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NASA In Financial Trouble
JoeGee writes "And it's not the Russian Space Agency. According to the Associated Press, as reported on Yahoo, NASA is looking at 4 billion US dollars worth of budget over-runs through 2006. This isn't surprising, considering the lack of budget increases, and the continued financial pressure.
Never blame on budget cuts that which its more appropriately attributed to mismanagement, miscommunication, and misfortune.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
Looks likes the possibilty of selling trips into space to people in the private sector may become a necessary reality.
It sure sounds bad for NASA, but I'm guessing one of their accountants just swapped a dollar sign with a British pound sign, and their math is off by a few billion.
One one hand, I feel good about this, because it will encourage space exploration in the private sector. If profit-driven research finds new, cheaper ways into space, I might be able to take that tourist cruise before I'm 60.
On the other hand, do we really want corporations in charge of space research?
Lawyer 1: Oh, I'm sorry. You can't launch a ramjet spacecraft because we've patented the math you need to achieve orbit.
Lawyer 2: Yeah? Well your Ion booster-jets are based on our technology. We'll raise our rates so that we can afford to sue you.
Lawyer 3: Well you're all screwed because my company has patented any spaceflight using vehicles constructed on the ground or in orbit.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
The US spends about 1 billion dollars per day on the military. That's what some drunk guy in a bar once told me, and that's a pretty good source.
And when our oceans get seeded with alien life that migrates onto land and reproduces by shooting little hatchlings into us which can't be removed and we aren't able to move into space chandeliers because we don't have the expertise to build them because building space stations were a complete waste of money....what'll that guy be saying then?!
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis hebes
That just happends to be about how much more money I will see every 2 weeks in my pay check after the "tax break"
I can do without the money if it means human curosity can not be fullfilled....
Burn Hollywood Burn
F'ing Bush..
Why dont you complain to the people who allocate the money, ie: your congressmen. Bush tells them what he wants, and eventually signs the bill, but they have the opportunity to control and the policy.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
NASA is and has always been somewhat of a supporting agency to US armed forces, so stuff about its budgeting should be considered along with military budgeting issues.
Remember that Bush is demanding accurate accounting from the Pentagon now about its needs for the year- it won't budget deliberately expecting supplementary spending bills in the middle of the year. Every agency, including NASA, will have to have tight budgets from here on in.
This is a manner of managerial control; without secret expenditures, there can be no secret activity with government money. The same applies to NASA
Nasa's unprecedented reporting of its true budgetary situation fits clearly into political context here. It's jumping the gun with full financial disclosure as well as pressuring congresspeople and scientists who support it to raise more money for next fiscal year, even if it has to function under a tighter accounting.
Of course, this may be the start of more privatization of space. NASA can do much more with private money than it can with public money. Remember a lot of the funds in Iran-contra affair were originally private money.
Goat sex free since 2001
If you read what scientists could have done in terms of real science it'd make you cry.
Then NASA claims Tito can't visit because of safety concerns, concerns cause by, guess what, their unwillingness to train him for two days because they deceided at the last minute they needed to be re-imbursed training costs. Did they think he wouldn't pay? A naked ploy to keep him off the station, which not only backfired, but damaged whatever remaining reputation they had for honesty. They should have said, "We are not going to train you so that we can say it's too dangerous for you to go." instead of coming up with reams of BS.
Money that in 5 years NASA has flopped on this issue totally.
With the ISS, what makes it worse is that NASA has been blaming the russians, when the delay allowed them to catch some HUGE problems, including a return to earth problem with the gear they were sending up. Mix in the most attrocious budget forcasting imaginable, stir in a touch of arrogance and redacted astronought logs, and spit out giant boondogles.
Of course, all this will luke puny when compares to the fortunes spent persuing technicially infeasible missle defense systems.
This strategy to meet President Bush (news - web sites)'s budget would limit the international space station to a crew of three, its current number, rather than the intended six or seven. That would drastically curtail research aboard a laboratory described by NASA as the most sophisticated one ever flown.
Isn't this like the National Park Service's threats to close the Washington Monument in case of budget cuts? Target the most politically popular programs first, so Congress will restore all the money, instead of cutting less important stuff.
Of course, I would think they should cut back ISS as far as possible and use the savings for more unmanned missions around the solar system. But manned flight is popular, so we keep sending 'em up there to do that oh-so-valuable zero-gravity research.
sulli
RTFJ.
