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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Update: 03/29 20:02 GMT by KD : NASA has rescinded the memo to the JPL threatening budget cuts, and is now saying that no rovers will be shut down.
Update: 03/29 20:02 GMT by KD : NASA has rescinded the memo to the JPL threatening budget cuts, and is now saying that no rovers will be shut down.
Billions wasted in Iraq and one of the most exciting programs since the Moon landing starts a slow death from budget cuts. Just plain sickening. We need a grass roots funding effort to save the Rovers since it looks like the second one will be cut next year.
Why is it that we can't support cheap science that provides valuable insight into our solar system and neighboring planets, but we can find hundreds of millions of dollars to piss away on some congress critter's self named statue and bridge? Is it really possible that not one person in congress can be asked to not screw us over for self gratification?
Now Spirit is out there, how much does it cost to run on a day-by-day basis? Surely there are enough scientific groups around the world with the money and the projects to buy time with Spirit to keep it running. There's no way we should be even contemplating new missions to Mars if nobody can find a use for the perfectly good and proven rover that is already there.
"No one is any hungrier because we went to the moon, no one is any colder and certainly no one is any dumber. Why go to Mars? 'Cause it's next. 'Cause we came out of the cave and we looked over the hill and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the West and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration and this is what's next."
This sig is false.
And that is the really sad part of this. So much money is being siphoned out of just about everything to pay for the war in Iraq. We have bridges collapsing, overwhelmed health institutions, overwhelmed educational systems, money being "borrowed" from social security, etc.
The Bush administration is basically robbing this country blind to fund their war and even high-profile programs are falling victim.
And the really sad part of all this is that the draining of money out of everything is only just beginning. We have tens of thousands of veterans who will need expensive, long-term care and more joining those ranks every day. We have interest building on the money that has been borrowed so far, while we continue to borrow to fund the war. It's total madness.
Only a madman can stand at a podium, look America in the eye, and tell us that we are strong, our economy is strong, and we are winning some imaginary war on "terra".
I find this sadly typical of the kind of defective fiscal NASA-think that emerged when the engineers running things were replaced by professional administrators (and the political thinking that made that happen). The rovers are the single most successful high profile mission since the Apollo 13 rescue. The good PR generated is worth the budget. Witness the persistence of positive media reports about the success in excess of the intended mission, and compare with the other long term, ongoing mission ISS and the positive reactions of those who see those reports. (Not to compare with long term, punctuated missions, such as the Voyagers' fly-bys with long absence of reporting in between). NASA has people whose job it is to keep people engaged. Were they included in this decision?
In any case, I'd think it more productive to hibernate the two rovers alternately, 20% of the time each. Or even 25% each, to make up for the additional shut-down and start-up costs. Both regions get 75%+ of the exploration and science done with only about half the ground personnel at the consoles and performing analyses. Hopefully some one or more group like The Planetary Society or the Mars Society will collect donations to make up for the cut.
We hatessss adminimonstersssss, don't we my precioussss roverssss?
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I think the war in Iraq is as stupid as the next guy, but none of the problems you state are new since the invasion. The financial crisis that the US is facing is not caused by our war of aggression. It is caused by deficit spending. If the we had never attacked Iraq, we would still be screwed financially.
*notes that the previous administration had budget surpluses*
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Under Clinton the Budget deficit would be nearly gone by now. The forecasts were for 10 years to be eliminated. Even if that got stretched to 15 because of the down turn, it would a lot better than doubling it like Bush did.
There was a chance to clean up the future. Now the only way is to collapse the economy and rebuild. preferably with a new government first.
anyone want to start a revolution with me?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
"anyone want to start a revolution with me?"
The main problem with revolution is finding enough people you can trust after the conflict. If you win then there is all this power to be distributed... and if you lose then there is a wicked manhunt.
In my entire life I have met two people I would trust enough to rise up with and take the consequences (win or lose) afterwards.
Back on-topic: Space exploration joins progress in art and literature on my list of indicators that a civilization is truly prospering. Space exploration, much like astronomy, lacks the utilitarian nature of many other branches of science, and I have always considered it to be one of the brightest signs of our progress as thinking beings. Our continuing withdrawal from funding space related endeavors strikes me as a sad indicator of where we are headed.
Or it could be that people don't trust banks now because banks trusted people with loans that they could never possibly repay barring their winning the lottery (although with interest rates as high as these people were getting, even that may not have saved them)
Here is what I have been seeing said a few times that makes some sense to me:
One thing that IS causing a problem is the decrease in the value of the dollar. It is cheaper to sell American products like Wheat and Corn overseas than keep it in the USA, which means Americans have to pony up extra-cash for stuff so that it makes sense for farmers to keep their products in the USA. But the value of the dollar is based on how much other countries trust keeping their money in USD, and with all the economic indicators the way they are, and the banks being in trouble the most, overseas banks are thinking that keeping their assets in a currency that is NOT the USD is a better idea. How much that has to do with the war I don't know.
As long as we don't go back to the gold standard I'm good. Because the moment someone figures out how to make gold out of a less expensive material we are all screwed. If I can make something with 79 electrons, 79 protons and 79 neutrons out of my basement we will have a real crisis on our hands.
-nick
I'm inclined to agree with you, but my disdain for management of Iraq and such aside, I didn't see anything about the Bush administration in the article. Did the administration cut the funding for this somehow or was it an internal decision at NASA to redirect the funds? I honestly don't know, is this something congress controls through an oversight committee?
