James Webb Space Telescope Closer To the Axe

astroengine writes "This could be considered 'strike two' for the deeply troubled James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Last week, the House Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Subcommittee made the recommendation that the advanced infrared space telescope be cancelled. On Wednesday, the full House Science, Space and Technology Committee has approved the subcommittee's plan. The project may not be dead yet — the 2012 budget still has to be voted on my the House and Senate — but it sure is looking grim for 'Hubble's replacement.'"

Comments

So Painfully Frustrating

[eldavojohn]

Can someone please explain to me why despite the fairly linear rising budget of NASA we are shutting everything down right now? Is mismanagement really that bad at NASA? Is it saddled with debt from past programs?

I don't get it. It's like I'm watching my generation drop the ball despite all the obvious reasons in my mind to establish a presence off this rock. "Oh, my parents' generation put people on the moon. Not only did my generation stop putting people and telescopes in space, we also made ground observatories illegal and have re-instituted burning people who claim the Earth is not the center of the universe. Why? Because it was more affordable in the very immediate future."

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[zoobaby]

Read the report: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=35294

In short, the answer is yes, management is that bad at NASA. I am coming to believe that we need to look at NASA's mission and alter it for the post Cold-War era.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Moryath]

It's quite simple.

Every time the "budget for NASA" is drawn up, it's not the actual NASA budget. If NASA were able to put the money where it was needed, they'd be in a lot better shape.

What Congress does instead is writes a "NASA budget" with a fuck-ton of strings attached. They give a "budget" for various missions, not overall. They cover salaries and the funding of various project bids, which can't be reassigned until Congress writes the next "NASA Budget."

Add to that the fact that NASA projects are usually on the order of a decade long, and most of these Congressional Fuckwits from either party are up for reelection (and a lot get replaced) every couple years, then come in and rewrite the budget and re-earmark things to the states of whatever party's in power to the loss of the states that aren't.

The current, added problem is that the Republicans - the party currently with "power of the purse" - have a hate-on for NASA because NASA was actually DOING the climate research and ongoing studies in response to screams of "global climate change is a myth, there's not enough research." The cuckoo clock wing of the party wants to kill NASA right now because they don't want there to BE enough research, ever.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[bravecanadian]

When the greatest generation put us on the moon NASA's budget reached 4.41% of the federal budget.

Now it is 0.60 percent.

Meanwhile the pockets of the rich have been filled, and the military industrial complex/financial industry/various other big corporations run the USA.

Obama really got handed a steaming bag of **** when he took office after good ole George. Just as all the tough decisions that had been put off until tomorrow for years on end started coming home to roost.

The Republicans should be so glad they lost that election because now, with everyone's short memory, they can blame all these problems on Obama and have a good chance next year. Nevermind that in our topsy turvy modern world, Conservative/Republican means "spend like drunken sailors who cares about fiscal responsibility, yahoo!!!" and Liberal/Democrat means "try and get a handle on things before our bonds reach junk status" and then take the fall for making the tough choices.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe when you find why this one project ran so far over budget you'll have your answer.
 
I'm all for the space program. I had high hopes for James Webb. But it seems so badly managed. I can't help but think that someone on NASA's side cut their own throat with bad decisions.
 
Aside from that, I also feel that we need to get the president out of NASA's business. Every new administration seems to pull on NASA's strings in order to make it appear that the incoming president is a visionary pioneer with their eye on science. This is bull and we all know it. With each changing administration we doubtlessly lose tons of money on wasted R&D that went into the last administrations demands out of NASA. This needs to end. This isn't a statement on any party or any single administration before someone tries to turn this into a partisan pissing match. It's all of them.
 
I also wonder what other science suffers from politicians deciding the direction science should take and how many tax dollars are lost in these changes in "policy" by the unknowing.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

Mismanagment at NASA is shocking. I do IT work for several NASA funded earth science programs. They'll award you a 1 year grant and then it takes 13-14 months for the money to show up. Then they bitch about how you didn't spend the money in time. They are swining the budget axe across the board becuase they are re-routing all that money into the new manned space flight program. Whatever they call it now that Constellation is canceled, even though it uses the same vehicles as Constellation. Manned space flight is just a corporate welfare program for Boeing and Lockheed. It's also pork for the districts where the components are built. If you want proof, just look at the requirements: Make it cheaper and safer than the Shuttle, but use the same expensive dangerous components (SSME, SRB, ET) as the shuttle built by the same people. The fact that congress is making this high level engineering decisions for NASA is insane. It's fundamentally broken.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[sycodon]

There are no more "Steely-Eyed Rocket Men" left at NASA. Just bureaucrats with technical degrees.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone has some insight as to how this compares to, say the NIH budget and budgetary process? The NIH seems to function slightly better than NASA. Are there significant differences in the way Congress handles the two? Is the existence of private partners like Big Pharma enough to make the NIH work even with Congress' failings?

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[flaming error]

> Is mismanagement really that bad at NASA?
From everybody I know who's ever worked with them.... yes.

One of my friends had a five man company that made some esoteric part. NASA liked it, thought they could use it on the ISS. They made a deal. Which included NASA sending two guys to observe those five guys, full time, for eight months. The widgeteers had an aggressive development schedule they had to meet, and they had to do it while being continuously audited by two empty-headed challengeatrons.

Another friend ran a machine shop, and he got a NASA deal and they paid for him to build a second story to house a huge water tank and pressure chamber for testing, then NASA walked away.

Except for a couple pockets of competence like JPL, I think NASA serves mainly as a pork barrel.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[UnknowingFool]

Yes NASA isn't the best managed agency but it's rather simplistic to say that they're given more money but they can't do as much as in the past. You're ignoring that NASA has been asked to do more than in the past. Putting a man (or anything) on Mars is an order of magnitude more expensive and difficult than putting something on the moon. While they are given some increase in budget, it's not an order of magnitude more.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't correct for inflation. As a percent of GDP and federal budget as well as in 2007 dollars, the budget is lower than it has been in the past.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Chris Mattern]

Does anyone has some insight as to how this compares to, say the NIH budget and budgetary process? The NIH seems to function slightly better than NASA. Are there significant differences in the way Congress handles the two?

Yes, they're different. NIH grants are handed out by a peer-review board. NASA projects have their funding set by Congress.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[TWX]

If I remember correctly, the space race of the sixties and early seventies cost the US almost 1% of GDP to operate. The program also took lots of risks and resulted in the deaths of three Astronauts. We were competing for what we thought was our very existence against the biggest threat we had ever faced, an enemy who had stated their intent to ideologically turn us into them.

The Shuttle program of the eighties, which had military considerations (hence being a plane, along the lines of the X-20 Dyna-Soar) isn't really efficient at all. It's almost showing us how we have the means to brute-force our way to space. Using the shuttle to launch a satellite means not only is the weight of the satellite as a payload involved, but the weight of the shuttle, its supplies, and the personnel as well. It makes a lot more sense to launch just the satellite in a cowl. As for experiments in space, it probably makes more sense to design a capsule that has the capacity for the crew plus packed results from experiments with a non-returning, non-reentry-capable module that provides temporary habitation and laboratory space. The crew launches with both pieces, conducts experiments in the temporary module, packs the results into the capsule, straps in to the capsule, detaches from the module, deorbits and burns the module (if it's considered a risk in orbit) and then descends in the module. With the shuttle, since the same vehicle body is being reused (though it's probably more accurate to say 'recycled', considering the extensive refurbishing between each and every flight) the weight and design of the vehicle itself precludes a lighter, lower cost approach.

The Russians, while they've certainly had their problems, have had a much more cost-effective method with the Soyuz program, and the Progress modules for supplies delivery also have worked out fairly well. Cheap, designed for one trip, and able to be produced quickly and flown for their purpose without a lot of extra overhead.

