Plans for International Space Station Cut Back

Sajma writes "Reuters is reporting: NASA and its space partners on Friday approved a scaled-down International Space Station with fewer astronauts and less science so the United States can meet a 2010 deadline for ending shuttle flights, a top NASA official said. Space agencies in Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan gave unanimous approval to a NASA plan that means the orbiting platform, now about half completed, will never become the beehive of scientific and commercial research once envisaged."

Comments

NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[LostCluster]

There's a term in Washinton DC that comes straight into play here. "Unfunded mandate". When a government agency is told it has to do something it doesn't presently do, and not given a matching budget increase to cover the cost of that task, it's a big problem.

One of two things has to happen.
A: Existing programs are going to get slashed in order to move the money from existing projects to fund the new one.
B: The mandated project isn't going to go very well due to having not enough funding to get it done right.

While Democrats get accused of being "tax and spend" types at times, the Bush Administration seems to have taken on a "forget to tax but spend anyway" policy. NASA's budget just doesn't match its assignments right now, and that's what's leading to half-baked projects coming out of there.

NASA's got to get the shuttle program that's currently grounded back on its feet, meanwhile the Hubble Telescope is in need of a scheduled service visit and the IIS isn't completed yet. On top of that, Bush wants them working on a people to Mars project they didn't ask for. The Mars request didn't exactly come with a budget attached...

Would you like your taxes low or would you like NASA funded properly? It doesn't seem like you can have both.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[zors]

Would you like your taxes low or would you like NASA funded properly? It doesn't seem like you can have both.

Does it really have to be an either/or question? Couldn't we cut funding for something else, like say nuclear weapons research/maintenance, ( i mean we could get rid of the nukes, not just stop taking care of them.)? Just get rid of ICBMs all together, i mean, is it all that important that we be able to kill someone in 4 hours instead of 8 hours with a nuclear cruise missile?

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup - NASA. I love the Space Program. As a kid I had astronauts on my walls and lots of Estes model rocket kits. But one thing we need to realize is that NASA is partially a valid science program and partially an ornamental nod to "science". Now science programs have always been the red-headed stepchild of the administration (though this particular administration takes it to new levels), but NASA is the figurehead for "science".

I.e., other programs may suffer, and suffer greatly. But whenever the administration is accused of failing children by not promoting science, they send a chunk of cash to NASA and the defense, er.. space program and can then claim support of science on their annual glossies.

With hundreds of billions of dollars ($650 billion, most recently) going to Defense it's very to difficult to understand why a few hundred million is cut from the budgets to smaller research programs. And I'm not saying a few hundred million to *one* program, but rather, the *entire* budget for all smaller research programs is in the hundreds of millions. You think Microsoft is evil?

So we again cut science budgets -- not only because it clashes with the President's ideologies -- but because it just doesn't add any value to some defense contractor's stock portfolio. On top of that we make the deficit huge, in the *trillions* of dollars. Our kids are going to love us.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Nurgled]

That's true of everything, including things that most consider a lot more important than NASA.

I live in the UK, so there's no NASA to worry about funding. However, it really annoys me when, in the run-up to elections, the political parties start talking about reducing taxes, amongst other things. If the system was running perfectly and there was a funding surplus, I'd say cutting taxes is a good idea, but while hospitals continue to close and downsize, and education funding drops through the floor, we either need to raise taxes or optimise the systems that are in place.

I hear that there are over ten managers per patient in national health service hospitals here. I also see schools wasting money on computers that are five times faster than mine just to run Microsoft Office. The money's going to the wrong places. Either refocus the existing money or increase tax. Those are the only solutions.

This applies to NASA in the US, too. I wish voters would think it through and realise that, until we've got the system working properly, tax decreases are a bad thing, and that they should vote for parties which don't claim they are going to cut tax. That's the problem with allowing everyone to vote, though, I guess!

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it really have to be an either/or question? Couldn't we cut funding for something else, like say nuclear weapons research/maintenance, ( i mean we could get rid of the nukes, not just stop taking care of them.)

The nuclear genie is out of the bottle and here to stay, and there is NO WAY that we should give up our nuclear systems while certain elements of the third world continue to work on theirs. In addition, if Russia happens to fall back into an ultranationalist stance we could be in trouble there.

