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?"

Comments

Re:Budget woes?

[Reality Master 101]

I suggest that it is your intelligence, in this case, that needs some looking into.

Those that live in glass houses...

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.

First of all, 13B is ONE YEAR. Next year is paid for by ANOTHER 13B. Second of all, do the math. Let's say we need 10,000 people to manage the probe program (managers, engineers, secretaries, etc). Let's say it costs 100K per employee, just to be generous. That's only a billion dollars. That leaves another 12 billion.

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.

Of course they cost $100 million -- NOW. That's because they're designed and custom-built every friggin' time. It's an incredibly wasteful and stupid method of construction. If you made three standardized types that were EXACTLY the same, except that you could plug standardized modules into it, you would save immense amounts of money. It's called "mass production", perhaps you've heard of it.

If NASA built cars, they'd also cost $100M a piece.