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Galileo Amalthea Flyby Threatened
vince writes "The Galileo spacecraft will fly by Jupiter's moon Amalthea on November 5th. This is the *only* close flyby of this moon Galileo will make, but (as currently planned) it will not return any images, in order to save a paltry $1m - $1.5m. Looks like a grassroots campaign is going to be necessary to save the flyby."
Why are we building the International Space Station? The only reasons I can see are political. NASA, although it was started for political reasons (JFK could have cared less about the moon, he just wanted to be the russians), is an agency based on the advancement of science. Scientific gain should be the determining factor of whether or not a project goes forward. The ISS appears to have no scientific gain for the US or the rest of the world.
What new information about space and Earth can we learn through ISS that we haven't already learned on Mir and Skylab and continue to learn using new and old satellites?
ISS is a huge project. For what purpose of discovery? None. The Space Shuttles are having problems, projects to create new vehicles to replace the space shuttles have been cancelled.
In short, every year NASA is asked by Congress to do less and less science and more and more ISS. ISS costs tons of money but even though Congress insists that it be built they continue with huge cuts to NASA's budget every year.
It's time to start giving NASA the funding they need and let them work on science not politics.
I'm starting a company Spamassassin to sell a webmail service, like hotmail, but with spam filtering done on our servers.
A paltry $1m would go a hell of a long way, so if you're stuck with an over-burdened bank account, drop me a line. Until then, let's realize how much money a million really is.
It's this kind of attitude that has our national budget back in the red.