin and Russian.
at least Cantonese is no longer seriously a contender in my sphere. That was distracting
jamiek88 · · focus · HN ↗
yieldcrv · · focus · HN ↗
tonyhart7 · · focus · HN ↗
0ckpuppet · · focus · HN ↗
Muhammad523 · · focus · HN ↗
lukeify · · focus · HN ↗
XorNot · · focus · HN ↗
ok_dad · · focus · HN ↗
duskwuff · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment
junofan · · focus · HN ↗
Sounds like they blew it. What a shame.
someothherguyy · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/23/world/asia/23nsa-docs.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/23/world/asia/23...
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-chinese-servers-seen-as-spy-peril.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-c...
Gagarin1917 · · focus · HN ↗
Also also, if China were to create a new mission to collect them, they would see their costs balloon to unsustainable levels as well, as the issue is how the mission is designed. The samples are all over the place and would need a rover specifically designed to collect them and return them to a launcher.
The US Mars sample return project was always half baked in the hopes that doing something would garner funding for the rest of the mission.
NetMageSCW · · focus · HN ↗
Gagarin1917 · · focus · HN ↗
That alone is a separate multibillion dollar program just to do that.
joelthelion · · focus · HN ↗
Meneth · · focus · HN ↗
> A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body. Ownership of objects launched into outer space, including objects landed or constructed on a celestial body, and of their component parts, is not affected by their presence in outer space or on a celestial body or by their return to the Earth. Such objects or component parts found beyond the limits of the State Party to the Treaty on whose registry they are carried shall be returned to that State Party, which shall, upon request, furnish identifying data prior to their return.
It is clear, then, that the sample containers are still the property of the US, and that if the Chinese brought them back to Earth, they would be required to give them to the US.
[1] <a href="https://www.unoosa.org/unoosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/outerspacetreaty.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.unoosa.org/unoosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/o...
ok_dad · · focus · HN ↗
tim333 · · focus · HN ↗
fnordpiglet · · focus · HN ↗
Not only are political officers making science decisions, but nasa lost its way in the depths of over engineered missions due to requiring a senator to be bribed by the quantity of home stage work.
thinkcontext · · focus · HN ↗
If it doesn't happen then its of worse quality.
jmclnx · · focus · HN ↗
I think the Trump admin decided since it will not make them a profit, like other scientific research already canceled, it is not worth doing.
GolfPopper · · focus · HN ↗
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titzer · · focus · HN ↗