Had we not suffered in the seventies with the material loss of Skylab, then in the eighties with Challenger and more recently with Columbia, without much real new achievement, we might have a public more interested in pushing the boundaries of space. But, with the stagnation of manned spaceflight since the seventies, the public just isn't inspired anymore, and I don't blame them. The cargo runs the shuttle has been used for don't do much for me either.

When NASA is faced with the collective ennui of a nation, it can't expect to get a lot of support from representatives, even when the programs are completely unrelated.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Cornwallis]

Obama really got handed a steaming bag of **** when he took office after good ole George. Just as all the tough decisions that had been put off until tomorrow for years on end started coming home to roost.

The Republicans should be so glad they lost that election because now, with everyone's short memory, they can blame all these problems on Obama and have a good chance next year. Nevermind that in our topsy turvy modern world, Conservative/Republican means "spend like drunken sailors who cares about fiscal responsibility, yahoo!!!" and Liberal/Democrat means "try and get a handle on things before our bonds reach junk status" and then take the fall for making the tough choices.

And Oblame-a has taken that bag and happily made it his own so please don't play the Repukes vs. Democraps card.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Colonel Korn]

Can someone please explain to me why despite the fairly linear rising budget of NASA we are shutting everything down right now? Is mismanagement really that bad at NASA? Is it saddled with debt from past programs?

I don't get it. It's like I'm watching my generation drop the ball despite all the obvious reasons in my mind to establish a presence off this rock. "Oh, my parents' generation put people on the moon. Not only did my generation stop putting people and telescopes in space, we also made ground observatories illegal and have re-instituted burning people who claim the Earth is not the center of the universe. Why? Because it was more affordable in the very immediate future."

Maybe NASA is that mismanaged, but your own link includes a graph showing that NASA's budget has been in general decline since 1991: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1a/NASA_budget_linegraph_BH.PNG

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Chris Mattern]

But NASA hasn't put a man on Mars. It hasn't even done a complete study of *how* to put a man on Mars. On the other hand, while NASA's budget is considerably up from its low point, it should be noted that it's still much lower (in constant dollars) than it was at the height of the Moon missions.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Lunix Nutcase]

That "greatest generation", i.e. the "boomers",

Wrong. The "greatest generation" was the generation who gave birth to the boomers.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[bravecanadian]

Nah, the boomers were not the greatest generation -- their parents were.

You're right about their lifestyle though. The boomers just lived off all the hard work of the greatest generation and piled up all the debts that we now face in the future.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[bravecanadian]

I don't have a horse in the race.

I actually think people that are polarized to either side are just deluding themselves.

Both of them are horrible.

In this case though, I really do think that Obama had his hands pretty clearly tied by the circumstances.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

You can read that however you want, since 1998 it's been trending upward ...

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[perryizgr8]

i don't gt it. the budget of nasa in 2011 is 19 billion $. if you adjust for 2007 dollars, this is quite low considering 1991 had 19 billion, and every year in the '60s had considerably more.
as a % of budget, the nasa budget has been close to 1%, and 3-4% during the '60s. in 2011: 19B/3.8T=0.5%. this is the LOWEST ever in nasa's history. how can you expect greater things if you just don't give them money? spacex has done some things for cheap. but those things are just that: cheap. not groundbreaking, not furthering research, just plain cheap ways to do what has been surpassed many times by what nasa has repeatedly done.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[darkmeridian]

I remember from a book discussing the Hubble Space Telescope that a significant political problem that NASA faces is the shifting political winds with regard to space exploration. If NASA put in a request for how much a project would actually cost, then the project would never be funded because of the "why are we spending so much on space when there are people starving in America" crowd. Thus, NASA would put in a low-ball request, which would be stuffed through. The sub-contractors would have to cut corners to meet the low-ball bid. Of course, these cut corners eventually result in huge catastrophes such as a defective main mirror on the space telescope. However, at that point, so much money has been put into the project that asking for a few billion more seems more attractive than losing all the money already spent.

If politicians would fund NASA appropriately, and more importantly, if they could commit to a certain level of funding past the current administration, then things would probably (not certainly) better. But NASA lives in fear that every four years, its budget might be eliminated. The current movement away from NASA-designed lift vehicles would be a good thing in this regard. If private enterprise were providing all the launch vehicles, NASA could spend the money more effectively on space exploration while other agencies such as the NSA, NRO, Air Force, etc. helped subsidize the research on the private launchers.

Just my two cents.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

It has always actually been that bad. A *GOOD* portion of the Gemini and Apollo programs were re-purposed ICBMS. The people who ran them and flew them were a good portion air-force. The other bits, science and landers and such were NASA.

The *expensive* bits came from the military.

However the nature of the military changed from long range strike capability to short range automated. So the large heavy lifting vehicles needed to cause a nuclear war are not needed as much anymore. So the research into them is nil. Those same ICBMS that are being removed from inventory (due to cost of maintenance, and treaties) are the very same ones they used to put us on the moon. They had the budget for it, now they use that budget on other weapons of war.

Even today the airforce is building its own 'shuttle' as they can not use the shuttle anymore.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[atrain728]

I think the chart explains well enough why the "linear rising budget" is not a good indicator of anything.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

"But NASA lives in fear that every four years, its budget might be eliminated. " you mean

"in fear that *every year*, it's budget..."

And worse, what about this year.. no budget, so NASA operated on a "continuing resolution" which has the effect of "funding for each project/program/mission stays the same as last year" You're in the early days of a mission just starting to ramp up? Tough.. you can't. Got a program that's sucking resources from everywhere that you were planning on ramping down? Nope.. gotta keep doing something with all those people. And, then, when the budget finally *is* passed (not yet, though)... you have a couple months to replan before the end of the Fiscal Year come October 1st.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[UnknowingFool]

Yes but it's been asked to plan for one. Planning for one isn't simply putting some engineers in a room with coffee and donuts for a day. Engineers are probably working on discrete problems like sanitation, payload, communications, etc. While they won't have all the details just yet, they are formulating the questions to be answered. For example NASA funded the long term bed rest study to understand microgravity effects which will come into play.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[the gnat]

The NIH seems to function slightly better than NASA. Are there significant differences in the way Congress handles the two? Is the existence of private partners like Big Pharma enough to make the NIH work even with Congress' failings?

The other reply mentioned the main reason - the final funding decisions are largely in the hands of peer reviewers rather than Congressmen. But I'd also add that the NIH sponsors competing projects, which provides added motivation for the grant recipients to get something done as quickly as possible without wasting too much money. (It's basically applying the logic of free-market economics to public sector research.) The influence of Big Pharma is actually pretty minimal, although it can't hurt politically (nearly every PhD scientist working in biotech or pharma was funded by the NIH at some point). It's certainly nothing like the aerospace industry that depends on NASA for a large part of its business.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

Decades of fiscal mismanagement have brought us to the precipice. It's not the fault of one generation, they are all to blame. The warnings of deficit financing went out years ago, and few paid any heed. Oh there were some years when the budgets were reined in, and others (like the past decade) where the federal government has been on a raucous spending spree using borrowed and printed money. Now we get to pay the price for their mistakes. It is sad to see good science go down the drain like this. But that is because most people don't care. Now it's time to start cleaning house. Unfortunately NASA is likely to get the hammered. Too bad they can't apply the same cutting torch to social welfare programs and the War Department. And taxation isn't going to close the breach. It's got to be cost cutting and it's got to be now, or soon there will be no NASA, NSF, or any other science programs left.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[spidercoz]

Technical degrees? More like MBAs, the downfall of American society. Which brings up a point: why are "Masters of Business Administration" so fucking terrible at administrating businesses? It's almost like they don't have any real skills or abilities and it's a bullshit degree. Oh wait...

