New NASA Budget Woes

Abcd1234 writes "The last few months have seen NASA the focal point of high drama, the most obvious example being the controversy surrounding the next Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. Well, the drama continues with NASA reporting to a Senate subcommitee that it currently faces a $2 billion budget shortfall which could result in the downsizing, delaying, or outright cancellation of a number of NASA missions, including the Space Interferometry Mission and Terrestrial Planet Finder, which may be delayed, and the James Webb Space Telescope, often cited as the successor to the HST, which faces potential cancellation. Among the reasons for the shortfall: cost overruns in a number of missions, including the shuttle return-to-flight program, resumption of the Hubble servicing mission, and mandated congressional expenditures (a.k.a 'pork')."

Comments

Survivor Mars, The "M" Prize

[Anonymous Coward]

Get NASA on a for profit basis. Create the M-prize. First team to reach Mars and bring back soil samples wins a billion dollars. You film the various teams and require them to film the mission. You get a hit TV series out of the deal and cheap science.

Next season is survivor Afganistan. First team to go in and capture Osam gets a billion dollars. A real bargin and ratings gold. Could save broadcast TV and solve the budgt crisis at the same time! The government is so screwed up outsourcing to entertainment could solve all our problems.

Get with the (space) program, fellas.

[xigxag]

Look, NASA would solve a lot of its budgetary woes if it would just hire somebody professional to come up with names for its various projects. Space Interferometry Mission? WTF is "interferometry"? Sounds like a cancer treatment. "Planet Finder" --- boooring, besides, isn't "Finder" already trademarked by Apple? And who in the tarnation is James Webb? Some hack from the sixties nobody's ever heard of.

Off the cuff, I can think of much snappier names -- "Intragalactic Terrorist Locator" for the planet spotting thingy, "George H.W. Bush Memorial Telescope" should make it politically impossible to cancel the Hubble replacer, and for that Space Interfrazometer Moozit, let's license the sucker to Electronic Arts/Maxis and call it "SIMS in Outer Space."