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Hubble Upgraded; NASA's Future Not So Bright
jokrswild writes: "After 5 space walks and 172 million dollars, Hubble has been successfully redeployed. Hopefully it will be able to amaze us yet again in its abilities to capture the unimaginable." And Captn Pepe writes: "Space.com has a couple of articles regarding what the Congressional Research Service and what NASA's new chief administrator have to say about the space agency's future plans and prospects. The short version is, don't hold your breath for a Mars mission."
Ok, let's say you're an elected member of congress. How would your constituents like you to prioritize the following:
A. Fight Terrorists
B. Fix Economy
C. Teach Our Children
D. Fight Crime
E. Cut Taxes
F. Reduce deficit/Debt Reduction
G. Explore Mars
Assuming you don't have enough money for everything, what do you leave out?
If you want NASA to go to Mars, I'd suggest you help the Chinese do it: The only thing that might sway congressional self-interest is competition. Nothing took the wind out of NASA's sails like the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Washington state residents have voted TWICE in a row now to cut taxs seriously.
Yeah, I live in Yakima, WA. Those idiots!
Initiative 695 made all license tab fees go to $35 per year.
Quite a few shortsighted idiots in Washington thought this: "Hey, I pay 200 dollars for my tab! This is going to take it to $35. Wowee!! I don't know where the money for roads, local governments, and subsidies for my job will come from, but who cares, $35!!!"
People seem not to understand that if taxes are cut, the gov't won't be able to provide all the services their used to.
But anyway, no matter how much food we give to africa, a many will still be starving. Just think of what happened in Somalia. Corrupt gov'ts and militias take the food and the people still insist on having a lot of kids. Do you know that there is an average of 6.5 children per woman in Nigeria!! If you live in a famine and drought-stricken nation, you should know that there is not enough food for everyone to have 6 kids!!!!
NASA's budget is tiny compared to our oversized military. They spend a billion dollars on every friggin' stealth bomber! And bush wants to buy 45 more stealth bombers! A series of missions to mars (using the inexpensive Mars Direct plan) would only take 20 billion dollars. That's less than half the cost of Bushes' recent order of stealth bombers! We could easily cut military spending by 1% and that would give NASA plenty of money.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
NASA is held publicly accountable for their research, but the military (who has n times the NASA budget) has had many more disasters.
Difference is, we don't get to hear about many of the military cock-ups - National Security, and all that.
Research is always going to have a certain fraction of experimental failure in it. It's the nature of the beast.