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NASA Think Tank to be Shut Down
Matthew Sparkes writes "NASA will likely shut down its Institute for Advanced Concepts, which funds research into futuristic ideas in spaceflight and aeronautics. The move highlights the budget problems the agency is facing as it struggles to retire the space shuttles and develop a replacement. The institute receives $4 million per year from NASA, whose annual budget is $17 billion. Most of that is used to fund research into innovative technologies; recent grants include the conceptual development of spacecraft that could surf the solar system on magnetic fields, motion-sensitive spacesuits that could generate power and tiny, spherical robots that could explore Mars."
Tang
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
NASA budgeting has little to do with politics or even practical realities. NASA continues to try and thrive on the glory days of its leap to the Moon, even though the first landing was almost 41 years ago now. Whenever things are going bad, the President (choose any one you like) will announce plans for NASA to do something to make America proud and continue our long tradition of space exploration. However, not even Presidential boosterism can keep Congress from continually whittling away NASA's budget, to the point where it becomes a competition for money between the manned program (see as costly, inefficient, and dangerous) and the unmanned programs (see as cheap, flexible, and low-risk). Inevitably, the bulk of the budget goes to the manned program and some promising probes and instruments are shelved for lack of funds.
Now, I am a firm believer in the need for both the manned and unmanned programs. The fact is NASA is underfunded, and those funds could certainly come from somewhere else (DoD for example), but the bottom line with the American people always is, what's in it for me? Now, there a legion of examples of technology spun off from NASA applications, but those are not the kind of things that the everyday citizen is impressed with. And unless you are a Star Trek fan, the idea of exploration for exploration's sake is a dim memory, best left with Lewis & Clark. The sad fact is, unless NASA can come up with something stunning, that captures the imagination of Americans again, as the Moon landings did, this is just another stage in the deterioration of a proud agency that once carried this nation's pride to a new frontier.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
>> So what do they do? Shut down the people who dream up advanced concepts!
> Not exactly. They feed $500M to SpaceX and Kistler to develop real-working rockets that can deliver
> to ISS. And yes, the money is contingent on success. Invoking private industry to develop the next
> generation of vehicles is the way to go.
Building a rocket to go to the space station is not an advanced concept.
Building a space elevator using carbon nanotubes...that's advanced. Magnetic field drives...that's advanced. Solar sails, antimatter engines, gravitational drives...all advanced.
The whole point of research like this is to look for major leaps in science, technology, and engineering. The third-party space industry is concerned with profit, mainly by repeating what NASA and the military have been doing for about a half century. Maybe in thirty years they'll be in a position to concentrate on research like this...but I don't think SpaceX is concerning itself with warp drive just yet.
The NIAC, and the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics group before it, are about pushing for the future, not just resting on our chemically propelled century-old technological laurels.