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U.S. Satellite Programs in Jeopardy of Collapse
smooth wombat writes "A committee of the National Academy of Sciences, headed by Richard Anthens, has warned that 'the vitality of Earth science and application programs has been placed at substantial risk by a rapidly shrinking budget.' The list of Earth-observing satellite programs affected is a long one and includes satellite programs which observe nearly every aspect of Earth's climate. A delay in launching a replacement satellite or the disabling of a current satellite without a replacement could mean that data necessary to monitor or predict an upcoming event would be severely restricted. For its part NASA says that tight budgets force it to cut funding for all but the most vital programs. 'We simply cannot afford all of the missions that our scientific constituencies would like us to sponsor,' NASA administrator Michael Griffin told members of Congress when he testified before the House Science Committee February 16."
$400 billion for the Iraq war. All of it pissed away and probably actually hurt our efforts on the war on terror. By comparison, NASA's budget is only $16 billion per year.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
The first thing I thought when I read the title was that, yet again, people were cancelling missions because they had no "obvious benefit" or some such nonsense, completely missing the point that science for science's sake has often lead to many of the greatest breakthroughs in science history.
However, I realised that they're not just cancelling missions that are trying to learn more generally, they're cancelling missions that have immediate and obvious benefits: weather monitoring to try and help avoid natural disasters, studying global warming and suchlike.
What ARE the Americans playing at? This seems to me to be a very foolish course of action, these problems will not go away if we're blind to them...
Not only the $400B, we have to keep paying into the future - soldier's benefits aren't cheap plus the soldiers wounded are a long-term (rightfully so) expense as well and veteran's benefits make up a significant portion of the yearly budget and is not part of the military budget itself.
All of that, so we could show the world how awesome our toys are. Oh, and spreading democracy throughout the world.
So, we might be losing the ability to track dangerous weather systems, monitor volcanic activity and study the effect of humanity on the planet due to the demands of "scientific constituencies"? What exactly is a "scientific constituency"? The reporter/editor should have clarified this.
Or is this more of a situation where the sexy projects (travel to the Moon and Mars) are taking precedence over real science? And why doesn't that surprise me?
I'm not sure I could find where in the U.S. Constitution Congress is allotted the money or power to launch golf carts for a billion dollars.
Without even being American, I'm pretty sure that if you restrict the government to only the things expressly allowed in your constitution, you'd end up with being fifteen acres of the poorest hippies ever to own a printing press. You _are_ aware, are you not, that things like highways, fire brigades, the CDC or indeed a standing army are not covered by that constitution of yours?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
All those pesky earth-science satelites keep on reporting that the globe is heating up and stuff. Why would we want to hear that? That doesn't fit with our politics at all!
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
The funding will come, unfortunately it is all how you classify it.
A scientific satellite to help observe global warming? NOT in this administration! They don't even want to acknowledge that global warming is happening, let alone help observe it.
If this upsets you, I suggest you vote for a President that actually cares about Science.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Cost of war in Iraq: 245.727 billion
NASA's 2006 Budget: 16.656 billion
Glad to see my government has no problems blowing 14 years worth of operating expenses on something that by all appearances will never have a positive outcome, while letting vital programs for all of earth collapse.
That will not be a problem because Bush keeps cutting Veteran's benefits, to the tune of over $14 Billion since he took office.
Support our troops indeed.
You say you want a revolution....
Hmmmm... Let me see... There's this...
... We (he) was in it for his Oil buddies. Now that he is a LAME DUCK president he can virtually spout off about whatever...
"the desire to explore and understand is part of our character," President Bush Wednesday unveiled an ambitious plan to return Americans to the moon by 2020 and use the mission as a steppingstone for future manned trips to Mars and beyond.
AND
President Bush's Jan. 14 speech painted broad brushstrokes of his plan to put humans back on the Moon and send them to Mars.
Oh but that was back in 2004, right, trying to get more "techies" to vote for him...
And NOW, as most of us have always know is TRUE color...
Disgruntled members of a congressional oversight committee objected Wednesday to a White House budget plan that threatens to cripple NASA's unmanned space programs and Earth and aeronautics research, President Bush's plan instead emphasizes sending American explorers back to the moon by 2018.
Budget cuts for 2002
Elsewhere there is talk of a 1% increase in NASA's budget for 2k7 but this is NOTHING compared to the slash to the budget that Bush dealt NASA when he first took office because he "needed" that money for the military we would later use to attach the middle east...
Hmmmm... Nice Logic! Instead of looking FORWARD back then... and looking into alternative fuels, the future, and Space
But that's ok, it's obvious at this point that most Americans have a short attention span and don't really delve deeply. At least the "red" ones.
