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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')."
He understands what needs to be done to NASA. I hope they don't delay the Terrestial Planet Finder mission too long, that mission is a very important mission and would probablly get congress to get off their asses and decide to further fund NASA.
Heres to hoping theres a nice earth like planet around 1-3AU from Alpha Centauri A =)
NASA should be privitized. Commerical Satallites already supportly themselves, somewhat, and the rest we can let Richard Branson and John Carmack handle. Why does the already burndened American Taxpayer have to get stuck picking up the tab?
I think we should right now focus on having cheaper access to orbit, a permanent presence on the moon and a fleet of modular vehicles, manned and unmanned, that could be assembled in space for varied purposes.
Science was a only by-product of Apollo.
We need something like Apollo to lay foundations to have more science done later at lower budgets. Until science is no longer hideously expensive, it won't be done.
It gets down to patience, objectives and the will to get from here to there.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
People always suggest "they should privatize space!" but these same people fail to realize a fundemental problem: space is not profitable.
There is very little out there to capitalize on (you know...the root of capitalism?). I don't think people realize how hard it is to travel out there (in terms of size, durability, and other huge problems). What does a company do with space exploration? If the rings of Saturn were made of gold nuggets we would be there. If there where diamons the size of boulders on Mars we'd be there. Unfortunately by all measurements these places are remarkable but not useful for any buisness on Earth.
I don't think you'll have MD, Boeing, Airbus or anyone else lining up to fund their own excursions into deep space because there is simply no money to make out there. Remember that Columbus had a plan to make money before going on his little trip. Expecting companies to explore space just because is unrealistic.
Somewhere along the line, we're going to have to ask ourselves: what is more important? Eating at MacDonalds or watching our coutry nuke the shit out of the moon?
You can look at the most recent Hubble photographs (and a fairly extensive archive) at: http://hubblesite.org/gallery/.
Take a good look at those photos. How would you feel if NASA pulled the plug on such a successful project tomorrow, without a replacement for many years?
I think it would be a terrible shame if such an asset to the space program -- something that has had huge benefits to the world of Astronomy and science -- was just pulled out of the sky because of money troubles. It would be a sad reflection on the world we live in.
I read Toynbee and weird O. Spengler some years ago, along with many other historians but I can't recall a term that represents the construction of monuments to cement nation building.
just my .01 cent.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
I have said this many times before and here I'll say it yet again, and those idiots who called me a conspiracy theorist nutcase should know that they have been yet again blind to the obvious and evident. I have emphatically said before that the Bush administration opposed Hubble on ideaological and electoral basis, and did everything they could to ensure that it won't be serviced, and foresaw that even its successor probably will be aborted (in response to those who aruged Hubble is not being serviced because a successor will be launched). Ever since Galileo warned that the evangelicals want to tell us how the heavens go so that they tell us how to go to heaven, so that we do as they tell us, they have been in fierce opposition to astronomy, the science of the heavens, and for many centuries, from Copernicus to Darwin, the history of secularism had been primarily a history of Astronomy and its conflict with the Church. You still have people of such tenacity that, more than a century and a half after Darwin and nearly 5 after Galileo still insist that God created man and woman 6000 years ago, insist on it being taught in science classes, and send their folks in buses from their megachurches on voting day to elect a president in their image.
It's all done the same way; in much the way that Bush is deliberately running a huge budget deficit to bring down the "welfare state" thanks to fiscal crises he has created, the same was done with NASA. O'Keefe had nothing to do with space; he's a guy from business who joined the Bush administration on its very first day and was sent to NASA to carry out a partisan politics agenda, and he did it to the letter. The manned mission to Mars is simply a huge cost that will keep NASA distracted and in crises such as this one that will force it to cull science programs, in much the same way they plan to cull social security programs, and Bush has already culled 150 social security and welfare programs in his last budget, on the excuse that they can't afford them. Additionally, Hubble is primarily from the liberal state of MD, whereas the missions the Bush administration imposed on NASA are those that will primarily benefit the military-industrial complex and conservative states such as FL and TX.
Sounds like someone is bumping up the extra budget requirements, so that when congress argue and don't give the full request, they're free to actually cancel the projects they weren't really gonna do anyway.
That Mr. Bushie can get $80B to support is evil, immoral, and illegal wars, but NASA can't get $2B to fund crucial missions. We've given up on science that's not used to kill people. What have we become? Maybe someone is afraid of what knowledge NASA might unlock.. some other tidbit to go against creationism ?