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Moryath]

This was part of the problem so frustrating about the space shuttle program. Originally, the shuttles were supposed to fly a LOT more missions and do a lot more. For one example: the fuel boosters were originally designed to be carried into space as reusable modules to add to a space station. Politics killed that part.

There were originally supposed to be a lot more launches, but Congress killed funding to produce enough shuttles and booster parts to make that a reality. Later dipshits in Congress would lament "we were supposed to be launching a lot more regularly" in their attacks on NASA, while ignoring the fact that their predecessors were the ones responsible for not providing enough money to do so.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[zill]

If the NASA budget is linearly rising, then the value of the money they receive is exponentially declining due to inflation.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[couchslug]

"I am coming to believe that we need to look at NASA's mission and alter it for the post Cold-War era."

Get rid of NASA as it exists, switch to missions where the humans stay on Earth, and let the rest of the world spend their money on manned entertainment (it's not "exploration").

Instead of doing for the rest of the world what it should do for itself, we can sit back and reap the benefits.

There are many countries which have no space program and do just fine. Germany is the worlds second largest exporter, far more efficient in every way than the US, and doesn't bother with space exploration because it isn't useful to them.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

The current, added problem is that the Republicans - the party currently with "power of the purse" - have a hate-on for NASA because NASA was actually DOING the climate research and ongoing studies in response to screams of "global climate change is a myth, there's not enough research." The cuckoo clock wing of the party wants to kill NASA right now because they don't want there to BE enough research, ever.

Really? Let me clue you in: even your most nutjob right-wing Repub deep down acknowledges global warming. If the Repubs are going after NASA it's because of a political vendetta because that jackass Al Gore instructed the primary climatologist at NASA to fudge his original numbers as a political ploy to oust all the Repubs from the Bush administration. (If you don't believe me, look up past articles in The Register regarding this very topic.) This is politics, pure and simple: both sides play the game dirty, and we're all fools for re-electing most of them.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[h4rr4r]

Germany participates in the ESA. So technically they do have a space program.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA is based on space exploration mainly. So what is the alternative? Focus on just putting up satellites for cable tv so you can watch a bunch of millionaires play games?

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[ridgecritter]

FYI, JPL is managed by CalTech, not NASA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_Propulsion_Laboratory

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't gt it. the budget of nasa in 2011 is 19 billion $. if you adjust for 2007 dollars, this is quite low considering 1991 had 19 billion

Okay so in 2000 the budget was under 15 billion adjusting for inflation dollars. Why wasn't the shuttle decommissioned and Hubble shut down then? Why now?

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Uhhhh oh ya!]

Exactly, I would agree that NASA needs to take a look at their management chain but part of the chain they cant do anything about. The government is constantly readjusting their budget and not following through on promised funds. The politicians make the argument that there is work that needs to be done to bring jobs back. Yet despite all these cuts I don't see them doing anything useful, all the funding just heads to the military or bailing out some big business with worse management than NASA.

Now don't get me wrong I am not an anti military guy and I am all for them receiving a large budget but not if it means cutting other important programs to the point where they can not longer function. Military has made huge strides in R&D but it takes decades for it to reach the public. NASA brings the images and information about things light years from earth right to our computers as they discover it. But the government doesn't care about that they know most people wont notice a one or two decade gap in any new information about the universe outside earth.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[arth1]

If I remember correctly, the space race of the sixties and early seventies cost the US almost 1% of GDP to operate.

And has given us back far more than that!

The program also took lots of risks and resulted in the deaths of three Astronauts.

Compared with the seven that blew up in Challenger, I think that just goes to show how much better driven it was when politicians didn't want to micro-manage and required so much bureaucratic overhead that only a tiny amount of the money handed to NASA can actually be spent on real engineers, real parts, real scientists and not on even more paper pushers to satisfy a certain breed of politicians who cry "oversight, accountability" without allocating extra funds to pay for just that.

If anyhting, I think we need to go back to the cold war way of doing things, and abandon the post-cold-war paper-shuffling game.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[ColdWetDog]

I think it's more along the lines of the Winston Churchill aphorism:

"You can always depend on the Americans to do the right thing. After they have exhausted all other possibilities".

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[0123456]

This was part of the problem so frustrating about the space shuttle program. Originally, the shuttles were supposed to fly a LOT more missions and do a lot more. For one example: the fuel boosters were originally designed to be carried into space as reusable modules to add to a space station. Politics killed that part.

If I remember correctly, the Nixon administration told NASA how big a budget they could expect to have in the future and told them to design a program within that budget that they could push to Congress. NASA came back with a far more expensive program and acted surprised when they didn't get enough money.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Wyatt Earp]

Don't blame Bush for NASA's failing and Congress's inability to fund it properly, Republicans generally support NASA stronger than Democrats because states with heavy NASA presence generally vote Republican (Florida, Texas) and NASA goes hand in hand with military spending.

If you look at NASA spending and NASA foes in Congress its almost always cut by Democrats even during the Apollo era. Walter Mondale was the biggest foe of Apollo and personally made it his mission to cut funding to NASA

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch4.htm

"This item involves a fundamental and profound decision about the future direction of the manned space flight era. This is, in fact, the next moon-type program. I believe it would be unconscionable to embark on a project of such staggering cost when many of our citizens are malnourished, when our rivers and lakes are polluted, and when our cities and rural areas are dying. What are our values? What do we think is more important?"

"Mondale then offered his amendment again, as he sought to delete the $110 million for the Shuttle/station as an appropriation."

Once Johnson got the Presidency, NASA started being defunded, then it goes up under Reagan, Bush, down and up and down under Clinton and up under Bush.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA_budget_linegraph_BH.PNG

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

the only reason the shuttle got built was by NASA begging the DOD to use it to put Keyhole spy satellites in space. the shuttle cargo bay was completely redesigned for this purpose (rebuilt to fit the satellites in question).

after NASA got to the moon, they got something like a 70% budget cut. among the first things they cut was QA, and the rest (Hubble mirror never being tested before launch, looking away from obvious and eventually fatal shuttle design problems) is history.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Wyatt Earp]

No, President Obama could have had some spine and cut some military procurements that are spiraling out of control, the Bush White House did it to the Future Combat System, Comanche, Paladin, DD-21.

But President Obama keeps shoveling money into bad programs like KC-46, JSF, DD-1000, LCS.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-manned exploration is much cheaper than manned exploration.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, it is the US Senate's responsibility to propose and pass a budget. By law, there has to be a budget resolution proposed by April 1 every year (http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/98-472.pdf). There hasn't been a budget resolution proposed (or passed) since 2008. Since 2006, the US Senate has been controlled by the Democratic Party. Consequently, your conclusion that Republicans are 'the party currently with the "power of the purse"' is incorrect.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[robot256]

Because that's when they started PLANNING to shut down the shuttle and Hubble, more or less. You can't just go *click* over with things like that.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[compro01]

Germany is the worlds second largest exporter, far more efficient in every way than the US, and doesn't bother with space exploration because it isn't useful to them.

Germany certainly has a space program, the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (trans: German Center for Aerospace ). They're also part of the European Space Agency (The main ESA astronaut training center is located in Cologne and mission control is in Darmstadt). Their budget is considerably smaller (€1.4 billion or about $2 billion USD), but it does exist and do stuff.

They just don't do launches themselves as their latitude makes it impractical (their furthest south point is 47 degrees, vs. the 28 degrees (Kennedy Space Center) the US launches stuff from or the 5 degrees (Guiana Space Centre) France can launch from. higher latitude=more delta-v needed to reach orbit=need bigger rockets=more expensive), same reason the Canadian Space Agency doesn't launch our own stuff.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[SecurityGuy]

They're not, actually. A frightening amount of the nonsense that got us into this mess is precisely what they teach you NOT to do in business school. Unfortunately, organizations are often run by people with huge egos who are motivated solely by power and wealth. These qualities serve you well in getting to the top of an organization. They don't predispose you to listen to people who actually know things, whether those people have MBAs or PhDs, or whatever degree in a technical discipline you happen to favor.

