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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')."
Just offshore NASA to India.
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
Incorrect. The JWST hasn't even started major construction, and the estimated (and optimistic) launch date is late 2011.
Hubble is a bird in the hand, and the JWST is two birds flying around in the future, and part of an organization that routinely starts and cancels projects.
Don't count your telescopes before they've hatched.
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?
Oh well, what the hell...
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.
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.
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.
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."
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
This is the only reason NASA would contemplate keeping hubble alive: to appease citizens who want to see pretty pictures.
You can point at the pictures all you want, but the HST is still broken and outdated. Some great research has come out of it yes, but that doesn't mean that it's worth the cost of fixing. Some great research has come out of ground based telescopes too, but they're not as glamorous and don't put out as many pretty pictures for the public to ooh and ahh at. The ground based telescopes is where great research is coming from now, ask an astronomer. They put far less import on saving hubble than the general populace, and they're the ones who actually use it. Hubble is just a public-relations device anymore.
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.
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..
Gaaah! It really cheeses me off whenever I hear this tired old argument. "There are problems here on Earth! We must solve all the world's problems before going into space!"
That's the same as saying we should never do anything in space. The world has had problems for thousands of years, I don't see paradise-on-earth being established anytime soon.
So if you really believe this, let's get serious. Let's stop making movies, since they cost a ton of money and don't contribute to solving the world's problems. Let's outlaw the gambling industry. Let's shut down tourism, too. Let's make people give up their pets -- Americans spend way more on their pets every year than NASA gets.
And of course, the US military budget is about 10X NASA's budget, maybe we should trim *that* back until after we've solved illiteracy, poverty, world hunger, AIDS & cancer, etc.