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

An Example of a Short Sited Administration

[amcdiarmid]

NASA is in a budget crunch. They are going to NOT service the Hubble because its' successor (James Webb) will be up in 4-5 years. But wait, mysteriously, NASA is in a budget crunch and will kill James Webb due to budget priorities.

Or We will send enough troops to beat the Flintstone army, but not enough to keep Bedrock safe and orderly untill we can install a new government in Bedrock.

Duh!

Why NASA?

[HermanAB]

Honest question: Why does the US have NASA? The US Army, Arforce and Navy all have their own space programs, so what is the point of NASA?

A modest suggestion...

[sssmashy]

NASA should hire some of those legendary Russian engineers who kept the Russian space program alive on a shoestring budget, using inelegant but practical solutions like kerosene rocket fuel. They should also hire the entire winning X-prize team. Mothball the shuttle program, focus less on manned space missions, increase R&D co-operation with private companies. Figuring a way to get payload into orbit cheaply should be the main mission.

Yeah, it's always tough to find the money

[Anonymous Coward]

When you need to give:

$700,000 for the Admiral Theater in Bremerton, Washington, despite a $4.2 million privately-funded facelift

$500,000 for the Olympic Tree Program for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

$1,250,000 for Aleutian Pribilof church repairs.

$750,000 for the Ketchikan Wood Technology Center.

$400,000 for a parking lot and pedestrian safety access in Talkeetna (population 300).

$2,500,000 for marijuana eradication.
-----

Priorities, priorities. You know?

Re:Somekind of thingy I don't have a word for

[Quirk]

"Uh you are really overselling the worth of the ISS"

Yes I am, while not wanting to appear flippant, I noted Stonehenge as an example of making a people in the image of an icon or wonder. I'm suggesting we build, and even overbuild, not because it's economically feasible but because it will meld the efforts of several nations in a symbol that transcends political differences. The spinoffs from developing and implementing new and bleeding edge technology are manifold and not always apparent. What I'm suggesting verges on a technological totemism and, as such, may seem bathotic, but I think we are subject to a very primitive brain barely overridden by the executive center of the cortex, and likely to respond very positively to making the ISS a la the Tower of Bable. When has space exploration been an economically driven enterprise? There is probably no similar project in all of history that didn't pork feed contractors.

One of the biggest blunders to come from the baby boomer generation was the demonization of nuclear power and it was extended to the Orion project. It may be that a transnational enterprise would manage to escape the hysteria surrounding nuclear powered spacecraft giving support to Project Prometheus. (It's not uninteresting as an aside that James Lovelock, formulator of the famed, Gaia hypothesis now advocates development of nuclear power because were out of time to search out alternatives in the face of depletion and pollution of oil.)