• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

I really should read my own blog.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Mobile Menu

  • Seattle Meet-up Post
  • 2025 Activism
  • Targeted Political Fundraising
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War / In Case You’ve Forgotten

In Case You’ve Forgotten

by @heymistermix.com|  June 5, 20127:47 am| 24 Comments

This post is in: War

FacebookTweetEmail

The news that the Department of Defense had two space telescopes with Hubble-sized mirrors (via) sitting in storage is yet another reminder of the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent on defense that we know nothing about. Just think how many totebags had to be purchased to pay for NOVA pieces justifying the Hubble, all while the NRO had a couple of spares just sitting around in their garage:

The new telescopes are “actually better than the Hubble. They’re the same size, but the optical design is such that you can put a broader set of instruments on the back,” he said.

NASA might not get to use these scopes because they have no money for refitting, launching and operating them–our priorities aren’t that screwed up–but it’s still nice to see the military throwing a crumb to the rest of government.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Terror Pals Serve “Off the Pig” Babybacks to Barry!
Next Post: Another Number Two Drops »

Reader Interactions

24Comments

  1. 1.

    PeakVT

    June 5, 2012 at 8:01 am

    We spend $50B+ on spies, satellites, and the like. Is what we get worthwhile? There’s no way to know.

  2. 2.

    AlladinsLamp

    June 5, 2012 at 8:11 am

    So, but out a bid for someone (SpaceX) to put these in orbit. ASAP.

  3. 3.

    Marc

    June 5, 2012 at 8:25 am

    They’re “better than the Hubble” only for some purposes. It’s a happy accident that their wide-field design is ideal for the sort of programs that were highly ranked in the last astronomy decadal survey. (The decadal survey is an astronomical community effort to recommmend funding priorities to Congress; scientists get together and look at important scientific questions and promising ideas for addressing them. The outcome is a prioritized list, and WFIRST (a dark energy + planetary microlensing search) came out at the top.

    The biggest problem is JWST. The successor to the Hubble is over budget, delayed, and enormously expensive; NASA is paralyzed until it launches.

  4. 4.

    arguingwithsignposts

    June 5, 2012 at 8:26 am

    I wondered what that thing in my garage was.

  5. 5.

    Villago Delenda Est

    June 5, 2012 at 8:34 am

    Department of Defense, my ass.

    Department of Spending. Always has been. Priority one: Larding defense contractors with cash. Priority last: the actual people in uniform.

  6. 6.

    owlbear1

    June 5, 2012 at 8:41 am

    At a presentation to scientists Monday in Washington, Alan Dressler, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science, showed an image of one of the telescopes, but it was so thoroughly blacked out — redacted for national security reasons — that the audience burst into laughter.

    Our country has too many of these bug-fuck nutz jackasses sucking at the government teat.

    Fire these paranoid stupid mother fuckers NOW!!

  7. 7.

    Keith G

    June 5, 2012 at 8:52 am

    Just think how many totebags had to be purchased to pay for NOVA pieces justifying the Hubble..

    What’s with BJ’s penchant to use this formulation.

    Totebags have little to do with it. I imagine that Nova’s production costs are covered by corporate underwriters. One of which is Lockhead Martin. Go figure.

  8. 8.

    Donut

    June 5, 2012 at 8:56 am

    There must be some reason why the Tea-hadists don’t freak out over this stuff but do freak out over spending on education, Medicaid and food stamps.

    I wonder what that reason could be? Hmmmmmm.

  9. 9.

    DLew On Roids

    June 5, 2012 at 9:04 am

    Somewhat pedantic, but I think those satellites were part of NRO, not DoD.

  10. 10.

    Glidwrith

    June 5, 2012 at 9:19 am

    One question: if they have two in storage doesn’t that kind of indicate there are others actually in orbit and these are the spares in case one went down? Or if they are giving these up that they’ve got something better in the wings?

  11. 11.

    Schlemizel

    June 5, 2012 at 9:21 am

    NASA has always been, at some level, an arm of the DoD. Men in space was just a convenient way to gain knowledge and develop technologies to bring warfare to a higher plane. They almost stopped pretending after Apollo. The POS Space Shuttle was designed and built for the military to launch satellites covertly. It was useless for actual exploration. Any civilian uses/benefit/growth was merely coincidental.

    Remember that great Hubble rescue mission in the early 90s? For what it cost NASA could have built 3 Hubbles and launched 2 into better orbits with standard rocket technology holding the third just in case.

    Like so much else we had in this country we have pissed away the huge lead and all the advantages we had on the alter of Mars. We spend more than the rest of the world combined on defense and that does not even include the hidden expenditures like NASA

  12. 12.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    June 5, 2012 at 9:26 am

    I remember hearing about this outrageous project funded by the DoD to build expensive room sized computation machines. Later on, the DoD funded this project to connect computers in order to maintain communications during a nuclear war.

    All outrageous wastes of money whose only purpose was to serve the DoD. Nothing good ever came of them.

  13. 13.

    chopper

    June 5, 2012 at 9:26 am

    why build one when you can have two at twice the price?

  14. 14.