Billions of dollars of debt, poor schools, students who can't even read or write. 50% of the working public in LA is illiterate. space is great and all, but we have bigger fish to fry here on earth
Doonsbury used this quote in one of his cartoons with a punchline that it was too bad GWB was apparently a child left behind and was unable to read his Dads book.
Form a post above I learned that Quayle had actually proposed spending half our military budget on space development. Eventhough I probably disagree with Quayle on every other issue he would have received my vote.
And above all about $400,000,000,000 each year for the army..
The really sad part is.. That would probably work better than most other "solutions".
The world is far too preoccupied with the "image" of things, not the substance.
That would make sense, if there weren't any ground based telescopes now that have better resolving power than the hubble.
They can't pick up a few bands that are filtered out by the atmosphere, but you're acting like the hubble is the only worthwhile telescope in the world. The ones in Hawaii look fantastic from where I'm sitting.
AND the Bush administration has increased the budget for the sciences. Doesn't sound like bible thumping fundies to me.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
The United States Army, Air Force, and Navy do have space programs, military space programs. NASA was the only government agency focused on peaceful civilian use of space. Dubya has turned that definition of NASA on its head, however with the extreme focus on unmannned robotic space missions -- which would be based on dual use technology. In effect, the civilian NASA budget has been highjacked by the Dubya regime as another source of funding for the militarization of space. (There is only so much funding that can be hidden from the US Congress (an increasingly redundent governmental appendage) or from the American taxpayer.)
Your explanation is actually very optimistic. It describes an administration with a set (albeit evil) purpose, and, with sheer determination, remarkable acumen and awesome foresight, this demonic plan is achieved.
I think that this is actually giving credit to this bureaucratic mess known as NASA. They haven't been that organized since the Appolo days.
NASA is in survival mode. Its actions are not rational, they are guided by the panic of administrators that see their personal empires crumble.
NASA has admirable engineers and great scientists, but they don't get to make the decisions. Bureaucrats do. Evil geniuses need not apply. Now, on the other hand, if you know someone who can snowjob Congress, they are hiring...
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Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Hey moderators! The parent of this comment may piss people off, but is not a troll. The simple truth is that if you love space you should hate NASA.
In fact most people don't renember back in the 70's when an invenstor wanted to pull together some capital and buy some old Atlas missle shells and turn it into a pivate satellite launch program. Only to have the whole thing administratively killed by NASA.
Also, other countries are building very profitable space programs while the US lingers - even though the US was the first to the moon. This is not an accident, it is because NASA is accountable to non market forces and has gotten in the way of true market solutions or even hybrid solutions.
Do I even need to mention two blown up shuttles, confusing meters with feet on a mars mission, well over a $100 million calibation error on the hubble because no one bothered to check the mirror. Not to mention all the pork in NASA, and how they've underperformed promises by nearly 100% - and no it's not because they're under funded, that might be an excuse for not doing projects, but not one for doing them crappy because of political failures - which ironically happen to be behind most all their major disasters!
If you love space, you should hate NASA, not only because they've constantly underperformed at the taxpayers expense, or because they've made so many deadly billion dollar screwups, but most importantly, they are getting in the way of better solutions. They have been for the last 30 years, think how good things would be now if "space-ship one" type ventures were considered back then and not now! Nobody's going to finance exploring the last frontieer, untill they can first make it the profitable frontier. Space is simply toooooo big to conquer as a cost burden, NASA is more incapable and incompentent of doing space for profit than almost any other orginisation on the planet (or off).
I love science and space, and some of the things NASA has proposed and done are very exciting to me. But please, in the name of God, why are we wasting our resources and hearts trying to fix something that is inherently borken by the very political nature of it's accountabilities. It never ceases to amaze me how desperately people cling to things that simply don't work for the sake of a fantasy that politicians and administrators can somehow work a miracle and fix it. Well WTF! noone ever got into space with an attitude like that!
Wrong question.
The real question is why do the US Army, the Air Force and the Navy have a space program when the US have NASA?
And don't tell me the military are running streamlined, efficient, programs. Been there, sone that. It's the exact same bureaucratic waste, except it's covered by more secrecy, so you don't know about it.
The answer of course is that the military do military things, NASA civilians ones. You don't expect the military to launch satellites monitoring crops, do you?
If anything these operations should be *more* separated. Remember it's the military that insisted on the shuttle always being able to land on US soil - which of course made sense to them - which had effects on design (notably bigger wings IIRC). Then when the result proved less than stellar they happily went back to rockets, and NASA was left with the turd.