What ARE the Americans playing at? This seems to me to be a very foolish course of action, these problems will not go away if we're blind to them...
Well, the reasoning is pretty clear, if you accept one premise: anything the private sector might the government ought not do. By this way of reasoning, government weather monitoring, morally speaking, tantamount to theft of potential profits from private parties.
I'd posit, I hope in an impartial way, that acceptance of this precept is the greatest difference between the conservative and liberal theories of governance.
An alternative precept is this: the government should do any activity where, on the whole, the public benefits more from government participation than government non-participation. This is a liberal viewpoint. To represent the conservative viewpoint fairly, conservatives don't say this is false, but it is true only in a tautological sense. They believe that in any case where the private sector participates to some degree in an activity, public sector participation a priori impledes the progress of the public good. This means it is never the case that government activity in spheres the private sector is interested in does the public good, people of a conservative bent can hold both premises consistently.
Of course, these are caricatures of liberal and conservative thinking. Most thoughtful people don't reason exclusively from first principles to specific situations, but make allowances for exceptional circumstances.
In any case, while one might violently disagree with government policies of the left or right, the stupidity if it exists doesn't necessarily lie in the process of reasoning, but the first principles from which that reasoning proceeds.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The hilarity of Dubya talking about Mars landings and moon bases, all while mismanaging the federal budget and slashing science programs, was a welcome distraction at the time. I remember thinking, "This guy believes that humans are biologically separate from the animal kingdom, and that at least two-thirds of his constituents are going to Hell after they die, and now he's on the side of science?"
I just wish this expectation of failure made acceptance of the President's failures easier to deal with. Perhaps soon we can put a government in power that works to make America competitive in the science and information-dominated industries of the 21st century, rather than a government that pays lip service to this concept.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
Why should someone in California pay for a highway in Illinois? Why should someone in Miami pay for a fire in Denver?
Because the one thing you rugged rocky mountain individualists, Randroids, and libertarians in love with your own wallets don't understand is that we aren't just Californians or Illinoisans. We are not a Confederacy, no matter how much the Dixiecrats running the country want that to be.
We are Americans, E Pluribus Unum. Helping Californians helps me. If I help pay to fix earthquake damage in California, they help pay to fix tornado damage here. That way neither of our economies is overly strained. And that benefits us all.
"Asking me to pick up the tab for your toys, against my will, is really not acceptible anymore to me."
So move elsewhere. Or work to get someone else elected.
I never drive, I only use the trains. I therefore think that all funding for highways should be cut. I mean, private industry will pick up the slack, right? Anyone who drives can choose to send a few bucks to their favorite highway maintenance organization, right?
"A great majority of the citizens of the State are so far in debt that there is no likelihood of escaping it in their lifetimes, so the citizens push the debt off to the next two generations."
Personal debt has more to do with people not spending within their means, and being ecouraged to enter into bondage with the credit companies. It doesn't tie in so well with government debt, you are conflating the NASA budget with Social Security, etc.
"I don't see any public interest achievements in NASA, and I definitely don't see why NASA or the U.S. government needs to be handling any scientific research"
Then open your eyes. Or read more history of science. One of NASA's roles is to create new markets -- for example, without NASA, there wouldn't be a market for commerical satellites.
"It is time to just end the program entirely and leave it up to a competitive marketplace. There are enough billionaires with money to spend, let them finance these toys strictly for ego"
What competitive marketplace? There is no market yet. Government has always acted to open new markets, which is what NASA is all about.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The Iraq war and even budget cuts have nothing to do with this. These satellite programs aren't getting cancelled because the budgets are being cut, they are getting cancelled because they have long since exceeded their budgets and then some.
The US satellite industry has self-destructed. At one time, not very long ago, if anyone in the world wanted to launch a satellite, they went to the US. Now, they go to the Europeans. Why? US companies didn't want to bother with little commercial satellites. They wanted contracts in the $billions. Even if these big government projects fail and get cancelled, they are still more profitable than the commercial contracts.
Increasing funding won't do a thing except waste more money. We need to stop measuring our performance by how much money we spend! How about measuring by how effective we are?
Eventually, of course, the government will wise up and stop bankrolling these billion dollar boondoggles. They will just buy data from the European and Asian satellites. But, of course, that won't happen until at least next quarter, so party on!
Least successful war? I nominate three others...
Vietnam, which we LOST. Many more allied casualties than this war, war aims not achieved, one million Vietnamese dead.
Korea, which was a DRAW. Also many more casualies than this war, war aims not achieved, barely held on to S. Korea, lots of Koreans dead.
The War of 1812, which we LOST. Washington DC sacked and burned to the ground. More American casualties than this war, and signifiant homeground damage due to British invasion. Oh yeah, and it made Andrew Jackson the indian-killing moron a war hero.
