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What's Getting Cut From Science Part of the Federal Budget
Kristina at Science News writes "As part of the announcement of its proposed fiscal year 2010 budget, the Obama administration released a summary (called 'Terminations, Reductions, and Savings: Budget of the US Government, Fiscal Year 2010') that includes which science-related programs are getting cut. Two big programs are the nuclear waste storage project at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and a second prototype airborne laser missile-defense weapon." Update: 05/07 23:03 GMT by T : On the other hand, reader Dusty writes, "The NASA budget for 2010 has been announced, up
5% on 2009. Human space flight plans to be reviewed."
STFU, you dumbass liberal wacko. It is those guns, bombers and soon particle weapons that allow you to be able to freely post things on sites like this. Every one LESS of those things is one more step towards a fascist, socialist slave future for all of us.
[snicker]
GPP was a take-off on a well-known quote:
"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
Who said that? Well, that would be that well-known dumbass liberal socialist fascist wacko, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I was paraphrasing this guy:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
It's not $17 billion in cuts, it's $17 billion in proposed cuts, 99% of which won't happen. For comparison, last year George W Bush proposed 434 billion in cuts, none of which happened.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The first ABL laser prototype worked out prety well, actually. The whole point was to bypass countermeasures by hitting the missile while it was still boosting, which is an unmistakable signature. It's somewhat questionable as an overall strategic defense, since you'd need the have a plane in the air somewhat close to the launch site, but for theater defense it would work great.
We don't seem to need to defend against the Russians right now, but a crazy dictator who managed to cobble together 1 working nuke warhead and 1 working long-range missile? That sounds like a likely scenario, and the sot of thing where said mad dictator would give us plaenty of warning time to get our defenses airborn near his country.
Missile defenses don't have to be viable vs a Russian saturation attack with modern countermeasures to be useful this century. Providing solid protection against a low-tech threat with just a few misiles is entirely worthwhile (especially if you live in the major US city closest to N Korea!).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.