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NASA Proposes Ending Voyager
darylb writes "NASA is proposing ending the 28-year old Voyager program, which costs a paltry $4mil per year to operate. One of the two Voyager probes is approaching the edge of what can be thought of as the sun's atmosphere (where the solar wind bumps up against interstellar wind), a place where no probe has gone before. Canceling this project means saving almost nothing compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars spent so far. The craft will be out of juice by 2015 in any case, so the marginal cost for the extra, invaluable, data would be minimal." From the article: "NASA officials said the possibility of cutting Voyager and several other long-running missions in the Earth-Sun Exploration Division arose in February, when the Bush administration proposed slashing the division's 2006 budget by nearly one-third -- from $75 million to $53 million."
If fans of Enterprise can scrape up money to try and save a show, surely there is no
problem getting a few thousand geeks to "buy" Voyager from NASA.
GWB talks about this great "Ownership Society", well, here we go!
I, for one, would pay a few bucks to own a peice of history.
My great-great-great grandkids will be safe when Vger comes back because
they own it. Vger wouldn't kill it's owners, would it??
What a brilliant example of farsightedness on behalf of the Bush administration; or better, a brilliant example of the lack thereof. :-(
...) in a decade or two?
We want to have a manned mission to Mars, but we don't want any exploration of what else is out there in our solar system...
Spending billions of Dollars in the hunt for non-existent WMDs, instead of spending a couple of millions on the exploration of something that DOES exist. (I would think that all the extra congressional and presidential work in the Schiavo case probably cost more than what Voyager would cost for a year)
On the other hand - being European, I would wish ESA *had* funds like for the number of projects that NASA still has the money for...
I wish, someone would try and clue in politicians on both sides of the Atlantic!
I think, the Indians might be the ones doing it right - they are trying their first space missions, but unlike the others before, they are from the start trying to keep them on a tight budget (given that the country has a huge growth, but not too much "left-over" money for things like space programs). In a couple of decades, when India might be in a position to seriously fund space programs, their "budget" experience might really come in handy to make the most of their money for the space projects... Will they be the next big space nation and out-do the "modern" world (US, Europe, Russia,
Bush threatens to cut funds to show how tough he is.
NASA threatens to cut good programs to call his bluff.
Unfortunately, the Bushies have no sense of proportion and will be quite happy to carry thru with their cuts. It will be up to Congress to save these programs, but again, the Bushies are just stupid enough to let the program sink to show who's who.
Infuriate left and right
Thankfully that's fewer tax dollars spent on a program that is easily funded by private dollars. We've seen numerous slashdot articles in recent months that prove that our public dollars should no longer be used for advancing scientific studies outside of our atmosphere.
I'd like to see Congress draft a few bills canceling the old laws on the books that prevent private companies from spending their dollars finding new ways to space.
Virgin Galactic, anyone?
Canceling this project means saving almost nothing compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars spent so far.
The amount of money spent so far has nothing to do with whether we should spend more money. Spent money is gone, no matter what we do. New expenditures should be evaluated on their own merits.
I would agree, however, that this seems like a project worth continuing.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
I guess I haven't been keeping up on the journals. What have been the great new discoveries?
Didn't Bush last year propose sending humans to the moon and then mars? And his follow up budget proposes budget cuts to accomplish this?
Did someone explain to those guys that Jules Verne's book is Science Fiction?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Or basically sell off the project to an appropriate "qualified purchaser". Japan wants to get their space program going-perhaps their government would like to take over the Voyager project. The EU might be another option here. For that matter, some of the oil rich states have some interest in basic science. Even Singapore could take this one on-it would be nice world-class project for a city-state. Gates or Ellison(for that matter most of the richest 500 people in the US) could do this if they were seriously interested in space. I can imagine some of the larger private foundations might be interested to.
Just a quick not-well-thought-out idea, but what about trying to turn this over to the public, maybe some sort of amateur consortium -- some sort of "open source science". I'm sure they've got huge amounts of data on these little guys, is it accessible? Does anyone have a tutorial for macgyvering a 386, a microwave and some tinfoil to send/receive Voyageur instructions?
and now back to the fallout shelter...
There must be some way, if the right people were agreeable, to turn this into some kind of open source, "amateur-run" science project. I'm guessing the gathering of data is the expensive part -- time on the receivers large enough to gather the puny signal.