I don't think this is a Republican vs. Democrat issue. Neither side is championing space exploration or more NASA funding in anything other than a token way.
One problem is that it isn't as easy to answer the "What's the point?" question as it is for funding for life sciences research like fighting cancer, a vaccine for HIV, etc.
Why explore Mars? Personally I haven't a clue. Why try to find a cure for cancer? Because I might get it. When political pollsters get the mood of people I think Space Research is near the bottom of the list.
... and pray tell me who is going to analyse those Terabytes of data that your multimillion satellite has collected? And no, this is not a SETI@home project as image processing is data-intensive and the datapath and memory hierarchy within a PC is not exactly well tuned for these high throughput systems.
The NSA has similar issues in that irregardless of Echalon, they still need skilled analysts to interpret the information, computer filters notwithstanding. Could you perform a vegetation cover auto-correlation with the spatial extent and connectivity of basin drainage? If so, volunteer your computer and expertise.
LL
Whenever a NASA article comes up on slashdot, the user comments always break my heart.
Fact: Good engineering is EXPENSIVE. Building, testing, and operating a manned spacecraft is a tad more complex than writing a perl script or configuring a linux kernel.
Add to those pressures a dwindling budget (a fraction of what it was during the Apollo era) and very little public support, even from those who would present themselves as forward-thinking technical types, and I'm frankly surprised that NASA's track record in the 1990s was as good as it was.
Alas, I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that modern American culture is probably incapable of supporting a serious and useful space program, and I can only hope that I am still alive, and useful, when other nations get their act together to pick up where we left off.
:Michael
40 years ago, we had a goal, or three. We were in a race with the russians, one that defined america's character, to a point. Space was the newest and niftyist thing out - everything in US culture there for a while somewhat focused around space, and what space could do for them.
Now that group of children have grown up, and as adults, have come to accept space travel as the norm. Nothing special about it, why spend money on it? There arent any more hyped-up goals. There really hasn't been. Closest thing in recent times was the hubble, and most people were too short-sighted to see the benefits of such a device. The IIS isnt generating the kinds of emotions from the public NASA should be looking for.
IMHO, what i think would be nice, to rekindle the "spirt" of the space program - go back to the moon. Go to mars. Send a human bean somewhere beyond the van allen belts, once again. The world has no more great adventures.
Maybe when the children and teenagers of the computer age reach their 30's and 40's, some of their knowledge and wonder generated by their youths will inspire them to create new adventures, and NOT be concerned with the financial aspects of every little thing.
I do agree though with those that say nasa is absorbing a lot of tax dollars - but so is the military (arguably). So are government employee overhead. I bet they all put premium unleaded in their lawnmowers, golf carts, and 400HP marital aids. Space is just one of several budget concerns, but it seems to be the one that always gets the most heat from the public, perhaps since its probably one of the newest broad-categorys of expense, and still considered "newfangled" by 50-something year old people who use GPS mapping, cell phones, satellite television, etc, etc, etc.
Slashdot something useful.
Management is not a tunable parameter.
Don't knock the Mil spending. Its one of the few area's you can get funding for things that look even close to pure research - be that physics, biochem, whatever. It does not _HAVE_ to make a profit - the first time in is always expensive. If your lucky, the tech/knowhow will work its way back into your lives.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Actually, the real goal of NASA is to get to Alpha Centauri before the Zulus do.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Both you and the people who modded you up need need to go back and retake some of your high school civics courses.
The President doesn't just "eventually sign the bill", he also has the ability to veto it. He also has the ability to control administrative policy. All of this gives him emormous leverage over Congress, because he can threaten to veto bills that are highly important to the districts (and thus careers) of individual Congressmen, unless they give him what he wants.
Even in the highly divided Congress we have today, Congress gave Bush most of what he asked for. Clinton was even more effective, considering he faced hostile majorities in both houses.
Whether you are cheering for NASA's demise, or reacting in horror to their budgetary problems, this was Bush's decision. (Or someone he delegated it to.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What good is a baby? they make a mess, they wake you up in the middle of the night, they drain your pocketbook, and all they do is sit there and make noises and mess themselves all day long. I say we kill all the babies, because theyre useless and a huge drain on society. Think of all the other more worthy things people could spend their money on if there werent any babies.
You dont see the value of the ISS now, nobody does, its just been born. The technology will advance, and just as babies grow up to become valuable members of society, the ISS will grow up to become a valuable scientific outpost, if people will keep from offing it.