NASA May Shut Down all Space Station's Research

jdoire writes "NASA is considering shutting down all the research programs it conducts aboard the international space station for at least a year to fill a projected budget shortfall of up to $100 million, a top station manager said on Thursday. Why the shortfall, you may ask? Because of $3 billion of Congress's pet projets"

Comments

Re:Excuse me?

[rbarreira]

yes, I RTFA'd, wow

Apparently not enough:

Instead, NASA will pay for:

  Construction or renovation of dozens of museums, planetariums and science labs for colleges.

  Computers, classrooms and lab space for colleges and schools across the U.S.

  A website and laboratory for the Gulf of Maine Aquarium.

  A sprawling headquarters building for a non-profit research group in West Virginia created by U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan. The Democrat is now subject of a broader congressional ethics probe.

This is exactly what many Slashdotters supported

[guanxi]

As I recall, most Slashdotters supported this policy. Don't think it has anything to do with Congressional pork, which has always been there. It's simply NASA's new priorities:

When Bush announced manned spaceflight to the Moon and Mars, Slashdotters broadly supported it (perhaps someone can find the original post). But of course, there are not unlimited resources, so money must be diverted from something else, namely science.

NASA now has cut all environmental science from its mission (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/science/22nasa. html) -- conveniently for Republican environmental policy -- and made manned spaceflight its top prioirty (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/ 17/1415223).

The mammoth deficit and the Republican's refusal to raise taxes ensure that funds are even more limited. NASA can't have it all, so which do you want? Science, or manned spaceflight?

Re:Rest Assured

[Junior Samples]

According to msnbc, the Iraq war is costing $200 million per day. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11880954/ A half day of war funding would take care of NASA's immediate shortfall.

Re:Why is it called pork?

[Ohreally_factor]

Wikipedia has one theory.

I think it has more to do with politicians buying votes by delivering actual barrels of salt pork to their constituents. There's also a related term, "Bringing home the bacon", but this is more general, and is more a reference to earning a wage.

With a "War Budget" of ....

[inflamez]

... $419.3 billion (2006 official), it's no surprise that they have to cut certain other projects. Poor NASA, sadly there's not as much profit in exploring / colonizing space as there is in invading countries with rich oil sources.

Re:Line item... WHAT?

[wwahammy]

The Line Item Veto is not the cure-all that a lot of people think it is. I think here in Wisconsin we've proven its weaknesses and drawbacks.

It was enacted in the mid 80s and the first governor to use it was Tommy Thompson. Under him it became called the "Vanna White Veto" because he took letters from words and wrote totally different bills from the ones he recieved. The State Supreme Court ruled that's you have to use whole words and can't create new words.

Tommy found a new way around the veto by eliminating dollar amounts and writing in a smaller dollar amount. The Supreme Court said that was in the spirit of the law so that is now allowed. That basically allows the governor to cut funding to a large number of programs but give him an out politically because he doesn't have to totally eliminate the program. Nice for the governor huh?

Last year Doyle decided he would try something new. He cut out a bunch of pages of the budget but kept parts of numbers so that he could INCREASE state education funding by almost $500 million. While I like the outcome in this case, it shows how the power can be abused.

While people hate (or claim to hate) pork barrel spending sometimes its the much lesser of two evils. For example, if the only way a legislator will vote for a reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act is by giving a congressman $45,000 for a museum in their district about underwater basketweaving then I can't say I'd be totally against. I think the benefit far outweighs the expense. In the end less than 2% of the federal budget is earmarked to specific projects. Is that too much? Of course but its far outweighted by much larger portions of the federal budget (military, medicare, social security, etc.). While we should be vigilant to ensure that there aren't huge abuses of earmarking (Bridge to Nowhere), a little bit should just be expected and sometimes is the best way to get complex and controversial legislation passed.

I may not like that this has to be done but its also the reality considering the people we've elected.

Re:China

[Mr. Slippery]

They are not technology deveopers, merely technology copiers.

Do you think that status will last forever?

It was China that first developed gunpowder, printing, the magnetic compass, and the planetarium. When they recover from the effects of a few centuries of colonialism and Maoism - really just a blip on the course of Chinese history - expect China to be a dominant world power, technologically and politically.

In fact, they wouldn't have half their navigation tech if Clinton hadn't circumvented security recommendations for campaign contributions.

Clinton merely continued the policies of Reagan and Bush I with respect to "technology transfer" to China.