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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?"
I'm not surprised, although I think they still manage to be more fiscally responsible and sensible than the rest of the US government as a whole. Barring the money sink that is the space shuttle and international space station (why do we still need this? Oh yeah, politics), they've had really successful projects. Just take the recent Mars rovers for a high-profile example.
There is one good reason to build a Moonbase: Telescopes on the far side of the Moon are as insulated as you can get from interference from human sources. A good set of telescopes, in all spectrums, on the far side of the Moon should be an eventual goal of NASA. (Not that we need people there to run them...)
The only other reason for a base on the Moon is turism: It's a place where a person can walk on the surface of another major body and be back within a few months.
Neither of these should make a Moonbase top priority.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
People see shuttle launches on TV. And most will, at least, not protest the money being spent. But they might get pissy about billions vanishing into a black hole of government science whose results they cannot watch on TV. NASA's prioritization is, at least to some small degree, a slave to public opinion. Yet another reason why privitization of the emerging space industries will be helpful. Then, at least, informed people with money can set priorities as opposed to politicians who just want to get elected.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
And a huge chunk of it is spent on bureaucractic bullshit. Paying admistrators, and their secretaries, and their benefits, and their health insurance, and remimbursing transportation costs, and federal audits, and enviromental impact surveys, and nasa.gov, and PR, and ...
Another chunk of it goes into funding existing missions. We STILL have to keep paying for Voyager if we want anybody listening to it. For every probe that's out there, we have to pay for the earthbound hardware that listens to and talks to it, the talent that knows how it works and can troubleshoot problems, and the scientists on the publi dole who analyze what we get back.
That leaves some money leftover for NEW missions. Some that money goes into paying private contractors to build parts, some goes into research into new technology, some goes into upgrading and maintaining he shuttle fleet, some goes into the ISS. Some goes to foreign governments. Russia doesn't launch our astronauts for free.
How many probes could we launch with all that money? We could have probes flying all over the solar system. We could have fundamental research into remote robotics.
I imagine that with $13 billion we could launch thousands. There'd be no money leftover for building the ones we launch next year, though. Or paying for the crews to maintain the ones we launched last year.
There is no reason that through mass production, NASA couldn't be launching thousands of probes a year. If you're launching that many, they don't have to perfect. Launch 10 of them at every target, hoping five will end up working.
Sure there is. A probe costs hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Even at a mere $100 million, $13 billion is enough to build only 130 probes, to say nothing of paying for launch, maintainance, and scientific analysis.
NASA needs to completely change their culture and use some intelligence for a change.
I suggest that it is your intelligence, in this case, that needs some looking into.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Here's an experiment: Find out what state NASAs big dollar items come from. Then look at who is on the committe that controls the NASA budget and what state they are from. Look for correlations. After that, we can talk about priorities at NASA.
If a bunch of engineers and hard scientists got together and decided how to spend NASA's budget most effectively, we'd see only automated missions. The data gathered would be wonderful, it would be efficient, and their budget would be cut in half the next year by Congress.
Manned exploration is the sizzle that sells the steak. You have to keep a manned program going to keep the short-attention-spanned taxpaying pinheads interested in space. If space is just drones and bots flying off to take soil samples and collect space dust, the money will get diverted to a subsidy to study how pet monkeys could be used to deliver nuclear warheads to a target or some other stupid Pentagon project.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Why spend all that time and treasure putting telescopes so far from humans and then spend even more time and treasure putting humans RIGHT NEXT to the damned things?
... sure, vibrations and dust are natural events there, but humans add more.
If you think having telescopes on the far side is good because it is out of the way of human pollution, then why for heaven's sake do you want to throw human pollution back into the mix as close as that?
The vibrations from human equipment, outgassing, dust raised
Good god almighty.
Robots would have to do 99.999% of the work anyway. What would humans add to either the construction or maintenance?
Infuriate left and right
Nasa was never about science. It was about putting people on the moon. The science talk is just a nicer lofty goal that hides the real goal: making sure nobody gets control of the moon other than the US.
If you control the moon, you have a major military strategic advantage, the ultimate high ground. You can catapult anything down, anywhere on Earth and nobody can stop you. So NASA's highest priority is making sure nobody gets ahead of the US on this technology.
Science has always been secondary. That was true during Apollo, that's still true now.
While there are points to be made about how the shuttle is a bad choice for space flight and science isn't getting the funding that's needed, this author clearly doesn't understand all the benefits of manned space flight. I mean seriously, saying that the moon is only interesting to geology postdocs? That all people do in space is to take each other's blood pressure? He clearly lacks ANY knowledge of the science and innovations we gain by reaching new frontiers. One of his references is to a radical writer's article that thinks Apollo missions stopped off it orbit before going on to the moon and fails to understand the concepts of where to get fuel, where to stage equipment and where to practice somewhere relatively close by. Now, not only are blogs spewing crap but "news" sites are too.
