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NASA Cancels Missions After All
jd writes "Barely a day after NASA chief Dr. Griffen swore blind that projects might be frozen but not cancelled due to the new priorities and budget constraints, news comes of a new asteroid mission that has been cancelled due to the new priorities and budget constraints - something Dr. Griffin did not mention in his earlier comments. The visit to two asteroids, short about $90 million, was completely abandoned according to NASA, with no possibility of revival. In consequence, smaller missions are reportedly feeling at much greater risk."
Technology should move at the speed of profitability, not humanity's best interest.
And this is exactly why there are no more antibiotics on the horizon -- much more profit in Viagra.
Sorry, government should (IMHO) take charge in those areas where something is in humanity's best interest, but is not yet profitable. Once things are profitable, the gov't can get out of the way. Private industry is too focused on short-term profit to care much about anything else.
Anyway, he had Peggy Noonan on his show a few weeks ago, who was a speechwriter for Bush and Reagan, amonst other republicans. She was mentioning how during Bush's 2004 campaign she took a leave from her job at Wall St. Journal to work for Bush's re-election. Colbert immediately responds with "Which of Bush's many achievements made that worthwhile?" And she couldn't say anything but just smirk. She didn't even attempt any talking point of one thing Bush did, it was pretty awesome seeing her pretty uncomfortable she was in even trying to list something positive Bush achieved.
make world, not war
I worked at JPL this summer and you're absolutly right.
JPL is special in that it is run by the California Institute of Technology for NASA. JPL employees are employees of Cal-Tech, not the federal government.
JPL is much more focused and efficient then any other NASA center, and it shows. It's also the only place in the US where a space mission can go from concept, to detailed design, to fabrication, launch from KSC, and then operations are at JPL as well. End-to-end inside the JPL fenceline.
That's a bit of an exaggeration... NASA's share of the federal budget is roughly 15 billion dollars. The DOD gets 475 billion. That's closer to the neighborhood of 30 times. It's worth mentioning that the executive branch gets 25 billion a year though; About the same as the legislative branch, the judicial branch, and NASA combined... Limos and jets cost more than shuttle missions apparently.
I think you're really missing a very large point about what the government is for, and what private industry is for. Private industry is really great at putting money in forseeable goals where profit can be made. It's really bad at funding basic research in areas where there's no clear profit to be made. It's also really bad at developing anything that benefits everyone as a whole, but can't be charged for. 100 years ago what corporation would have wanted to fund some patent clerk who didn't even do any experiments and just wanted to think about the nature of light? But yet now our entire view of the Universe is different, and many of the devices you use every day rely upon an understanding of relativity.
The problem (as far as a corporation is concerned) is that in science you don't always know what you're going to find out before you find it out. Weird problems in one area can lead to huge advances of knowledge in something that's completely unrelated. That's why it's best for the government to continue funding this basic research, since it's the people that're going to eventually benefit from it, or maybe never benefit from it. What corporation wants to fund experiments counting the number of Neutrinos (very weakly interacting particles that have no forseeable practical applications) that come from the sun? No corporation in their right mind is the answer. They'll never make back money invested in it. But yet that very experiment has led to big developments in the understanding of particle physics. We now know that neutrinos have mass, and oscillate between the different types of them. And even this knowledge has no practical applications of it at all. Might it someday? Maybe, then again maybe not.
Really, the big problem with a Mars mission is you're going to waste a lot of money on one big project that could produce a LOT more scientific results if used in 100 other small projects. You'll probbably gain some technology along the way, but what do we really expect to gain scientifically from a manned Mars mission? Maybe we'll find life on Mars, and learn more about planetary geology. Is that worth scrapping all the other smaller missions? I don't think so.
What worries me about the manned Mars mission is the vast majority of the money is going to go to private industry to develop technology only suited to going to Mars. That's great if you think Science is just about making the world like Star Trek, but it isn't so good if you think science is about learning things about our universe. Don't get me wrong, I think the manned missions have some importance. I just don't think that importance overshadows the science that Nasa (and really hardly anyone else) produces.
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