Optimist says glass is half-full; Pessimist says glass is half-empty; Dynamist takes a drink.
If the axe must fall why not see if other countries with growing space programs will assume the expense and carry on the mission. Of course there would be security and other transition issues, but if we can put a man on the moon...
"Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology" -- Search and Destroy -- Iggy Pop
If that 75 million figure is correct, I'm sure there would be quite a few takers in the private sector. I mean Mark Cuban paid 280 million for a basketball team for crying out loud. How cool would it be to have a space exploration division, complete with working rockets!
-Ryan C.
Reminds me of the Stephen Baxter's novel Voyage, where after the Apollo landings, NASA concentrates on a manned Mars mission.
Everything is sacrificed on the altar of Mars. There was no Pioneer, no Voyager, no Hubble, etc...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Voyager effectively uses "spare time" on the DSN, although we do still pay for it. Consequently we don't get full coverage but about 12 hours a day, although this varies...
1st the replacement shuttle would have been here already. Lockheed HAD a working prototype but the complete morons went with the vaproware that did not even have REAL plans drawn up and then had huge overruns and then scrapped.
Heads should have rolled on that one. Choose the working one or the.... OOOOHH SHINEY PICTURES!!!!!
4 mil for 10 employees on a project like this sounds about right.
;) Your loan repayment will probably be something like 125m$; that'd be around 5m$/yr for total comm hardware costs. We're up to 7.5m$. Add in any other hardware costs they might encounter (for example, rent on supercomputing work to process the data, or whatnot), additional services that they need to pay for from other departments, travel, unlisted managerial overhead, etc, it's not too hard to come up with 10m$/yr.
10 employees, all likely with PhDs, underpaid (like NASA tends to), would be perhaps 65k/yr each ->650k$. Benefits and personel costs will at least double this, probably pushing up somewhere around 1.5m$. IT costs, office rent, power, and other "basics" will put this somewhere around 2.5 m$, possibly more.
Of course, I'd suspect that the most expensive part will be rent on their comm equipment. Here's where I wish I had my partner, who is studying to be an actuary, with me. Your communications hardware will probably cost somewhere around 50m$ in terms of capital costs, with operating costs of perhaps 1m$/yr. Lets assume a repayment time similar to the operating time, and put that number at 30 years. Lots of assumptions here, I know
What a crazy random happenstance!
Its particularly sad turn-off the magnetospheric spacecraft, since the magnetospheric is such a complex system and being able to collect data from mulitple spacraft is so vital to understanding the system. Though the instruments on spacecraft do degrade over time, I know that the Polar spacraft, for exaple, is still collecting useful data. it is still being used in multi-spacecraft studies, along with newer spacecraft like Cluster, to better understand the magnetosphere.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
Amen. Comparing NASA's budget to the DoD's is like looking at an ant standing next to a human - especially when you consider that a lot of military expenditures aren't included (veterans benefits aren't included, wars are all "supplimental", nuclear weapons are in the DoE, most national debt was incurred to pay for military activity, etc)
Of course we need a military. I'd say "of course we need a strong military" as well. But spending almost half of the world's total, while our nation's scientific organizations get the scraps? That's wrong.
What a crazy random happenstance!
I'm not talking about donating cash, but donating time/equipment.
I mean, Voyager is out there right, it's still sending data back no matter what. If NASA cancels the project, the data will still be coming back...I mean, they don't send a janitor out there to switch it off.
So is it so out of the question that people get together some dishes...probably cheap ones laying around that the small digital dishes put out to pasture...and grid them together to get the signal. THEN collect the data? Is that at all possible?
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
but you pick some programs to cut from that budget
Easy: cancel the ISS, cancel the entire shuttle program, and cancel manned trips to moon and Mars. NASA would then have plenty of money to do real science and to work in peace on better propulsion systems.
Revisit manned space travel in another decade or two, when we have the technology to do a good job at it, developed as part of unmanned space travel and advances in other fields.
In my home skool district, they cut everything ELSE in order to keep the sports and music programs alive. If you didn't play basketball or sing in chorus, you were NOTHING, and it didn't matter what your interests were - there was no funding to cover them. Funding for art was cut year after year after year - to the point where the single art teacher was split between the high school and the elementary school. Art wasn't offered as an option after 9th grade - if you were, gods forbid, good at art and not much else, you had to fight tooth and nail to get any kind of classes after 9th.
