Gregory's ServerI was curious, so I looked up NASA's budget over time. For once I don't think we can actually blame Reagan for that budget cut. JFK gets the budget rising, LBJ sees the budget peak and start falling, then Ford and Nixon preside over it continuing to fall and level out and then every subsequent administration except Bush Sr lets it shrink.
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I've heard that theory posed before. I'm a little skeptical just based on the fact that the Soviet Union seems to be a credible threat in the popular imagination until 1989 and coked up finance bro is kind of THE meme of the 80s and wages get decoupled from productivity well before 1989. That I could potentially see agreement with, but it necessarily says the outward perception of the power of the Soviet Union differs from the power of a spectre of communism, at least as it pertains to the US domestic sphere. That makes some sense too given radical organizations that draw inspiration from the Soviet Union seem to be in relatively bad shape by the early '80s, but I'm not as well informed on that era so I could just be wrong about the facts on that. @Matt5sean3 @chrisisgr8 I was born in 70. It's a bit more adjacent to me. Something I feel (felt as a child?) more than know for sure. @Matt5sean3 @LeftistLawyer @chrisisgr8 the soviet union never ceased to be a credible threat. For those of us who live anywhere east of Berlin, that is. |
@Matt5sean3 @LeftistLawyer @chrisisgr8 Recall that Nixon hated Kennedy, so when budget concerns threatened Apollo 18 and 19, well, that was an easy decision for Nixon to make.
Then the shuttle program came along like an industrial money vacuum hose, and Carter didn't really care about the space program, and Reagan's only semi-creative space thought was Star Wars, which was a defense program. Sigh.....