Honestly, most of the nutty things I see done in business are done by people in leadership positions who don't have MBAs.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[tlhIngan]

Of course, these cut corners eventually result in huge catastrophes such as a defective main mirror on the space telescope.

You do realize that the defective main mirror deformed by only a tiny amount, right? Something on the order of 2.2 micrometers (0.0000022 m, or 0.0022mm), and it wasn't defective that the telescope was useless. It was a well-characterized flaw and still managed a lot of useful work in the meantime. For a huge mirror, that's pretty impressive given if it was on earth, gravity would probably distort it more.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[0123456]

Of course, these cut corners eventually result in huge catastrophes such as a defective main mirror on the space telescope.

What did that have to do with 'cost cutting'? It's not as though they bought a defective mirror because it was $500,000,000 cheaper, someone screwed up the measurements when building it.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[tlhIngan]

Get rid of NASA as it exists, switch to missions where the humans stay on Earth, and let the rest of the world spend their money on manned entertainment (it's not "exploration").

You do realize what the first "A" in NASA stands for, right? Aeronautics - NASA actually performs a lot of R&D on stuff that moves through the air. Space is a big part of their budget because it's so expensive, so their aeronautical research divisions tend to go unnoticed.

NASA started as NACA (National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics), and it's still a huge (and quite important) part of NASA's work. It's just the work they do isn't as flashy.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[ArcherB]

Obama really got handed a steaming bag of **** when he took office after good ole George. Just as all the tough decisions that had been put off until tomorrow for years on end started coming home to roost.

Don't blame Bush. Don't blame Obama. Congress controls the economy. Let me repeat that in bold caps so it will sink into your head:
CONGRESS CONTROLS THE ECONOMY

It's in the Constitution. Congress writes the laws that affect the economy. Congress writes the budgets and controls the purse strings. All the President may do is ask nicely for funding for his agenda and veto whatever bills he doesn't like.

With that said, the last time the control of both houses of Congress changed parties, unemployment was at 4.6%. This was back in 1996, GWB was president and Congress went from Republican control to Democratic control. The time it happened before that was when Clinton was president. Clinton's first two years were hounded by recession until Republicans took both houses during Clinton's first mid-term. The economy rebounded quickly enough to get Clinton re-elected and even ended his second term with a surplus. The surplus was actually bad for Bush and Congress at that time because it's really hard to say "no" to funding for anything when there is a surplus and deficit spending went through the roof. Still the economy remained strong until 2007 when Democrats took over Congress. Of course, Bush doesn't get a pass because he compromised too much and refused to use the veto stamp on piss-poor congressional spending bills. Obama should take more blame than Bush because he actually asked Congress for MORE piss-poor spending bills. Still, the blame ultimately falls on Congress.

So, Stop blaming Bush. Stop blaming Obama.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[darkmeridian]

You're missing the point: contemporary technology made it possible to make a better mirror. In fact, the backup mirror was perfect. The "small" error in the main mirror caused only 15% of the entering light to be focused properly. That's a huge consequence. Furthermore, the Hubble main mirror was only 94-inches in diameter. The largest earth-based telescopes have mirrors that are over four times wider.

The mistake in the main mirror and the failure to catch it was the result of cost-cutting.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[darkmeridian]

Perkin Elmer, the contractor working on the lens hated NASA as a result of the shifting budget, and NASA hated Perkin Elmer for spending too much. This caused such a breakdown in their relationships that NASA basically stopped supervising PE. At the same time, PE did not put its best optical design men on the project to save money. PE actually caught the mistake with the main mirror on the ground, but they were so far behind schedule that they rushed it out the door. Backup lens ground using older technologies were perfect, but no one bothered to check them with the same equipment that detected the error in the main mirror because, well, it cost too much to do so, and it would have set the project back even more.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Moryath]

You don't remember correctly.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

You claim that Republicans spend too much? How about the fact that your Lord Obama has spent more than all of the previous presidents combined, and he hasn't even made it through a full term yet. And putting off tough decisions, how's that budget for 2010 going? Still not done? How about 2011? That's not done either? Are those problems just to hard for Lord Obama? Well he did "create or save" a lot of jobs, at the low price of $238,000 per job. How could a business possibly have done better if that money hadn't been confiscated from them.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

Specifically at Goddard. I know someone working on JWST at one of the contractors, and the folks at Goddard have been micromanaging (with deleterious effects) and constantly moving goal posts. The sad thing is all the worker bees will be the ones who get hosed and laid off, and the gummint types at Goddard will just mover on to screw up something else. Yay, government for the people!

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[thrich81]

This so OT I really shouldn't comment but it is so BS it needs a response: "Still the economy remained strong until 2007 when Democrats took over Congress." In reality, the economy was running full throttle on the back of the crazed housing/lending bubble which everyone knew was unsustainable at the time. And still the government was running a deficit.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

That is better than the $300,000+ per job the Bush tax cuts created.

And that is if you give the tax cuts the credit for creating every job during his term.

Secondly, Bush spent more money during his term than Obama in his partial term so far by a very wide margin. I don't know where you are getting your facts. The decisions made by Bush have continued to cost enormous amounts of money both in revenue and in spending by the govt.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[0123456]

You don't remember correctly.

[citation needed]

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

I am coming to believe that we need to look at NASA's mission and alter it for the post Cold-War era.

Already done. The mission is now to make the Muslim people feel good about their contributions to science and engineering.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Joce640k]

In short, the answer is yes, management is that bad at NASA.

...yet we can still afford two billion a year to air-condition the tents in Afghanistan/Iraq.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

There was money to make a backup lens, but no money to actually see if it would help fix the problem with the main lens?

From which universe is that logic?

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[GooberToo]

Just about everything that was fucked up with the shuttle was fucked up by Congress and the Air Force.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Jane Q. Public]

"Get rid of NASA as it exists, switch to missions where the humans stay on Earth, and let the rest of the world spend their money on manned entertainment (it's not 'exploration')."

No. Leave NASA alone to do what it is good at: robotics. Leave manned spaceflight to people who actually have balls and brains, like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Burt Rutan. (Burt has officially retired; we are sorry to see him go but what a run he had! No less than 4 of the craft he designed are in the Smithsonian.)

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Joce640k]

Space is a big part of their budget because it's so expensive, .

True, but mostly it's expensive because they send people up there. If they dumped the ISS and shuttle (which they should have done a long time ago IMHO) there'd be plenty of money for the really useful stuff, eg. Webb Telescope, DSCOVR, etc.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Joce640k]

Google for "mars rover", "cassini mission", etc. Which part of that isn't space exploration.

The big albatross around NASA's neck is the shuttle and ISS. They cost a fortune and don't achieve much. Dump *those* and there'll be plenty of money left over.

NASA's budget should still be a national shame though. It's a drop in the ocean compared to the wars and bank hand^wbailouts.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Unequivocal]

GWB was not president in 1996. Maybe you mean 2006?

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[ArcherB]

And still the government was running a deficit.

I believe I covered that here:
The surplus was actually bad for Bush and Congress at that time because it's really hard to say "no" to funding for anything when there is a surplus and deficit spending went through the roof.

In reality, the economy was running full throttle on the back of the crazed housing/lending bubble which everyone knew was unsustainable at the time.

Someone tried to do something about that.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.
--John McCain

HERE is a NYTimes article on the bill. Why did the bill fail? It never even made it to the floor. Democrats blocked it in committee.

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

''I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,'' Mr. Watt said.

So, if you are blaming the recession on the housing bubble, it appears that it was not only the fault of Congress, which is my primary point, but that Democrats in Congress are the problem, which was my secondary point.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Dragonslicer]

FYI, it is the US Senate's responsibility to propose and pass a budget.