If you want to cut something, cut the NON-WORKING anti-ballistic missile system that's supposedly going to cost 60 billion dollars. The system testing to date of the aforementioned is so contrived it isn't even funny. I've worked defense contracts just long enough to smell bullshit at 10 miles away.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[smchris]

Does it really have to be an either/or question? Couldn't we cut funding for something else,

Not to bring up the elephant standing in the room or anything, but we _are_ occupying a (now) hostile foreign country larger than California and paying for that on future debt. (And half-ass occupying Afghanistan, which is somewhat less than twice the size of California).

Maybe we should cut local government some more? Like fire, police, schools, libraries? "Spare money" was back in the Clinton surplus. The U.S. doesn't have "spare money" now.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Zeinfeld]

Does it really have to be an either/or question? Couldn't we cut funding for something else, like say nuclear weapons research/maintenance,

Or the $250 billion spent so far on the Iraq war with another $250 billion or so that is going to have to be spent if we want to prevent Iraq being essentially annexed by Iran.

If you look at the federal budget most of it is eaten up by so-called entitlements. The government has to pay pensions, social security, medicare, medicaid come what may and there is not much that can be done to reduce that. Those retirees in Florida are not going to allow their pensions to be cut.

The rest of the budget divides into roughly two halves, military spending and the rest, that is education, health, transport, energy, farm subsidies, corporate welfare, state aid etc.

The military budget itself consists of roughly two halves which we can call the defense budget and the political/corporate welfare budget. The defense budget is the stuff that actually has some military purpose. The political/corporate welfare budget is the bases that are only kept open to keep the local senator happy, weapons systems that the army does not want, planes that the airforce has not asked for and so on.

There are still plenty of $700 hammers and $1,200 toilet seats, in Iraq Haliburton took the spare tires off the brand new Mercedes trucks it was using, when they got a flat tire they just abandoned the truck. Cost plus you know... But the 168 billion overcharged on the fuel contract only shows what happens when they know the administration is deliberately turning a blind eye. The same thing goes on in the US on pretty much every cost plus contract, just not quite to the same extent.

Padding out the military budget with pork is a bipartisan consensus. There are a handful of folk willing to stand up to the waste. John McCain being one of the few, ever since Goldwater the folk in Arizona have not been impressed by polticians who bring back pork anyway.

There was a lot of silly speculation about Kerry choosing McCain as his VP candidate. I don't think it was ever seriously considered. McCain knows he has much more influence as a Senator wielding a swing vote than a VP with a competent President. There is only one job that I think would persuade McCain to leave the Senate and that is the only job that only he can do, Secretary of defense.

ISS: Bad Idea, Bad Policy, Bad Implementation

[reallocate]

>> ... beehive of scientific and commercial research ..."

I'm sure the word "beehive" never appeared in any ISS prospectus. It was, and is, a facility that lacks any single compelling reason to exist.

Except for monitoring long-duration human spaceflight (mimicing the Mir experience), little, if any, of the research conducted on ISS will make human space travel easier, safer, or cheaper. Certainly, nothing will contribute to that objective in a way commensurate with the station's outrageous cost. The station itself is only marginally engaged in space travel, since it does not go anywhere.

The ISS is the product of the ill-informed and, simply, bad space policy that began with Nixon's decision to build the compromised and targetless Space Shuttle in lieu of continuing humam space exploration.

35 Goddamn years....

[gaijin99]

Its been 35 freekin years since we walked on the moon, and look at where we are now. Its as if Colombus had come back to Spain and been told "hey, nice that you found a new continent and everything, but we'd rather sit here with our thumbs up our asses than spend the money to go there".

This is just plain pathetic. There's $135 million for the (proven to be ineffective) "abstenence education" programs, but we can't seem to find the money to maintain NASA at even minimal levels. $200 billion (and rising) for a pointless war in Iraq, but a program that could give the USA a serious strategic and scientific boost gets budget raped. $9.6 billion in tobacco subsidies over the next five years, but screw NASA?

We don't need any furthur evidence that they're smoking crack in Washington people.

35 years ago a human being walked on the moon. Today the furthest we get is Low Earth Orbit. That's bullshit, total bullshit.

Orbiting Space Barge of Death?

