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NASA Priorities Out of Whack?
amerinese writes "Just last week, we saw a story on NASA reconsidering the fate of the DAWN mission, another reminder of the space agency's budget woes. Gregg Easterbrook over at Slate.com argues not only is the budget a little short, but NASA's priorities are all wrong. From the article: 'For at least a decade, it's been clear that the space shuttle program is a clunker. Nonetheless, NASA's funding remains heavy on the shuttle and the space station, while usually slighting science. This year's proposed budget for fiscal 2007 takes the cosmic cake.' Is NASA just not thinking creatively enough?"
Wow. You clearly have no idea of the realities of the situation, yet you feel free to make wild claims about what you think can be done with NASA's money.
Let's see... $13 billion... of which most goes to the manned-missions right off. So that's ISS and the shuttles getting the bulk of the money. Research for aerospace stuff gets another reasonably heafty share. In fact, when you get down to it, the solar system exploration budget is around $2 billion, total. That goes to fund research, build new missions, and support existing missions.
In reality, missions are very expensive and mass-producing parts doesn't fix that. Every single mission has to be launched, which is a huge fraction of the total expense right there. Fuel isn't going to get a lot cheaper through the wonders of mass-production. Neither is the man-power needed to plan the details of each mission and to work out and check things like the trajectories. (I'm periphrially involved with selecting an extended tour on a mission right now. It's complicated to say the least.) And modular components only work if the modules are sufficiently useful to a broad number of missions. This is generally not the case, as it turns out. Every mission has specific goals and requirements that almost always demand a new suite of designs. (Check out the latest Mars missions; the new objectives have caused their instruments to be VERY carefully and specifically designed.)
And to put $13 billion into perspective: that's a few percent of what the war in Iraq has costed so far and around 1% of what it will ultimately cost us. In fact, that's the price of about 7 stealth bombers. Which were easier to mass-produce than interplanetary missions, incidentally.
Your intuition for the money here is dead wrong. I'm not saying NASA is above reproach; it very much so is not. (I can spend days ranting about how much they waste time and money.) But if you want to help solve the problem, you'll have to understand the situation first.
gr8
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Here is the first part of the experiment you suggested. It turns out that the appropriations committee that handles Nasa's budget has experience some serious changes this year and as such we may see so new "spending" habits with future budgets, who knows. However, the individuals that currently sit on the appropriations committee responsible for NASA as of March 2006 is as follows:
Link to committee membership source
http://www.planetary.org/news/2005/0323_US_Congre
Link to Nasa Budget
http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/AN_Budget_04_det
Nasa Appropriation Committees
Senate Committee on Appropriations
Full Committee:
Thad Cochran (R-MS) Chair,
Robert Byrd (D-WV) Ranking
Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science:
Richard Shelby (R-AL) Chair,
Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) Ranking
House Appropriations Committee
Full Committee:
Jerry Lewis (R-CA) Chair,
David Obey (D-WI) Ranking
Subcommittee on Science, State, Justice, and Commerce, and Related Agencies:
Frank Wolf (R-VA),
Alan Mollohan (D-WV) Ranking
Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
Full Committee:
Ted Stevens (R-AK) Chair,
Inouye (D-HI) Ranking
Subcommittee on Science and Space:
Kay Bailey-Hutchison (R-TX), Chair
Bill Nelson (D-FL) Ranking
House Committee on Science
Full Committee,
Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) Chair,
Bart Gordon (D-TN) Ranking
Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics:
Ken Calvert (R-CA), Chair -
Mark Udall (D-CO) Ranking
Nasa Budget:
See Link (PDF Warning)
http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/AN_Budget_04_det