Do You Know The Silly Reason Why America Put A Man On The Moon?
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Oh, they're steeped in corruption now, thanks to politics, mostly Congress. The SLS/Orion pork-filled boondogle is clear evidence of that. NASA never wanted any part of it, and wants to dump it and let private enterprise handle it, so NASA can move on to important stuff. But Congress isn't having any of it, as too much of that money goes into their Congressional districts. The SLS/Orion is a project that NASA shouldn't even be playing a part in, yet Congress is forcing them to do it, and it'll be NASA that gets blamed for incompetence and corruption when the program is finally cancelled.
But that's just one example of where politics and money has corrupted things at NASA. Another one is NASA's official position on human-caused global warming. The overwhelming majority of the scientists at NASA do not agree one bit that the science has been settled on that issue. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which is the place where the entire NASA Climate Science division is run from, is the department that actually makes these kinds of scientific determinations. And they disagree with the whole human-caused global warming "science." But they've been overruled by politics and money, thanks to the corruption of Congress by what those at NASA aptly refer to as "the alligator shoes" (lobbyists).
But these are documented and verifiable corruptions, all accounted for and evidenced. What I'm interested in is the documented and verifiable occurrences of corruption during Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. This corruption was rampant and ubiquitous according to you, and therefor it should be a piece of cake to cite, say, three examples during these three manned spaceflight programs.
I agree that MOST of those who were employed by NASA were there for the "thrill" of taking part in the program, but to believe that it was not politics as usual at NASA is naive.
You were doing fine until the final two sentences. Private enterprise does not "invent everything as they [go] along." They can't. There's no way to capitalize a value in that. Private enterprise exploits existing technology, and refines or invents new technologies only as the need arises for a specific purpose.
As for the "favors" in play, always, simply name a few of them, instead of just assuming they were there during Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. Should be easy enough to do, since all of them would be recorded and evidenced, or at the very least all of the pennies spent by NASA would surely show discrepancies to allow one to draw such a conclusion.
There are many, many misconceptions by the public about NASA. One is that NASA's budget takes up far more of the federal budget than it does. A majority of people think NASA's budget is up to 20 percent of the federal budget, instead of the .5% that it is. This is a misconception that is easily disproved by verifiable facts. Another misconception is that because NASA is funded by the government that it must therefore be just as corrupt and inept as any other government agency. This is also a misconception that is easily disproved by verifiable facts.
Sort of. The R7 wasn't a booster, it was a complete multistage (2-stage) ICBM that was being repurposed for satellite launches.
First, the "space race" wasn't cooked up by the Air Force to find a way to fund ICBM advancement. Where do you come up with this stuff? Secondly, any rocket with a minimum range of 5,000 km and is designed primarily for nuclear weapons delivery is called an ICMB. But the only true ICBM that was used as a launch vehicle for the Mercury, Gemini or Apollo programs was the John Glenn's flight aboard an Atlas rocket. The first and second US manned flight, that of Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom, was aboard a highly modified Restone rocket that had evolved from the Redstone ICBM.
The Saturn rocket family, the only launch vehicles to ever transport humans beyond low earth orbit, was designed from the ground up by a team of rocket scientists led by Wernher von Braun to specifically launch heavy payloads to Earth orbit and beyond. Originally proposed by von Braun as a military satellite launcher (to perk ears up to get funding) they were immediately adopted as launch vehicles for the Apollo program.
So then you say that "ALL of the US launch vehicles" were ICBM's, that's fundamentally incorrect, literally and figuratively.
Again, the fact that NASA worked on projects for the military was hardly a secret. But NASA never worked on military projects without being contracted by the military to do so. Also, NASA never had anything whatsoever to do with the development of the SR-71 Blackbird. Beginning in the late 60s NASA used the Blackbird for high speed and high altitude research, and after the SR-71 program was cancelled NASA was given the two remaining flyable planes to use as they saw fit. NASA quit flying them a year later because it cost NASA $25,000 an hour to fly them (as opposed to the $85,000 an hour that it cost the CIA and the $103,000 an hour it costs the Air Force, and isn't that interesting). NASA quit flying them because they didn't have that cost in their budget.
Incidentally, "development of orbits needed to be tested"? No. Kepler and Newton had already determined the exact orbits. There was never any trial and error on orbits. They went up, went around, and came back down, exactly according to the mathematics of Kepler and Newton. Exactly.
I'm am just 22 days older than the "space age" so I really have no memories of what it was like before then. I have been captivated by all things space, including the technology and the NASA of it all, since before I can remember. So when you make utterly ridiculous claims like... NASA retarded our space program, that NASA held back the program and drove up the cost substantially, that there were the corruptions of back door deals, last minute changes in contracts, kick backs, politics, etc., and that if only private enterprise had been in charge rather than NASA, we could have put men on the moon in one-third less time and for half the money... I know that you don't have a clue what you are talking about.
I understand where it comes from, that anything and everything the government touches they manage to screw up, therefore NASA must have been screwed up in the same way from the very beginning. It certainly makes sense. It's logical. And told to anyone who doesn't know squat about the subject it's thoroughly believable. It must be, right? Except, no, that's the one true exception to the rule. Granted, it's becoming somewhat corrupt now, and people at NASA are sort of revolting over it, too. But it's hardly the SOP at NASA now, nor has it ever been.
