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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"
If they're going to finish building the damn thing in less than 4 years, why doesn't it make sense to stop playing with that science experiment and put on their hard hat? They need to focus on construction or else you'll have this half finished barge in orbit. You'll get a lot more science done when the place is big enough for a 6 scientists.
Apparently not enough:
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I've not yet deiced if Michel Griffin is doing a better job, or if I just paid less attention when Sean O'Keefe, the previous administrator fought such battles.
I think Michael Griffin is doing a better job.
Focus on the missions, and the supplementary benefits will follow. NASA did not need to buy computers for students, build planetariums or make a special website so that I could learn about the Voyager missions. Instead, they supremely engineered those things, and the science that they returned (and are still returning) inspired and taught the world.
People tend to underestimate the impact of one successful mission. Voyager, Hubble, Apollo and The Mars Rovers have done more for
science and education around the world than any congressman.
Nice troll is right;
Construction or renovation of dozens of museums, planetariums and science labs for colleges. Oh I see NASA is uniquely qualified to provide laser light shows to rock music and the presence of museums and planetariums are instrumental to the exploration of aeronaughtics and space.
Computers, classrooms and lab space for colleges and schools across the U.S. If you've checked the prices on tutition and contact hours recently you'd know that if a school wants something useful, they'd just cut a check and buy it, if a school wants something that's "well yeaah maybe it'll come in handy, I'm sure we'll figure out something to do with it" than why not get the money direct from congress and cut out the middle-man, doesn't the middle-man have better things to do than run community outreach when their primary mission is basicaly on hold?
A website and laboratory for the Gulf of Maine Aquarium. Fish in space, KEWL I wanta aquarium on ISS! That'll make one hell of a screen saver!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
What this story is talking about is beuracratic nonsense... its the absolute right thing to do.
The only way we'll ever compete, or advance beyond the 70's in space technology, is to kill the shuttle and space station once and for all. Both were utter wastes of resources designed from the start to be nothing more than a civilian funding source for military research, then warped into corporate and international welfare programs with the fall of the cold war in the 80's.
The space station was never meant to be finished... it was meant to be as expensive and difficult to build as possible, to keep pumping billions into defense contractors, ensuring they were still around when the next big war came along.
It worked. Now our actions around the world more than support the funding of our defense contractors. Time to stop wasting money on the space station and put NASA's budget doing what it does best.
The topic author points out $3 billion in "pet projects" -- many of which are a waste, but also many of which are valuable. Not that the budget should have itemized spending like this -- it is just absurd to say that pork of $3 billion in a year is the problem.
The problem is the nearly $5 billion per month (USA Today article with the numbers here) being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even if you think the wars are legitimate, logic dictates that this huge cost is the reason why our deficit is going up, and why programs are being shortchanged.