I might also mention the American Civil War, but at least a few good things came out of that one. Also some bad things, like one out of three American males dead. But hey, who's counting?
If you calculate the cost of these wars in constant dollars, some of them, particularly Korea if you include reconstruction (which I assume people are including in the Iraq cost), approaches the current cost of the Iraq War. It is likely that before the end, the Iraq War and reconstruction will end up costing more than Korea, but not by much.
Now, I think that the Iraq War is an expensive and miserable failure, same as the next guy, but hyperbole really weakens the case, don't you think?
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Wow.
What I don't understand is why there isn't more alarm in the USA about this situation. From my studies of economics I have come to understand that we don't really understand economics - for every economist that says the debt in the USA is a big problem, you can find another that will say it's not a problem at all. Conclusion - we don't know. However, as a biologist I do understand that graphs like this one generally indicate that a big change is about to happen:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/history.gif
Meanwhile in many sections of Iraq, people have their first clean water, their first reliable electricity, their first real sewer system, ever. Hundreds of schools, dozens of hospitals exist where no service was available for at least 20 years.
That's great. Why should I have to pay for it? Why should my friends and relatives have to go die for it? I don't give a flying fuck about the Iraqi people, frankly. There are kids here in the US who aren't getting a decent education or nourishment. I have relatives who can't afford good health care, in the most wealthy society on the planet.
Where are all the islamic countries and their aid? Why is it the job of the US to police the world and free the oppressed people (as long as there is some supposed long-term strategic value to doing so)? Look at what's happening in Sudan. Why aren't we sending in the troops? Oh, right... No strategic interests in that part of the world.
People like you make me crazy. Either you're insulting my intelligence by trying to divert my attention with emotional rhetoric, or you're just stupid. I wish the Bush Administration would just have the balls (hear that Rummy?) to just fucking say what they're doing, and why. "We believe that having a friendly country in the middle east will be in our long-term interests. So we took out an unfriendly despot in a country that wasn't particularly liked by its neighbors (a bunch of slightly more friendly despots). But we didn't do the homework on what would happen, and now we're kinda stuck. Oops! Live and learn!"
No, they have to pull out this stupid "Think of the happy Iraqi children!" bullshit.
Bah.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
Griffin used to help run the Star Wars "missile defense" boondoggle. That was a program outlawed by Congress in the 1980s, but whose administrators still found $BILLIONS each year to keep going. A program producing little useful science, and no useful defense products. It's only value was pumping corporate welfare into defense contractors and "trickle down" bribes into the politicians who love them.
But when running NASA, even Griffin can't find money to keep America's most beloved, productive, and strategic science agency alive.
Meanwhile, Bush's support for proliferating nuclear weapons to all the hot wars in Asia is great marketing for the useless Star Wars "missile defense shield".
--
make install -not war
... starting with those pesky sciencetitians that keep pointing out the flaws in our ideologically-driven policies.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
No, I'm not talking about government; I'm talking about the posts on this thread. At least 2/3 of the posts on this thread should be marked Off-Topic. Look, the title article is about NASA; could someone at least talk about NASA? Instead, so many are spewing off their political and economic philosophies.
OK, here's the deal: NASA just got a budget increase. Did anyone notice that? That's important, because it means the budget cuts are not to NASA, but to some programs. And, the reason, children, that the satellites are being starved, the number one reason for budget cuts everyone else in NASA, is not because Bush is President or the Republicans control Congress or the U.S. Vietnam War was a stalemate or the U.S. economy is deep in debt. No; the Number One drain on NASA's budget is the space shuttle program, followed closely by the space station program. As in, say bye-bye to 80% or more of whatever money NASA gets. THIS IS THE REASON BUSH IS CUTTING OUR LOSSES ON THE SHUTTLE AND SPACE STATION!! We (in the U.S.) have to get rid of those programs, or we aren't going to have a space program.
Yes, the Earth-observing satellite programs are in bad shape. They have been for a long time. Believe it or not, they were in bad shape before Bush became President. And, unless we cut our losses on the space station and come up with an economical replacement for the space shuttle, the EOS programs are going to be in terrible shape long after Bush leaves office.
Nothing I've said here is secret or novel. This is all common knowledge to anyone paying attention to the U.S. space program. So, how to explain the bulk of the posts to this thread?
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
You know, I was watching a show about the three mile island incident the other day. It showed president Carter going to the site to do a press release to show the public that it was safe. (well, it was sorta safe) That little show really made the local people feel better. "if the president is here, then it must be okay" He was willing to take a personal risk to help ease the concerns the of the people he serves.
How did we go from a president that served in the military, with nuclear physics experience, that was willing to take a risk to fulfill his duties to...well.