Not that I would be exceptionally surprised if this were now true, since even the president proposes a budget, but constitutionally, the House of Representatives has authority over government spending.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because the percentage of the budget changed doesn't mean it suddenly costs more to put a satellite or shuttle in space. If you had X amount of dollars one year and then the same or more next year, why aren't able to do the same things you were doing!?

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

I see this all the time. You know that, although the president can submit a budget to congress, the house actually designs the budget put into place. You want to blame people for programs like that, blame the representatives who vote for money that comes to their district because their district builds part for said aircraft/etc.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Joce640k]

Umm, aren't you agreeing with him?

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Titan1080]

Don't fret, there are other nations that still have ambition. Unfortunately, those nations are trying too hard to emulate this dying empire of ours.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[0123456]

Nah, the boomers were not the greatest generation -- their parents were.

The 'greatest generation' handed China and half of Europe to communists and have spent most of the last few decades voting themselves more and more benefits to be paid for by their grandchildren.

Admittedly giving China and half of Europe to the communists turned out not to be such a bad deal for the West since it kept them backwad and uncompetitive. But it was still morally wrong.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheap is groundbreaking. The biggest problem with space exploration is its astronomical cost.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[DougF]

I agree, the government needs to get out of the supporting-people-just-because-they're-people business. If we weren't supporting multiple generations on welfare and Medicaid, we'd have plenty of money for robotic explorations, scientific research, education, infrastructure maintenance, etc, all things which bring a return on investment.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Z00L00K]

The shuttle is dumped now - for good and bad.
  - It's a relatively expensive tool for space launches, which makes it bad.
  - It's very versatile compared to many other solutions, which makes it good.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Z00L00K]

Not very different from any other huge organization.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, MBAs have been trained to manage growth. NASA is not growing. MBAs don't know what to do with that.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't hand anything over.

The Russians beat them to that half of Europe. And after they had done the heavy lifting against the Nazis, do you think it would have been a good idea to keep rolling eastward from Berlin?

Are you saying they should have let MacArthur nuke China?

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[hairyfeet]

Riiight. hey lets create huge masses of starving people in an economy with negative overall job growth in a country with access to an insane amount of guns! that'll be the ticket? It sure will be if you want a lot of dead rich folks with their houses looted. They have a similar "paradise" where nobody gives a shit about the poor, its called Somalia, you might enjoy it as long as you have money for some technicals.

As for TFA, its another F35. The thing is insanely behind schedule and over budget, won't be done for years yet, it is a classic case of mismanagement that needs to get the ax. And I agree with another poster that sending meatbags into space just to say we've sent a meatbag into space? Seriously fucking DUMB. the robots do better science, can go farther, last longer, get more readings/samples, and don't need piles of water, food, and a place to shit and sleep.

So until we can get some better engine tech (which we can develop and test on the robots, as nobody is gonna be bawling if the robot bites it on national TV) sending meatbags out there is like trying to drive a model A up Everest. Sure it is possible, but it is slow, risky as hell, and just plain pointless. Better to send probes like New horizons to learn as much as we can while spending the money to search every inch of the skies to ensure we don't miss some planet killer drifting in the darkness.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[ArcherB]

GWB was not president in 1996. Maybe you mean 2006?

You are correct, but I was even wrong on that date. The 4.6% unemployment figure was from Jan 2007, which was when Democrats took control of congress.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[glassware]

Correction: Leave JPL alone to do what it is good at. The rest of NASA couldn't bang two rocks together to start a fire.

JPL is a microcosm of everything that was ever right about the United States Space Program.

In case you're wondering:
* JPL does all the robotic missions. You know, the ones that last ten years on Mars when they were only supposed to last for 90 days.
* JPL develops the awesome planet-exploring craft. The ones that learn something new.
* JPL manages the successful spacecraft that were launched decades ago and are still going (i.e. they are responsible for the remaining pioneer and voyager data and craft)

Check them out. If you have a chance, visit their "open house" day. You'll see more awesome robots than you can shake a stick at.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[hey!]

Nothing surprising in that. Think of what the world would be like if nobody rationalized doing things they knew very well were a bad idea. A world in which smart people never did anything stupid.

I heard a quite interesting theory about the change in the business culture in the US during the 1980s. In the 50s and 60s, the business culture was influenced by people who had fought in WW2. Those men had a sense of solidarity with the people working for them and a duty towards them. They had sense that the guys on the front line were doing something important. The story even cited one such CEO in the 70s who turned down a raise because it would have been bad for employee morale. In adjusted dollars he was making less than a tenth of what an average CEO in his position would make today.

I have no idea whether that theory is valid; I suspect to the degree it is true, it is probably an oversimplification. But still, that is the kind of person you want in the CEO's chair if you are an employee or an investor planning to hold the stock for the long term.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[More Trouble]

Do you have a reference where "cutting corners" produced the bad mirror on Hubble? Because I understood it was stupidity.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[jweller13]

I agree that manned "exploration" of space is of little practical value and largely a waste of resources. Unmanned...well anything...is an order of magnitude cheaper and more efficient.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[hey!]

I'm not so sure that you can conclude it was the result of cost-cutting. What happened was a combination of two things:

(1) The null corrector (an optical instrument used to check the figuring of the mirror) was improperly assembled; it was but the matter of a moment to make this mistake; the laser spacing measurements are thrown of by 1.3mm because of a stray reflection from a worn spot on the assembly jig. That's about the thickness of a dime. A washer is inserted to obtained the correct reading.

(2) The contractor checked and double checked the figuring of the mirror, and actually detected the problem. However, since the checking device was less accurate than main null corrector was supposed to be, the engineers decided to believe the main, incorrectly assembled null corrector instead.

The misconfiguration is something that could happen to anyone, but the decision to ignore the faulty test was the serious mistake. Personally, I don't see how cost-cutting has anything to do with that mistake. It's obviously much cheaper to fix the null corrector and continue figuring the mirror. The only way I can imagine cost cutting coming into this is if the program might be canceled because of the delay in figuring the mirror.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

We are shutting everything down because your once safe, wonderful country, is being invaded by millions of unintelligent, useless, criminal THIRD WORLDERS. That's why.

Had enough 'diversity' yet? Or will you wait until they have completely destroyed your society before you admit you were wrong, and that you much prefer to live around white people?

What's wrong with saying that you prefer living around white people? The non-whites sure love it, don't they!

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[lennier]

If NASA put in a request for how much a project would actually cost, then the project would never be funded because of [technocratic arrogance and disgust about the democratic process]. Thus, NASA would [blatantly misrepresent and lie to Congress to get a false budget approved, but if Congress calls them on this, that's politica corruption]

Would you trust a contractor who treated your company this way?

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[lennier]

NASA brings the images and information about things light years from earth right to our computers as they discover it. But the government doesn't care about that they know most people wont notice a one or two decade gap in any new information about the universe outside earth.

You know, it's cool that we get pretty sky pictures and all, but playing devil's advocate for a moment... if what we're seeing in the sky is thousands to millions of light years away... then realistically, even in the best case that it might affect our lives, our knowledge of the local universe won't begin to matter until thousands to millions of years' time, because we can't get there from here.

So why exactly do we need to know what's up there right now?

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[lennier]

For example NASA funded the long term bed rest study

Oh, so that's where John and Yoko got their funding from!

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[lennier]

And has given us back far more than that!

Citation needed. The money spent on the US manned space program has certainly funded a lot of US engineers working hard back on the good ol' Earth... to produce one-off, special-purpose parts with no commercial application outside NASA, which then get completely trashed once a program like Shuttle finishes. That's a win?

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[lennier]

And since you were talking about the Cold War, the same was true even for Apollo. Are the Saturn boosters in use today for satellites? Nope. So how much of what was achieved in Apollo was transferred out of NASA? Are there any objective figures?