    The Red Pen

    June 5, 2012 at 9:29 am

    Remember when the Hubble had to be fixed after it initially launched? There’s an interesting backstory.

    As this article points out, the only real difference between a spy satellite and a space telescope is which way it points. It turns out that the CIA/NRO already had a system for properly focusing these space telescopes prior to launching them, but they wouldn’t let NASA use this system for the Hubble because it was secret, and NASA are nerds.

    So, while the repair mission was dramatic, it was an unnecessary expense courtesy of the fiscal black hole known as the nation’s intelligence agencies.

  15. 15.

    WJS

    June 5, 2012 at 9:36 am

    It should not be a surprise to anyone that, for a lot of NASA jobs, you need some form of security clearance.

    Having said that, I can sympathize with a lot of the people who are upset that our government has billions of dollars in satellites overhead. The hardest part of the budget to cut is the one that covers “defending” America from future threats and unknown threats. This has led to the creation of a particular kind of bureaucrat–someone who is in charge of something that doesn’t play well with others but can, nonetheless, bring magic to a PowerPoint briefing. Drones are a lot like this, but they don’t cost nearly as much as a satellite that never gets used.

    Those people are wonderful at building walled gardens for themselves that no Senator dare touch.

  16. 16.

    jak

    June 5, 2012 at 9:49 am

    A book was written about the building of the Hubble back in 1995. “The Hubble Wars: Astrophysics Meets Astropolitics in the Two-Billion-Dollar Struggle over the Hubble Space Telescope, With a New Preface by Eric Chaisson”.

    Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Hubble-Wars-Astrophysics-Astropolitics-Two-Billion-Dollar/dp/0674412559/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338904004&sr=1-1

    Some relevant interesting background.

  17. 17.

    celticdragonchick

    June 5, 2012 at 10:03 am

    @chopper:

    Exactly. People in NASA have wondered for decades just how much needless duplication is going on bewteen them and the Air Force wrt space technology.

  18. 18.

    RSR

    June 5, 2012 at 10:05 am

    Rochester, huh?

    I guess a Kodak or B&L project?

  19. 19.

    celticdragonchick

    June 5, 2012 at 10:08 am

    @The Red Pen:

    Yes, the repair thing really sucked.

    I actually watched the launch from my front lawn. Pretty damned cool. Even though I was over a hundred miles away from Vandenburg, it was perfectly easy to see the first stage booster climbing up and then see the seperation to the second booster. The coronal ejection flare at seperation was enormous and filled maybe a quarter of the horizon.

  20. 20.

    meander

    June 5, 2012 at 10:26 am

    Villago Delenda Est Says (@5):

    “Department of Defense, my ass.

    “Department of Spending. Always has been. Priority one: Larding defense contractors with cash. Priority last: the actual people in uniform.”

    You make a good argument, but…. SOLYNDRA!!!!!! Who needs to care about the hundreds of billions wasted, the horrible accounting systems, the campaign finance for contracts corruption, when there’s SOLYNDRA to moan about? God forbid that Issa point his gavel at the DoD.

  21. 21.

    RCH

    June 5, 2012 at 10:27 am

    FYI, NOVA is funded by Lockheed Martin and David H. Koch, as well as the CPB and tote-bagging ‘Viewers Like You’. Koch actually funds a lot of science-related stuff, which is surprising given how much he benefits from public ignorance.

  22. 22.

    MobiusKlein

    June 5, 2012 at 11:23 am

    @Glidwrith: Yes, it does.
    The fact they have two strongly implies there are two more that are even better at spying.

    What does it say about our society that spying on each other is more important than spying on the universe?

  23. 23.

    Tehanu

    June 5, 2012 at 2:19 pm

    @meander:

    It was called the War Department until 1947 or so. I would submit that that was a much more honest name. At this point, since we are spending more on “defense” than the entire rest of the world, I wonder why our “shining city on the hill” needs to defend itself against the rest of humankind.

  24. 24.

    James E Powell

    June 5, 2012 at 3:26 pm

    @Tehanu:

    I wonder why our “shining city on the hill” needs to defend itself against the rest of humankind.

    Everybody knows: it’s because they hate our freedoms!

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - Winter Wren - North of Quebec City (part 2 of 3) - Cap Tourmente and on the way to Tadoussac 2
Image by Winter Wren (5/13/25)

Recent Comments

  • NotMax on Tuesday Evening Open Thread (May 13, 2025 @ 9:18pm)
  • MagdaInBlack on News of the Weird Open Thread (May 13, 2025 @ 9:17pm)
  • Mai Naem mobile on Tuesday Evening Open Thread (May 13, 2025 @ 9:17pm)
  • lowtechcyclist on Tuesday Evening Open Thread (May 13, 2025 @ 9:16pm)
  • Jay on Tuesday Evening Open Thread (May 13, 2025 @ 9:16pm)

PA Supreme Court At Risk

Donate

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
War in Ukraine
Donate to Razom for Ukraine

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Meetups

Upcoming Ohio Meetup May 17
5/11 Post about the May 17 Ohio Meetup

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Hands Off! – Denver, San Diego & Austin

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

PA Supreme Court At Risk

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!