Can someone explain to me how NASA's capabilities got so degraded that their options are now "fascist crackpot nutbar" and "military/aerospace assclowns who seem to be whacking whistleblowers and can't build anything for shit"?
@camerondotca budget cuts and privatization. The stuff NASA produces themselves are still stellar (haha) quality that far surpasses expectations.
@KolaMagpie @camerondotca NASA lost its $125-million Mars Climate Orbiter because spacecraft engineers failed to convert from English to metric measurements.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/mars-climate-orbiter-team-finds-likely-cause-of-loss 
Mars Climate Orbiter Team Finds Likely Cause of Loss
A failure to recognize and correct an error in a transfer of information between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team in Colorado and the mission navigation team in California led to the loss of the spacecraft last week, preliminary findings by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory internal peer review indicate.
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)@GreenFire @KolaMagpie they also built a thing in the 70s that is still phoning home from the depths of space... it all seems better than cowboying up with Musk or Boeing.
@camerondotca @KolaMagpie I didn't mean to defend privatizing public service. I just mainly like to bring that story up as much as possible in order to help drag Ronald Reagan for forcing the USA to abandon the metric system.
@GreenFire @KolaMagpie Fair. It is amazing how many times that the answer to the question "Why is thing X fucked in the USA" is "because of Ronnie".