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[lennier]

It's like I'm watching my generation drop the ball despite all the obvious reasons in my mind to establish a presence off this rock.

List Of Obvious Reasons To Put A Permanent Human Presence In Space:

1. No air
2. No water
3. No food
4. No fuel
5. No gravity
6. No biosphere
7. No marketable commodities
8. No native population
9. No trade routes
10. No military objective
11. No faster-than-light travel
12. Lethal quantities of radiation
13. No advantage to preserving human survival that can't be achieved with cheap mineshafts on Earth
14. ...
15. Star Trek!

One out of fifteen ain't bad I guess?

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[perryizgr8]

inflation? also, if you want a mars mission you'd have to pay much more than the moon mission.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[perryizgr8]

spacex is NOT exploring space. they're just putting objects in orbit. you do not explore space sitting inside a fucking capsule. let them do monotonous delivery missions and fund nasa to do the next big thing.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[phlinn]

I believe the GP was misremembering a claim about debt which is mostly true. I think the second time frame at that link is more relevant, as it includes spending which was specially approved after Obama such as stimulus packages, but they all involve projections about the future, which may not be accurate.

I don't think it's remotely possible that total spending by Obama to date to exceed everything spent under Bush's term. But his annual deficits are vastly larger than anything during bush's term. The stimulus package tripled the deficit in 09, so it's fair to ascribe 2/3 of that spike to Obama. The following years are all his.

OTOH, the president may have influence, but congress should be the primary consideration. Ascribing the deficit to the president is like taking a program you dislike, putting it at the top of spending, and comparing it to revenue by year to prove that if we just didn't have that particular program we would great! It's fundamentally misleading.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Squidlips]

It is because of the "Rocket to Nowhere" (SLS) that the flyboy dopes at NASA are pushing instead of real science like the Webb.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Jane Q. Public]

That's true. Good point.

After the clearly preventable Challenger disaster of 25 years ago, NASA was ordered to pull its bureaucratic head out of its ass, yet has never seemed to be able to do so. Nevertheless, the robotic missions led by JPL have overall been smashing successes.

So your point is taken. Perhaps NASA should go away, at least in large part. The several useful research arms that belong to it can stay, as can JPL.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Jane Q. Public]

No. I was not agreeing with him.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[arth1]

You forget that NASA, being a government agency, can't sit on research and inventions; it goes to the benefit of all of us.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5893387/Apollo-11-moon-landing-top-15-Nasa-inventions.html
http://space.about.com/od/toolsequipment/ss/apollospinoffs.htm

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[phlinn]

After reading further, it looks like the tripling happened before obama took office, so I retract that statement. Obama can't wash his hands, since he voted for the expensive budget items beforehand as a senator, but the stimulus was not as large a portion as I thought. I'm assuming the stimulus $787 billion was for the life of the program, so that it's contribution that year was less. Otherwise, I don't see how they can reconcile their numbers.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

"By 2010, Bigelow had invested US$180 million in the company. Bigelow has stated on multiple occasions that he is prepared to fund Bigelow Aerospace with about US$500 million through 2015 in order to achieve launch of full-scale hardware."

"The BA 330 (previously known as the Nautilus space complex module) is the complete, full-scale production model of Bigelow Aerospace's expandable space habitation module program. Ultimately, it is more of a model of space habitation module and not one specific craft as Robert Bigelow, owner and founder of Bigelow Aerospace, intends on building several of the modules for sale at a tentative asking price of US$100 million each."

2.5 of the BA 330s = pressurised of international space station.
"The cost estimates for the ISS range from 35 billion to 160 billion dollars."

The admittedly still a concept BA 2100 would be 2.5 *times* the pressurised volume of the ISS.

One wonders what they would have done with even a tiny fraction of the NASA budget.

Ditto SpaceX.

Fine. They aren't trying to send probes to Mars (yet). So get NASA out of the space shuttle and ISS game, and turn a fraction of those billions over to Cygnus, SpaceX and Bigelow.
Then use a fraction of the remainder to fund the James Webb space telescope.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[khayman80]

The several useful research arms that belong to it can stay, as can JPL.

Thanks. Being unemployed in today's economy wouldn't be fun.

Cut bait

[zoobaby]

As massively over budget, mismanaged, and failings to meet timelines as this project has been, maybe it's time to kill it. I know it would be capable of wonderful science, but sometimes you just need to cut your losses.

Re:Cut bait

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? 5 days of worth of sustaining the wars funds the James Webb Telescope.

Re:Cut bait

[Anonymous Coward]

As massively over budget, mismanaged, and failings to meet timelines as this project has been, maybe it's time to kill it. I know it would be capable of wonderful science, but sometimes you just need to cut your losses.

Perhaps fire the management team and get a new one. It would be a real shame for this to go down the drain. Cut the manned space program and use the savings to fix this.

Re:Cut bait

[zoobaby]

They have changed the management team once. It will be a great loss for science to cancel the JWST, but sometimes, enough is enough and a lesson needs to be taught. The worst part is, it's basically done and in testing.

Manned space flight is essentially cut from NASA once the shuttle lands.

Solution.

[softWare3ngineer]

Tell congress that they can turn it around and use it as a spy satellite. Then attach it to the defense budget.

Re:Solution.

[creat3d]

Tell congress that they can turn it around and use it as a spy satellite. Then attach it to the defense budget.

"We'll take a hundred of 'em!" - Congress

Re:Solution.

[SteveHeadroom]

Perhaps the lenses can be used to focus a laser to blow up non-Christian brown people? That should get the Republicans (and many Democrats) to support it.

Re:Solution.

[fabioalcor]

Not gonna work. They will use it exclusively as a spy satellite, and it will not make any science.

Re:Solution.

[timster]

Telling people that the JWST could be used as a spy satellite would be what's called a "lie". But if they can get it launched before Congress finds out that it has to be permanently shielded from the Sun...

Re:Solution.

[toastar]

It's all about the spin, you see it's a spy sat with night vision.

Re:Solution.

[Cerberus7]

Amusing thought, given the supposed connection between spy satellites and Hubble. It is rumored that Hubble was based very heavily on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNAN

Re:Solution.

[Jeng]

That sounds familiar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[creat3d]

Say goodbye to advanced scientific research and hello illiterate hicks and endless wars.

The irony is killing me. Your present, endless wars were started by an illiterate hick but I'm sure you know that already. Seriously, what fucking difference do you see between Bush and Obama? How long will you americans take to realize both of your parties are exactly the same thing?

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is killing me. Your present, endless wars were started by an illiterate hick but I'm sure you know that already.

That was sort of the whole point of my post, numbnuts. Thank you for being captain obvious, though.

Seriously, what fucking difference do you see between Bush and Obama?

Ones a run-of-the-mill idiot and the other is an even bigger idiot?

How long will you americans take to realize both of your parties are exactly the same thing?

Why are you asking me?

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[bravecanadian]

Yeah because all these budget problems and huge systemic deficits started in the past few years.

I mean I completely agree that people had hyped Obama up to an impossible standard but really..

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

He's done nothing to make it better though. Americans better learn to love their banana republic and third world education ratings in a few years.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[bravecanadian]

How can you make things better when your government is essentially bankrupt, your economy has just fallen off a cliff as you got elected, you are mired in two useless wars and you are beholden to tons of corporate interests that paid to get you elected?

I don't think anyone who was being realistic could think that Obama was really going to come in and suddenly everything would be sunshine and rainbows.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[Desler]

How can you make things better when your government is essentially bankrupt, your economy has just fallen off a cliff as you got elected, you are mired in two useless wars and you are beholden to tons of corporate interests that paid to get you elected?