[Migraineman]

Mir had been called that at one point, but I think Mir had much more value (and economy) than the ISS. Perhaps we could call the ISS the "Orbiting Space Boondoggle of Death." Barges have a use, after all. The ISS could have been useful, but the reality is that it doesn't *do* anything. I take that back ... it does one thing - it provides a function for the Space Shuttles. So the Shuttles and the ISS are locked in a perpetual self-sustenance loop, one supporting the other, for the sole purpose of maintaining the other's existence. Not a good thing.

While folks may note like ELVs, they're the most economical method for putting payloads into orbit. You aren't carrying around all the Shuttle mass just for the purpose of being able to fly it back.

If we expect to maintain any kind of space presence, our launch structure needs to split the hyu-mohn function apart from the cargo function. Haul the ugly bags of mostly water up in a vehicle designed specifically for that purpose, and only on missions requiring the hyu-mohn presence. Everything else goes up in unmanned vehicles. Screw the "reusable" cargo transport. It's less expensive to build the base vehicle for each launch. The crew transport could be reusable, maybe, but should be optimized for crew functions.

Unfortunately, there's a huge industry that's built up around supporting the Shuttle infrastructure. They're not going to let go of the cash cow without a fight.

We used to have fire but the inventor died

[gelfling]

Why even get out of bed in the morning - what's the point? Oh wait I forgot - these are the people who won't do stem cell research that could cure Parkinson's, diabetes and a host of other horrible diseases because some psychochristians think it's a sin.

Scientifically useless from day 1

[senahj]

There was never any real scientific rationale for the ISS.
It was always a political project in search of justification.

Cassini is significant science. NEAR Shoemaker was significant.
The Mars rovers are significant. Galileo was significant.
Hubble is significant. Stardust is significant.

The ISS is a waste of money.
Bush's "Man on Mars" directive is more of the same, in spades.

NASA's budget is HUGE!

[MG]

Comparing NASA's $15.7 billion to the DOD $400 billion is the wrong comparison. Everything looks small compared to defence.

The budget for the National Institutes of Health is about 30 billion. They fund most of the basic biomedical research. Every university biology department in the US runs off this money.

The budget for the National Science Foundataion is about 6 billion. They fund most of the physical science and mathematical research in the US. They also pay for telescopes and most of the real space research.

In contrast NASA's budget gets us a pointless space station, a broken space shuttle and a few (very expensive) inter-planetary probes. (For example, Cassini cost 3 billion dollars!)

The Real Problem is

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1961, when shit wasn't invented yet and people fought bears for vital food, President Kennedy had the balls to give NASA less than nine years to get to the moon.
In this day and age, when there's metric shitloads of technology all over the place and the internet makes valuable porn as free as air, President Bush gives a trip to mars seventeen years. What a tool.

See, Kennedy had the balls to lay a firm deadline down. "You bitches will put a man on the moon before January 1, 1970 or I will come back from the grave and kick your ass," he said. He knew he was going to get shot. That's how hardcore he was. He also got crazy laid by Marilyn Monroe.

President Bush says, "You ought to think about just possibly putting a man on the moon sometime during this five year period."

President Kennedy showed us that you have to slap NASA around a little bit to get them to do anything worthwhile with manned space exploration. You can't be all lovey-dovey and set long gradual timetables.

And Bush mentions "the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods." So we'll have another Skylab ISS, but on the moon. The only differences will be that it won't crash into Australia like Skylab (it will crash into the Moon instead - that might sound hard to acheive since it would already be on the surface of the moon, but they will find a way to do that), it will leak more than ISS, and since it won't even be international we won't be able to bum rides from the Russians.

If Kennedy was alive in this day and age he would have said, "Fucking NASA, I am still alive in this day and age so you assholes better have a self-sufficient Mars base by the year 2013. Also make me a space elevator. And resurrect Marilyn Monroe." Then NASA would complain that it is not their job to resurrect people and Kennedy would punch NASA in the eye.

I bet the "Crew Exploration Vehicle" thart they are working on is going to blow the fuck up about twenty times too. You can probably trace the suckiness of manned space exploration to the decision to switch from cool names like "Mercury" and "Apollo" to crappy names like "Skylab" and "STS." When the Apollo blew up they fucking fixed it and came home, but when the Space Shuttle gets fucked up they make Powerpoints about it and ignore the problem.