Of course, this is also the same district with a teacher that kept me on the demerit (disqualifies you from ALL after-school activities, including sports) list for six months because she thought I "wasn't trying hard enough"... nevermind my C average in the class or the fact you had to be D or lower to get listed.
What's the personal benefit you get from the stupid war?
Such an array would give you enough resolution for the job. The collecting area wouldn't be so hot, but provided you had the resolution AND provided there wasn't much else in that direction, it might be doable.
The probe that landed on Titan was designed to broadcast only as far as the Cassini probe. The signal wasn't pointed at Earth, was intended to be a fairly tight transmission, so the bleed-off wouldn't have been that great, and no doubt had plenty of other design features that would have made Earth-based reception a very tough problem. The signal was picked up directly by Earth-based receivers, when one of the receivers failed on Cassini. The signal was perfectly good.
We're talking about a signal AIMED at Earth and designed to REACH Earth. In other words, it should be a much easier problem to pick up the signals and interpret them.
Even if a totally amateur effort wasn't going to work, it would be an excellent way to test signal processing systems on new designs of radio telescopes, such as the truly gigantic hectare array. It would also be good for practice material for Universities who can afford to rent a little dish time on something like Jodrel Bank, and would allow them to get the data with a fraction of the effort.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Your communications hardware will probably cost somewhere around 50m$ in terms of capital costs, with operating costs of perhaps 1m$/yr. Lets assume a repayment time similar to the operating time, and put that number at 30 years. Lots of assumptions here, I know ;) Your loan repayment will probably be something like 125m$; that'd be around 5m$/yr for total comm hardware costs. We're up to 7.5m$. Add in any other hardware costs they might encounter (for example, rent on supercomputing work to process the data, or whatnot) . . .
What on Earth (or not on Earth) are you talking about? NASA does not take out loans for comm equipment - it is paid for up front through appropriated funds or budgeted yearly as a cost for payments to foreign ground stations. Nor do they use rented supercomputers to process telemetry. Landsat data is processed by commodity Linux hardware/software. EO-1 data is processed to Level 0 on a freakin' DEC Alpha box.
Despite the stereotype that some people like to present, NASA does not generally throw money around like a drunken sailor. Once the data is captured, processing can be done on anything with enough bits. The missing monetary piece is mostly the cost of data capture and storage/archival of the raw and processed data - it's not free, especially when you take the mandated backups into account. This is a subject that is going to bite us more often in the future. How much effort and cost are we willing to expend to protect data, especially historic data? The archives are growing every year, and the cost goes up, generally borne by federal agencies, including NASA.
Another piece of MISSING math is that the town sustained itself at the previous level nicely. However as the town grew and the TAXED income did as well what happened to THAT money? The town grew by 4x yet the income of the town stayed at the same level? That is not possible.
For example in my town they increased property taxes by about 500 per household (almost a doubling). Now the amount they were saying they would need by MY math would be covered just by the one neighborhood I live in. Yet they increased the whole town. They have also in that time anexed large areas. Where did the extra go? Then in 3-4 years they will be saying 'woppsies' we are short again...
One of the parents of this thread is right. This is just a diversionary ploy. Most of that equip was probably amoratized YEARS ago. Yet they still 'pay' for it. Its the goverment either they own it or they don't. Then if they do not well maybe it is time to turn it off. We will find out what the edge of the magnetic sphear is later. Do not think it is totaly pertinant right now. NASA needs to FOCUS on what it is doing. They have become a bunch of little underfunded programs. They need a FOCUS. Like 'put a base on the moon by X' everything else can wait. They have stalled out.
Follow the money people! You will quickly see what is going on! You are being RIPPED OFF. Think of it as you are BUYING a service. What are you getting for your money. I would be willing to bet cold hard cash you can not even come close to figuring it out. Also no one would be able to figure it out for you as they do not WANT to know.
$22 million is pocket change for a huge number of private americans, let alone for thousands of corporations. I just cannot believe that a project with such a huge public profile (even non-nerds have heard of Voyager) could be axed to save crumbs.
NASA does not have much discretion over how to spend allocated funds. Congress pretty much tells them how to spend it because it is all earmarked by our nasty pork-for-my-district budget process, and if the President convinces Congress to follow his budget guidelines, NASA will have no choice except to choose which programs to kill while dumping billions into the voyage-to-Mars fantasy. If it seems cynical, it's because it is and because it's true.