Mars Rovers Facing Budget Cuts [Updated]

BUL2294 notes a CNN article reporting that the Mars Rovers program at NASA is facing budget cuts of $4 million for this year and $8 million for fiscal 2009. This will mean job cuts; and in all likelihood Spirit will be put in "hibernation mode," to be reactivated when or if future funding becomes available."

Update: 03/29 20:02 GMT by KD : NASA has rescinded the memo to the JPL threatening budget cuts, and is now saying that no rovers will be shut down.

Comments

Call your Congressman

[kramer2718]

I just called mine and told them to fund the rover.

Get their info here.

Selling one is more feasible than you might think.

[Tackhead]

They should sell one of the rovers to any institution willing to pay for it rather than let it die a slow death of neglect. A deployed rover with a proven track record is better than an $800 million shot that might arrive and land successfully.

The Planetary Society immediately comes to mind as a serious buyer. They launched the Cosmos 1 Solar Sail on an all-private budget of $4M. The mission failed due to hardware problem (hey, it really is rocket science), but it proved that private charitable organizations are quite capable of raising $4M for space exploration.

The Planetary Society was also instrumental in getting the word out (and raising funds to rescue the data) regarding the Pioneer Anomaly.

More important than the funding angle is the political one, but the Planetary Society has worked extremely closely with NASA over the past 30 years. The collaboration has been sufficiently close that they've actually flown hardware on the ill-fated) Mars Polar Lander. The Society's work with NASA on Spirit and Opportunity goes all the way back to when the rovers were named in the first place, as well as the calibration target" for the rovers' cameras.

In other words, $4M isn't just a business possibility, the handover of a rover from NASA to the Planetary Society is a political possibility too.

Re:Simple solutions for NASA

[NeverVotedBush]

We might still be screwed but certainly not to the extent that we are now. Estimates of what this war will end up costing - if it is ended soon with a complete withdrawal of US forces - are in the $3 Trillion dollar range. That used to be over half of our National debt.

No more. The US National debt is now $9.4 Trillion. Our debt is increasing by $1.6 Billion dollars every single day. http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

The National debt was around $5 Trillion when Bush took office. As noted above, it's now approaching $10 Trillion. He has basically doubled it during his two terms. So, yeah, we would still be screwed without the war but we are especially screwed with it.

And 4,000 Americans are really screwed - they're dead. And another 30-40,000 suffer from various levels of injuries up to missing limbs, missing eyes, missing parts of their brains, extreme disfigurement, etc.

Any other comments are superfluous.

Re:Simple solutions for NASA

[Harmonious Botch]

*notes that the previous administration had budget surpluses* TEMPORARY budget surpluses. The yearly debt is built into programs that we are committed to. Occasionally we will have budget surplusses, but we still, as GP says, are screwed in the long run.

Re:Maybe Next Year?

[tomhudson]

As someone above you pointed out, Bush is the president to enact a plan for getting men to Mars. Perhaps you need to actually look at budgets, because as someone else pointed out, NASA's budget has grown by a billion dollars this year. Spew elsewhere.

Perhaps YOU should look at NASA's budgets:

NASA budget: 1997: 14.358 Billion
NASA budget: 2007: 16.250 Billion

This is not an "inflation-adjusted" figure. Over the last 10 years, NASA's budget has grown by a total of 13.177%. Over those same 10 years, inflation totalled 27.23%. (and that's only using the "core inflation" figures that don't take into account housing, food, or energy).

Adding a billion still leaves it short by $2.017 Billion.

Re:Sad day

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to see where you got that "real" inflation is 10%-12% (which is a huge, useless range, btw). Second, the CPI is calculated by Ph.D Economists - if you think you know better than them, go prove them they're wrong, otherwise, keep your crackpot "facts" to yourself.

As an actual economist, I can't stand people that pull numbers out of their asses and talk like they're some kind of "authority" or that some crap they read is an "authority." Anyone that ACTUALLY understands economics would know that there is no such thing as "knowing" the "real" rate of inflation and that the CPI is the best indicator of inflation we have; there are versions of the CPI that DO include energy expenditures.
The reason that the traditional CPI does not include energy is because of the speculative nature of energy prices and 1) they change too often to be measurable with accuracy (on a monthly basis) and 2) it is assumed that the cost of energy will be picked up by cost increases in all other goods, thus energy costs would have a multiplicative effect on the CPI, which will make it less accurate and less useful.

Thanks for playing. Go home.