End the wars, default on your debt and rebuild the economy from their. It worked swimmingly for countries like Argentina. This will never happen though because you turds are going to be too proud to admit that you aren't the best country in the universe anymore.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[bravecanadian]

I am Canadian, and I live in Canada, so I do in fact live in the best country in the universe. ;)

Forget about it, not a problem.

[jmorris42]

Nothing to see here, move along. The Republicans in the House are so cute, trying to pass budgets and stuff. The POTUS and Harry Reid (Senate leader) have said they see no reason to bring a budget up for debate so it is pointless. Sometime in the fall when the Repubs come to grips with that talk will turn yet again to another continuing resolution and every program will just auto pilot along.

Read the writing on the wall

[elrous0]

No one will openly say it, but the U.S. doesn't have the money for space projects anymore. No politician wants to be the first to say it (because Americans don't like to hear anything besides "We're Number One!!!!"), so they're just quietly defunding everything.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[Anonymous Coward]

No one will openly say it, but the U.S. doesn't have the money for space projects anymore.

"Don't have the money" MY ASS. We give more money to redneck morons as farm subsidies than we spend on NASA, and our defense budget is nearly the same size as what the ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD spends (mostly our allies, btw).

Now, "lunatic creationist teabaggers don't want to SPEND the money" is a far more accurate description. Maybe if we get real lucky, they'll all get together in Florida or Texas and secede already...

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, compared to our budget nasa is pocket change.

We absolutely have the money. The ENTIRE space shuttle program is listed at just shy of 200 billion on wikipedia. The entire program, start to finish, including R&D.

Compare that to the iraq war or almost anything else, and it seems very obvious we can EASILY afford it. Nasa is listed at 17.6 billion per year on wikipedia. 2010 budget was 3456. I think we can afford half a percent of the federal budget going to nasa, but that's just me. As numerous others have pointed out here, this is a focus problem, not a money problem.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[PvtVoid]

No one will openly say it, but the U.S. doesn't have the money for space projects anymore.

Bullshit. The U.S. isn't broke. We have suddenly decided that we don't want to pay for anything. All "we the people" want to do at this point is sit on our fat asses and bitch about how high our taxes are and how much gas costs. Neal Stephenson got it wrong: we don't even do software any more, just pizza delivery.

We could be, and ought to be, an historically great nation, busy building a new renaissance of science, technology, and art. Instead, we're turning ourselves into a third-world shithole, with our national wealth and heritage looted by robber barons. Thanks, Tea Party!

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[ColdWetDog]

No one will openly say it, but the U.S. doesn't have the money for space projects anymore. No politician wants to be the first to say it (because Americans don't like to hear anything besides "We're Number One!!!!"), so they're just quietly defunding everything.

Oh we have plenty of money. NASA's budget is a rounding error.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[Anonymous Coward]

Only because we are funding huge profits for commodities like oil and rich people's airplanes, mansions, yachts, and sex vacations to Thailand though the lowest tax rates in modern history. "We don't have the money" is pathetic cowardice.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[Anonymous Coward]

We do have money for space, but we're spending it air-conditioning Iraq and Afghanistan because nobody is willing to put spray foam to insulate the damn tents.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[ArcherB]

No one will openly say it, but the U.S. doesn't have the money for space projects anymore. No politician wants to be the first to say it (because Americans don't like to hear anything besides "We're Number One!!!!"), so they're just quietly defunding everything.

No, the US has plenty of money for space projects. The problem is priorities and compromise. We'd rather fund someone to NOT work for two years than fund a space agency. We would rather fund farmers to NOT grow something than fund a space agency. We would rather emulate the health care system of nations that have neither a military nor a space program but pay higher taxes and think that we can still have all three without paying more in taxes. And the problem with compromise is that Democrats will say, "Fine, we'll allow unemployment benefits expire after 1.5 years" and Republicans say, "OK, then we'll cut NASA". Eventually, we are left with nothing but military and welfare programs that neither side wants to cut and no one can think of common sense approaches like, I don't know, make welfare recipients work for the military.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[ArcherB]

Bullshit. The U.S. isn't broke. We have suddenly decided that we don't want to pay for anything. All "we the people" want to do at this point is sit on our fat asses and bitch about how high our taxes are and how much gas costs. Neal Stephenson got it wrong: we don't even do software any more, just pizza delivery.

We could be, and ought to be, an historically great nation, busy building a new renaissance of science, technology, and art. Instead, we're turning ourselves into a third-world shithole, with our national wealth and heritage looted by robber barons. Thanks, Tea Party!

The facts disagree with you. See: Deficit.

Yes, we do have plenty of money. The problem is that we are spending more than we make. That is exactly what the TEA Party wants to stop. The government has a limited number of powers. We are spending WAY too much money on things that the federal government should not be doing.

And yeah, when gas prices double in two years, we are going to bitch because my income has not increased to compensate. So, instead of taking my wife and child out to dinner a few times a month and giving my money to people who live near me, I have to give it to people who want to kill us all. BTW, that's another TEA Party platform; domestic energy production.

As for taxes, the Democratic plan is tax the rich that would otherwise invest the money into business that would hire people and to tax large corporations who will simply raise prices on their products that everyone purchases. Unless, of course, you are GE who owned a media empire friendly to the president. They didn't have to pay taxes.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[cdrguru]

The problem is that China is funding $0.46 of every dollar the US spends. When that crosses the line to $0.51 China will have effective control over the US budget process and there will certainly have to be a Chinese banker in on the budget process to approve every line item.

So what does China think about the US having a space program that is in competition with their own? Probably not much unless there is a huge technology transfer with clear military use possibilities. If we are able to help them make missile guidance more accurate they will let us spend their money on putting up a pure-science telescope. If we help them with remote sensing to track down Chinese and US citizens that are openly critical of Chinese policies then they will let us spend money on other stuff that is non-threatening to them and we might find useful.

Otherwise? Well, we better start planning on what to do with a 50% budget cut across the board. There will be a choice between having a military or relying on a treaty with China to protect the US. There will be a choice between having Medicare and Medicaid or just shipping people off to Thailand for treatment.

I'm guessing Obama will sign the Chinese mutual defense treaty in 2013.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[nutshell42]

The deficit is so large because the taxes are the lowest they've ever been since the 20s. There certainly is such a thing as too much taxes but there's also not enough. If you don't have any taxes at all the State will cease to exist and you get the equivalent of Somalia, the tea party people overlook that neither extremum of taxation produces an optimal result. It's especially funny because they're the same people who think fondly of the high tax eras like the 50s.

And yeah, when gas prices double in two years, we are going to bitch because my income has not increased to compensate. So, instead of taking my wife and child out to dinner a few times a month and giving my money to people who live near me, I have to give it to people who want to kill us all. BTW, that's another TEA Party platform; domestic energy production.

The solution would have been to increase the gas tax gradually over the last twenty years instead of leaving it unchanged since '93. The economy would have adjusted gradually as well (as it did elsewhere). And now that oil's back through the roof (how could anyone have known in the 80s that oil might become expensive? Madness, I say!) the relative increase would have been a lot smaller. In addition roads would be safer with less soccer moms in land battleships.

As for taxes, the Democratic plan is tax the rich that would otherwise invest the money into business that would hire people and to tax large corporations who will simply raise prices on their products that everyone purchases.

Companies charge what the market will bear as long as anti-trust laws are enforced.

Unless, of course, you are GE who owned a media empire friendly to the president. They didn't have to pay taxes.

Yes, the vast left wing conspiracy. The worst part is where Planned Parenthood in conjunction with NAMBLA ensnared Republicans to refuse the elimination of tax loopholes so it would look like they were in the pockets of big business.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[Anonymous Coward]

As for taxes, the Democratic plan is tax the rich that would otherwise invest the money into business that would hire people and to tax large corporations who will simply raise prices on their products that everyone purchases.

Yeah, because all those tax breaks we've been giving rich people have really worked out so far haven't they?

