Which just shows that DOGE is a lie, and not about government "efficiency" or cost savings. NASA is arguably a giant waste of taxpayer dollars. Very little of its activity tangibly benefits the vast majority of Americans, and much of what it does do could easily be replaced with a generative AI model that produces new space pictures for desktop backgrounds. The entire space exploration and manned spaceflight activities could be cut, and no one would notice.
> Ok, you're obviously trolling here. This is clearly bait. But for anyone else reading this:
Only a little. The point is "waste" and "efficiency" are so subjective to be a near meaningless concepts. You could make the same points you did about many of the things Musk wants to cut, but they're not going to resonate to a tech audience like cutting NASA does. It's basically a temple of geek religion.
> NASA's budget for 2023 was roughly $25 billion [0]
That money could fund a lot of housing assistance or healthcare.
Personally, I think the things that "engineers" like should be cut first instead of being protected.
Yeah, it’s also really a drag about how we have technology for crossing oceans and flying through the air. Imagine the savings we could have diverted to the rich if only we hadn’t squandered all of those resources learning how to do that useless stuff. After all, humans were just fine for millions of years before ships and airplanes.
But Musk sells rockets, so it's not waste. QED.