Impact of Mars/Moon Mission on American IT workers' careers? 2

[bbarr]

Interested to get some feedback from everyone on what people are thinking regarding the proposed mars/moon missions and how they impact on the future of IT workers here in America:

1. Since this is the federal government, does this mean that much of the work will be limited to American workers (which from the perspective of Americans such as myself would be a good thing? )?

2. Will this have benefits to IT workers outside of the technology that is developed specifically for the missions?

3. Other thoughts on how this will be positive/negative to American IT workers.

- Bruce

 

[DrJavaJoe]

Take look at this article

http://starpaul.com/spacewhy.html

Expecially the part titled “APOLLO'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICA". I believe any significant spending on technology will benifit IT. Just think about the new equipment, tools, toys that we can expect to get from this endeavor and who usually gets to play, create, manage, etc with these things, us.

 

[chiph]

I would love to contribute to the project, but I don't think I have any skills that would be transferable. I do HR software, not rocket science. :-(

But I can cheer them on.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[DrJavaJoe]

Well let's hope new kinds of jobs are generated thus requiring new kinds of HR software.

 

[sem]

I suppose that you'll probably have a good time untill election

Regards, Dima

http://seminihin.narod.ru

 

[chiph]

Huh?

There's a chance that the new space exploration policy will change if George Bush isn't reelected. But I think it's not very likely, as one of the benefits of a large program like this is that many high-tech (thus high-paying) jobs get created all over the country. And politicians *love* to announce that they've brought "x" number of jobs to the local economy.

And despite all the people who say "The money is better spent on social programs" this, in a way, *is* a social program. It will result in new jobs, people buying an education, new techologies being created, etc. All that new experience & technology has a magnifying effect -- it makes the next breakthrough possible. Medical CAT scans were developed based on technology created for the Apollo moon missions.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[DrJavaJoe]

Chiph, I agree whole-heartedly but what if the winner is Howard Dean, the man is insane. My guess is that he'll probably shut down NASA all together and reinstate Saddam Hussein as president of Iraq.

 

[chiph]

One thing I've learned is that you have to separate the rhetoric from the actions. Anyone recall: "Read my lips: No new taxes" ??

The local paper did a comparison on the various Democratic candidates and their support on healthcare. Most were in the $700 billion (700 thousand million) a year range, but one of them (and it might have been Dean) was at $2.2 trillion (2.2 million million) a year for healthcare. Once you see numbers like that in black and white, the voters very quickly decide what they really want to pay for.

The only stupid voters are the ones you see on TV news broadcasts (the Springer effect). You'll see the same people after a tornado wipes out their trailer park. ;-)

My biggest concern is that the space station won't be maintained. Because of it's orbit, it requires a boost every few months. Hopefully the Russians (or maybe the Chinese!) will be able to keep it supplied.

The rumors that the plans for the Saturn V heavy lift booster were destroyed aren't true -- they still exist, but the tooling to create them and the launch umbilical support tower are no longer in existance. Besides, modern electronics and materials mean that you'd want a new booster anyway. The only thing you might carry over would be the F-1 engines.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[dilettante]

Wow, almost makes me wish I'd posted my comments about how this is election-year fodder for the gullible, and how anything that happens will be to "starve the beast" further as it enriches a few Halliburtons as all the jobs and technlogy investments and advancements are made in China, India, etc.

The present U.S. government has made its intent clear: to develop a global plantation-style economy to replace the existing one based on egalitarian principles and a strong middle class.

 

[dilettante]

Hmm... that came out as pretty partisan, but it wasn't my primary intent. To state my position better I'll cite another example.

Under the previous administration billions of dollars were handed over to the U.S. auto industry to develop more efficient and effective personal transportation. Very early efforts showed that people are not going to accept mass transit systems to a much greater extent than they do now. At least not in the near term. The practicality of electric cars intermixed with the other prevailing types of propulsion on the roads didn't look very good either.

So the program rapidly matured into an effort to develop hybrid (typically gas/electric) vehicles. These wouldn't have the range and speed limitations of electric cars, and would still result in very good savings in the amount of fuel consumed. Diesel/electrics aren't very feasible in the U.S. because of the sulfur levels in diesel fuels here, though Europe's cleaner fuels might make it work.

Well, the Big 3 here were required to produce a working model at the end of the process, and they did just that. That, and nothing else at all except vague promises of future (still to be realized years later) product introductions. The Japanese seem to have taken the threat of this new arena of competition very seriously, and have their own fuel situation to consider as well.

Now both Toyota and Honda have products lines which have been on the market for years. Each new product announced has been an improvement too. Where are the big 3?

Well, we still see "coming soon" each year at the Auto show. But so far everything that even looks close to production someday soon is based on licensed Japanese technology!.

Where did those billions go?

