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.

[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.

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.

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!)