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."

Comments

Drowning us in a bathtub

[Catbeller]

Grover Norquist, neocon extraordinaire and architect of Bush's economic program, once said that he wanted to shrink the Federal government to a size that could be then drowned in a bathtub.

After a 200 billion dollar war, estimated to have a final cost in the trillions, massive tax cuts, and borrowing to finance all of that, we are coming close to the endgame that the neocon theorists are playing towards: the bankrupting of the Federal government. No money for discretionary projects. It's a radical agenda. They are repealing the twentieth century by spending the government to death. And they're making a FORTUNE while doing so, and will continue to do so in the future as we service the debt they are saddling us with -- they own some of that debt, so they have a perpetual welfare machine for the wealthy. 17 percent of the budget is now interest on the debt, and it will increase to 25 percent in the nest few years. Imagine: a quarter from every dollar taxed will go to the holders of the debt instruments -- forever, since we'll never have the cash to pay down that nine billion dollar monster. We've gone from a 5 trillion dollar debt to a 9 trillion dollar debt in five years.

And back to point, this means no space program. No NASA. No research. No satellites to monitor global warming. No Mars. No SETI. NASA was living in a trailer park, budgetwise, for decades, but now it is being evicted from the lot.

No money left, sorry, we spent it all.

AND we'll still need to raise taxes just to keep up with the debt payments!

How much have the neocons cost us with these supply side experiments? How many trillions ahve we paid, how many more, just in interest to finance these tax cuts?

Re:Good idea though

[LeonGeeste]

Ah, good point. Why is "Dei" before "Gratia" though? My Latin sucks balls.

I think what I was looking for was "Deo volente". Congess provides the benefits Deo volente -- they do their best to find a place in the budget, but there's no guarantee they'll come through.

Sometimes whipping out a Latin phrase backfires :-(