And now of course we're in the midst of another massive round of Federal funding for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. So far this is a very dubious technology, and recapitulates many of the errors that the prior decade's program experienced in the "all electric" period. The blank check is very much larger this time too.

And where are the advances being introduced to the market even so this time? Japan once again, without those U.S. billions. This response seems to one more time be directly due to artificial market conditions engendered by Federal (and State, don't forget California) policy.

So the lesson here is simple. If you want government to "so something" about a technology issue you do not shovel money to U.S.-based multinationals. You get nothing for your dollars.

Where did the "hybrid" money go? That's easy, high-ranking corporate officers' and shareholders pockets! Most of the money was handed out to public universities for research that was not guided or coordinated and was not required to achieve a result. This "contribution" was used to offset tax liabilities of the Big 3. So as you see, the $$ were simply laundered on their way to enriching the wealthy further.

And this is what we should be watchful of when it comes to funding a "Mars Mission."

NASA is not the organization it was in the 60s. They'll probably be reduced to "contract managers" who simply sign the checks for large-scale contracts.

 

[Kruppcon]

You raise an interesting quesion:

1. Since this is the federal government, does this mean that much of the work will be limited to American workers (which from the perspective of Americans such as myself would be a good thing? )?

Should it be? Im not sure where I stand on this, but the question is, are we better off employing American workers who will put the money back in our economy at some time in the future, or are we better off getting the labor at 1/5th the price, which saves 4/5th of the money to go back into our economy now?

Bryan
--------------------------------------------------
KruppCon -

http://www.Kruppcon.com

 

[DrJavaJoe]

IMHO we are much better off employing American workers for the high tech positions. This is not just because they put money back into the economy but because the knowledge that is gained from this investment has a way of trickling down into the private sector. Now this can truly provide a boost to our economy.

"Two strings walk into a bar. The first string says to the bartender: 'Bartender, I'll have a beer. u.5n$x5t?*&4ru!2[sACC~ErJ'. The second string says: 'Pardon my friend, he isn't NULL terminated'."

 

[Kruppcon]

DrJavaJoe - I agree that the knowledge would directly filter into the private sector. However, the possibility exists also that if we outsource, we will learn how to efficiently manage resources to get more done than we could do ourselves.

Because there will always be people willing to work for money, you could argue that we would be able to more effectively manage those technical resources at progressively lower costs, allowing more technical work to be accomplished in both the public and private sectors.

Bryan
--------------------------------------------------
KruppCon -

http://www.Kruppcon.com

 

[DrJavaJoe]

the possibility exists also that if we outsource, we will learn how to efficiently manage resources to get more done than we could do ourselves. Efficiency and Government in the same sentence that is an Oxymoron. I would love to see the Government learn how to efficiently manage resources, but they need to start off slow. They need to resolve the Pentagon's $700 toilet seats, $600 hammers, first.

"Two strings walk into a bar. The first string says to the bartender: 'Bartender, I'll have a beer. u.5n$x5t?*&4ru!2[sACC~ErJ'. The second string says: 'Pardon my friend, he isn't NULL terminated'."

 

[bbarr]

But isn't one of the reasons we have government paying $600 for hammers due to protectionist / or pro-union policies?

If the government didn't do this and bought hammers at say $5 then their spending would decrease ... of course this would assume that "they" wouldn't then spend that money on other wasteful expenses.

A new thought I had though was, if we did have a base on space, then the question becomes do the newly minted moonians and martains outsource their work back to us terrestrial earthlings or keep it up there to support their new economy?

Wasn't one of Ah-nuld's movies about a revolt of workers on one of the outlying planets (I think it wars mars) because they were being exploited and the money was being sent back to earth?

 

[DrJavaJoe]

I agree about the $600 dollar hammers, let's outsource the development of hammers, but when we build a 20 million dollar robots for 500 million dollars, let's spend that money here. Now when we have off-shoots such as better prostheses, or better digital imaging, better robots, etc., we'll benefit first, then when this technology becomes mundane we can consider outsourcing that.

"Two strings walk into a bar. The first string says to the bartender: 'Bartender, I'll have a beer. u.5n$x5t?*&4ru!2[sACC~ErJ'. The second string says: 'Pardon my friend, he isn't NULL terminated'."

 

[chiph]

The reason for the $500 hammer is that the cost on goverment projects is spread among the deliverables. So the price of the hammer is inflated by $485 in fixed costs. It doesn't help that the goverment buys these things in the "1-5" column of the pricing schedule. It's like when they reduced the number of B-2 bombers that were going to be built. The fixed costs, now that they were being spread among fewer planes, inflated the cost of each plane.

Moon missions are probably an extreme example of that -- you aren't going to be building rockets on an assembly line, so each is unique -- hand built. That drives the cost up like you wouldn't believe.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[harebrain]

...or are we better off getting the labor at 1/5th the price, which saves 4/5th of the money to go back into our economy now?

Who are you kidding? Savings? This "money" would be 100% debt.