One can easily argue our national priorities are considerably out of whack. Easterbrook argues there are better places to spend the money than the projects which have been proposed. He might be right. But it's easy to argue that the proposed projects do have value.
A moon base might not help Mars exploration. But a moon base can begin the process of using lunar resources to support both exploration and human needs on earth. There's more to space than scientific exploration.
The James Webb Space Telescope might focus on the distant universe and questions of esoteric value. Planet finding, on the other hand, will have little real impact on humanity as well, at least in the near future. Both projects do have worth, however.
Of greater interest to me is comparing NASA funding to other things our society does. Back in October the Washington Post proposed canceling Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, and cited the need for health care for poor children as a worthier alternative. What few people recognize is that health care spending in the U.S. is 100 times the NASA budget. Health care spending is also increasing annually at multiples of the NASA budget. If poor children aren't getting decent health care, that's the fault of the health care industry, not NASA.
NASA, while far from perfect, does appear to be struggling to improve and is making some progress towards that end. It would be nice if other American activities -- for example education -- showed the same kind of work at improvement.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
Let's not forget that the escape velocity from the moon is minimalistic compared to that of the old mud ball. It wouldn't surprise me if, in a few decades, most manned spaceflight (American, at the very least, if not others) originates from the moon. Of course, this is all still just speculation. They still need an efficient means of getting the fuel for the spacecraft from Earth to the moon, otherwise the only thing they're really gaining is distance. Still, I'll bet that one Earth-to-moon flight carrying fuel would power more than one launch from the moon, though. Any positive gain is good positive gain, I guess.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
Easterbook just doesn't get it. Earth observation is nice, but it can be done with existing technology - commercial space satellites, high atmosphere observation balloons and planes. It doesn't require the scientific and organizational might that NASA embodies. The moon base does have uses. Firstly, there is the study of human phisiology in space. Second, there is the construction of telescopes and sensors of various types to give us a much better understanding of space. Third, is the mining of HE3 (heavy helium) for propulsion purposes. Fourth, is a platform for other space operations. It is going to be expensive. No doubt.
I agree that the space shuttle is a problem. But I don't understand why he brings up the two disasters seen on TV. It is as though he thinks that the real disaster was the PR problems which resulted. If that is the case, he is only making it worse. What we need is a redesigned shuttle. The Shuttle is out of date. There are new technologies that could be harnessed to make it better. In addition, there is the very real problem that the shuttles wear out. They may be reusable, but that doesn't mean they are going to last forever.
I want to see more funding on long term programs, the far-out stuff like NERVA, anti-gravity, and the like. These are the kind of programs that NASA was chartered for.
Only if having a point of view is biased. Being human we all have our biases of course, and these naturally (mis)inform our viewpoints. But this doesn't license you to throw around the accusation of "bias" every time you see an opinion you don't like, because to be fair you'd have to tell the entire world including yourself to STFU.
No, the only behavior that merits this charge is the practice of bias.
Consider the following statement:
A hypothetical example of bias would be if the Earth monitoring missions had moved to a different agency, say, EPA, Mr. Easterbrook knew it, and chose not to mention it. Or if the programs had been phased out and replaced by more cost effective ones. In that case you can justify calling the article "biased".
This kind of bias is the sophisticated liar's lie; when you mislead by leaving out context, you can lie without actually saying anything untrue.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Additionally, they've got this mandate from Bush to try to get to Mars ASAP, building a moon base first, which could use up their entire budget right there.
Beyond all of that, they feel they have to be careful to keep the public interested, or that their funding will be cut. Surveys have shown that most people are primarily impressed with human space flight, and I'm sure there's pressure on NASA to maintain manned missions even if they're just bread a circuses, and they could get a lot more science done for the money without them.
So I agree that $13 billion should be enough for NASA to accomplish an incredible amount more than they do, but not "should be enough" and isn't because they're all incompetent, but "should be enough" and isn't because they can't spend it on the important things for one reason or another.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Unmanned space probes are cool, no doubt, but manned space flight is where it is at. We have to learn how to live off planet. There is a whole universe that, absent any proof of intelligent life, is ours for the taking, and using NASA to create some orbital mirror of satellites with which we can watch ourselves flex is boring. I don't fund NASA so some scientist who can't get a job making a cool product can do a thesis, I do it so that I can be inspired, and yes, manned space flight is inspiring.
I like the Space Shuttle. Yes, we can rail on about how it didn't meet its goals, how it was overhyped, but stop for a moment and look at what it actually is and does? It's practically a space station in its own right, it is so big. It launches like a rocket, lands like a plane, can bring back stuff in a fairly roomy cargo bay and has a cool robot arm. It's turned the notion of in-space assembly from the stuff of science fiction into ho hum routine. Before the space shuttle, we didn't even know if we could build a human space habitat. Sure, we could launch one, but build one? And we've done it.