Was it due to diminishing returns on the rovers? Is the money genuinely better spent on what the article says they'll be spending it on... next year's new rover?
I'd imagine that $8 mil is a tiny bit of their annual budget and you'd think you'd want to put it towards something you already have parked on another planet and you know works. But then, I'm about the least qualified guy in the world to guess about those things.
Lets not forget the fact that studies have shown that spending on the space program has a direct correlation to increased GNP of the United States (estimates on how much vary, I've seen ratios ranging from 1:2 to 1:7 dollars-spent:GNP-rise).
And then, of course, there's all of the direct spin-offs that come from research done in the space program, and I'm not just talking tempurpedic!
Actually, decent chance that the sale may not go through.
First, for political reasons there are a lot of reasons to say no. Canada WILL be seeing a Federal election in the next six months or so. Selling off the company undermines a lot of the current government's platform. It looks bad on a national security front. It looks bad on an arctic sovereignty front. It looks bad on a selling out Canadian interests to the Americans front (which never goes over well with the voters). It looks bad on a public money front seeing as the Canadian government just finished bankrolling a lot of the research and tech that is making the company an attractive purchase.
The second reason the sale might not go through is that it might be illegal. The united states is basically the only first world country in the world that has not signed the Ottawa Convention on Landmines. Big-ass international treaty, famously brokered by Canada, that bans the production and use of anti-personnel landmines among other things. Now, seeing as the company trying to buy MDA is one of the largest landmine manufacturers in the world. Under the terms of the treaty, it may actually be illegal for Canada to approve any sale or business involving them.
In addition, many of the engineers and big brains that work for MDA are threatening to quit if the sale goes through. Plenty of them could be pulling in larger paycheques in the States already except that they don't want to build weapons or support companies that do.
So, very little advantage in Canada for the government to approve the sale. And the only real downside to not approving it is pissing off a few of Bush's friends. On the other hand, he is down to a few months now and it is looking like bending over for his administration now won't score many brownie points with whoever replaces him.
US agriculture is dominated by commodities traders and a handful of middleman packers/shippers/distributors. That's where your prices come from, farmers for the most part can't make enough to barely break even. I'll give you an example from here on our farm, if you could pay an additional 5 cents per whole chicken at the grocery store, that would double our net. *Double it*, if we got that nickle and it wasn't skimmed away upstream from us. The thing is, we can't set prices because it costs millions to set up a packing plant and a ton of governmental bribery..I mean hoop jumping, to pull that off. There's a small handful of large corporations that dominate the packing and distribution markets, and *they* set the prices on a take it or leave it manner, and if you leave it, you are screwed, out of business, you can't distribute in bulk (varies state by state, but mostly true). It makes getting Linux on all the OEM computers easy.
Anyway, all legals here, we are doing the jobs that...what was your point again?
It's very similar in most of farming, between local governments upping property taxes, that you can't avoid, cost of production, that you can't avoid-diesel, propane, electricity, bought in water, machinery, yada yada, salt to taste depending on type of farming, there's not much left to cut that you have any control over except labor. It's like they are doing all they can to destroy domestic agriculture on the family sized model, and the bulk of those subsidies you hear about go to those huge corporate conglomerates.
You can compete by being very small and in niche markets, or by being hugemongous and being part of a corporate enterprise, anything in between-the traditional professional family farm- is getting wonky.
NAFTA screwed over Mexican campesino farmers big time, put *millions* out of their own little farm jobs, drove them north in desperation, then here, caused a severe lowering of wages for existing workers. Remember way back a long time ago, Cesar Chavez, head of the farm workers union? HE called the illegals the ultimate wage lowering scab labor. It's like it was designed on purpose to turn family farms in both nations into FarmAgco International, Inc corporate farms. Gee, what a coincidence how that worked out, same as like what happened to them screwing over domestic manufacturing and now white collar IT, it's all designed to make the top 1% wealthier, that's it, that's the sum total of US economic policy in any direction you want to look at, just like now it is going to bail out the billionaire investment bankers.
Ok, I stand corrected on Canada, at least they're not illegal. That's the whole point of the issue down here, if we need migrant workers, FINE, collect their passport numbers, do a background check and grant them temporary visas if they've got a clean background. I don't think ANYBODY would have an issue with people who go through, instead of avoid, the system of checks and balances. There's a catch though, note that's a "temporary visa", not "permanent residence". If workers want to stay permanently, that's fine too, but do it legally. Apply for permanent residence with the INS, pass the background, health, and character checks, and wait in the 5 year long line like every other law abiding immigrant.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Thank you for putting up the numbers, saved me a whole lot of searching as I was infuriated by the GP. 3 Trillion kind of makes a difference.
About the casualties(drifting slightly off-topic) I think the most alarming are the psychological effects.
There may be 4000 soldiers dead, but those returning home after an utterly meaningless time spent in a country thousands of miles away, are the ones tearing my heart apart. It is one thing to lose a limb or an eye. That is terrible, but at least you can try to move on with your life. But to have your body whole and yet be wandering like a madman (or literally as a madman) with a gun at night, in the streets of your home town, because some ABSOLUTE MORON decided to send you to war with a secular country that had nothing whatsoever to do with us.. I think that is the saddest thing in the world. My heart goes out to all the people we killed, and all the soldiers we lost, and all the money that could have saved millions and done miracles in supporting science and human welfare. War is such a bitch.