I wish that we could build a newer shuttle, and, I wish we could send it to the Moon. I understand that CEV is better built for that. But, when they launch that CEV, look around inside, and compare it to the shuttle. The new CEV will have less room than the old shuttle.
BIG IS BETTER
This is my sig.
The reason NASA does environmental and climate research is to please a voting constituent that would otherwise be opposed to space research. The green crowd will support the NASA budget if some of the dollars go towards projects they find agreeable. If all the money was spent on deep space probes, there would instead be cries for redirecting the NASA budget elsewhere.
BTW, the funding for the shuttle was partially justified in the same manner. Some of the claimed benefits of the shuttle program were to make long term weather forecasts, monitor size and health of rain forests and deserts, and search for mineral desposits non-destructively.
Unfortunately, NASA really has no choice in this. If they don't play as many political games as possible, their budget won't survive. The general public isn't keen on funding pure research, at least not to the levels NASA requires.
The President names the head of NASA, the head of NASA sets the tone and agenda for the whole organization. Very rarely does the head of NASA not fall into line with the President's space policy (if he has one). Congress approves or disapproves the plan set forth under the direction of the NASA administrator. Thus the focus of the space program is directly traceable to the President's thoughts and goals in this area.
In addition to sending men to the moon/Mars being a good sound bite for the general public, manned missions tend to be heavily oriented towards a Florida/Texas locale with a subsequent influence on their economies. Considering the obvious interest our current President has in those states, it's one more reason (not the only one), this administration has focused on manned missions.
We need to find a better balance between manned and unmanned missions for NASA, I think the pendulum swings a bit too far in either direction sometimes, and now is one of them. They really do have a symbiotic relationship, and we have need of both. Apart from that, it's time to put the shuttle down and work on our next manned vehicle more seriously - there's no good reason to keep those things flying anymore, send one to the Smithsonian and call it a day.
NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA should only exist to "administer" funding to space and high altitude projects. Their mission should be similar to the FAA. The FAA does not build planes, does not do research into aerodynamics, nor do they fly planes. The FAA simply regulates air traffic and sets government policy on air traffic. NASA should do the same for space travel and space science. I am a space scientist and I shudder everytime I hear that NASA will be involved in a project. Not to mention that 13 billion dollars isnt that much when we are spending $200 a year on a selfish war!
As someone who is closely involved in the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), I find the way that Easterbrook chooses to pitch it against Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) quite peculiar. He thinks that looking for the first galaxies that formed in the Universe with JWST is esoteric, which in some senses it may well be, but searching for planets around other stars with TPF is, for all practical purposes, equally so. Both goals are, nevertheless, very exciting and inspiring.
In fact, JWST is a general purpose observatory in much the same way Hubble is, and will enable a very broad base of astronomy, from cosmology at high redshift in the early Universe, all the way back to the formation of planetary systems in our own Galaxy, and to the study of objects in the Kuiper Belt of our own solar system. Again, practically speaking, these are all esoteric and yet you only have to look at the public's fascination with the enormous number of astonishing discoveries that Hubble and other astronomical telescopes have made to realise that such things play a vital role in our philosophical understanding of our part in this vast Universe.
With regards the idea that JWST is somehow NASA's spolied child, keep in mind that the US astronomy community identified it as its number one priority in the most recent Decadal Review of the National Academy of Sciences, along with the European and Canadian communities: NASA is following through on this outside recommendation. Of course, there are grave problems in the NASA space science budget and no-one likes to see missions cut or delayed, and yes, there have been cost overruns on JWST (albeit largely due to non-technical issues outside the JWST project's control), but it's simply wrong to believe that NASA has somehow made its difficult decisions in a vacuum.
Most astonishing though is Easterbrook's naive assertion about gravy train aerospace contractors building the JWST: just who, exactly, does he think is going to build TPF? A couple of University of Podunk astronomers and a dog? TPF is, if anything, even more technologically challenging than JWST and can only be built by many of the very same aerospace contractors: it's bonkers to think otherwise.
Finally, on naming the former Next Generation Space Telescope after James Webb, while, I remember very clearly the moment that was announced by NASA and yes, it was a bit of a shock. All the same, it's important to remember that Webb put in place much of NASA's space science program at the same time as running Apollo, so his credentials are respectable at the very least. In any case, get over it: let's get the JWST done and launched, and answer some of those fascinating esoteric questions.
Lets not honor are agreements with other antions.
We are obligated to get certian thing for the space station up there, and right not the shuttle is all we got to do it.
Yes, NASA need a bigger budget.
Yes, the space shuttle needs replacing. Persoanlly, I think the 'space plane' way of getting up and down is the way to do it. That's another topic.
But we have commitments.
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