The rich keep getting richer. Sorry, but they don't need to.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[colinnwn]

The deficit wouldn't be noticeably detected by closing NASA down entirely. The deficit could be entirely eliminated by doing 2 things, ending all foreign wars that don't immediately affect our shores (cutting the defense budget in half at least) and by actually carefully monitoring and regulating the financial industry to prevent another economic catastrophe that causes our programmatic stimuli to kick in.

NASA funds the kind of high tech research and US based jobs that actually provide for the economic multiplier effect, and enable your car ten years in the future to get double the gas mileage. Though I in principle agree that the Federal government is doing things way outside its authority. But basic science research is exactly the kind of thing it should be doing (a la the NIH model) because this is the stuff that doesn't have an obvious market application now, but will be enormously important twenty years from now.

Increasing our production of domestic non-renewable energy resources is one of the most stupid ideas the T-party and R-party have right now, that is also unfortunately stupidly popular. We should be hording our resources for the day 30 years in the future that oil prices are twice what they have now, and other countries (not us hopefully) are fighting wars for control of those resources. Using them today is a supreme, extreme, and moronic waste.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[BJ_Covert_Action]

But somehow we have so much money that we don't have to tax the top 2% of earners in this country as much as we ever have in history before. Yep, that makes sense.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[Anonymous Coward]

We are rolling in money. We could easily use it for the space programs if we want to.

The problem is that we have collectively decided that we would rather use it on expensive medical procedures, tax breaks and loopholes for the rich, and expensive equipment to kill people in the Middle East.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that China is funding $0.46 of every dollar the US spends. When that crosses the line to $0.51 China will have effective control over the US budget process and there will certainly have to be a Chinese banker in on the budget process to approve every line item.

People who say that have a fundamental lack of understanding of how trade works. So we're sending a whole lot of our money to buy products from China. What would happen to them if we stopped buying?

We're as dependent on China as China is dependent on us.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[Anonymous Coward]

The US would have the money if the feds kept their hands off of every little project they could find. Instead they won't leave anything on the state level where it belongs.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[ArcherB]

NASA funds the kind of high tech research and US based jobs that actually provide for the economic multiplier effect, and enable your car ten years in the future to get double the gas mileage. Though I in principle agree that the Federal government is doing things way outside its authority. But basic science research is exactly the kind of thing it should be doing (a la the NIH model) because this is the stuff that doesn't have an obvious market application now, but will be enormously important twenty years from now.

NASA has enough military application to have their funding merged with the military budget, although the military is currently running a separate mission control in Houston right now so at least some of its funding comes from the military budget. Seeing that that particular mission control is supposedly secret (during the tour I took last week, the guide said, "The top secret military mission control is down that hallway next to the flag right there."), I don't think it's listed in our military or NASA budgets.

If nothing else, it shouldn't be that hard to amend the Constitution to allow/mandate NASA funding.

Increasing our production of domestic non-renewable energy resources is one of the most stupid ideas the T-party and R-party have right now, that is also unfortunately stupidly popular. We should be hording our resources for the day 30 years in the future that oil prices are twice what they have now, and other countries (not us hopefully) are fighting wars for control of those resources. Using them today is a supreme, extreme, and moronic waste.

If we tap our resources today and set a minimum price for oil (tariff) of say, $75/barrel, with the tax money received we could easily fund renewable technology well enough to have a viable alternative to crude in 30 years. The tariff would ensure that wells don't get capped when the prices drop and the minimum price would ensure a healthy profit for lease holders (read: US Government).

If we leave the oil in the ground, eventually someone will find a viable alternative, although much later than we would if we use the tax revenue from domestic production and tariffs to fund the research, and the oil left in our ground on off our shores will be a supreme, extreme and moronic waste as it would be a natural resource we have in abundance that would instantly be made worthless. Ideally, we want to pump the last drop of oil from our domestic resources on the last day it's needed.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[colinnwn]

Personally I think the minimum price per bbl oil should be more like $150, and I also don't trust the government to hold that money in reserve for using only for renewable resource research, development, and production, (See: Social Security Trust Fund) unless it was also Constitutionally mandated. Though that hasn't stopped us from violating Constitutional mandates and I don't like the idea of wantonly adding them.

eventually someone will find a viable alternative, although much later than we would if we use the tax revenue from domestic production and tariffs to fund the research,

I don't think there is any evidence to back that up. If we were to slowly turn off all domestic oil production, the price would spike and it would be extremely and immediately very financially rewarding to quickly put alternatives into large scale research and production. We are currently our own largest source of oil. I'm not against maintaining our current production methods and levels. I am against utilizing additional new technology that can extract more of our declining reserves that would be valuable in the future.

as it would be a natural resource we have in abundance that would instantly be made worthless.

Never. Gonna. Happen. It will become pretty clear as the price of oil starts declining long term rather than spiking and retreating, that it is time we could turn on the taps full bore and use the last of it. Until that happens, it is far from clear there won't be considerable price and supply spikes in oil markets as we search in fits and starts for viable and scalable alternatives.

Re:Read the writing on the wall

[TUOggy]

Yes we do. We could probably have enough money to conquer space if we would just stop spending so much on wars in other countries.

NASA's eulogy

[MrKaos]

This is the true cost of the Iraq War. Such a shame.

Re:NASA's eulogy

[Wyatt Earp]

Nope, NASA funding kept going up during the Iraq War.

This and a lack of a Shuttle replacement is 100% because of NASA's inability to innovate and manage a program.

Re:NASA's eulogy

[deadhammer]

Who the hell modded this man Troll? This is 100% correct, this IS the true cost of spending all your money on pointless wars - everything else has to suffer.

Re:NASA's eulogy

[perryizgr8]

this is correct. the troll mod shows the degradation of the american society. the same people who once rallied behind their president and went for zero to moon in nine years can't even put a man in leo right now, and can't replace their old telescope.

Re:NASA's eulogy

[perryizgr8]

nope, you are wrong. the nasa budget as % of the fed budget is the lowest ever in history.

Re:NASA's eulogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Or we could just let the deadbeats who feed off of the various welfare systems and never contribute to society starve to death... The choice is yours.

Re:NASA's eulogy

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Why is this modded Troll? If you look at NASA's funding historically you would see that during NASA's golden age, the Apollo program, funding levels for NASA were closer in the ball park to funding levels for the current Iraq war. When there is only so much money to go around, you can buy guns, butter, or science: pick one.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

How can you make things better when your government is essentially bankrupt, your economy has just fallen off a cliff as you got elected, you are mired in two useless wars and you are beholden to tons of corporate interests that paid to get you elected?
I don't know create a new entitlemen,t start a third war in the middle east in the name of international cooperation, and stack the NLRB w/ union stooges to reduce the chances of fixing the structural flaws in the economy impeding job growth.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

and stack the NLRB w/ union stooges to reduce the chances of fixing the structural flaws in the economy impeding job growth.

Yeah, because it was the unions fault for the economic slump not all the greedy corporations and CEOs. I'm sure those damn union stooges held a gun to heads of all those CEOs and forced them into making bad loans!

Congratulations to

[Anonymous Coward]

the ultraviolet astronomer community. You whined so much about JWST not being a worthy replacement of Hubble because it wouldn't observe at ultraviolet wavelength you just got it cancelled. Thank you.

The purpose of James Webb

[UnknowingFool]

For those that don't know James Webb was planned to be the successor to Hubble as it was supposed to see further than Hubble or ground based observatories. Also it was designed to observe in infrared rather than visible.

Re:Taking the Cake

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the only way to be sure.

I thought it was nearly built?

[SeeManRun]

If the thing is half built or more, then why cancel it. That is a real waste of money. You don't half do things, you find things that are yet to be started and cut those!

Re:I thought it was nearly built?

[Rolgar]

Fund it the old way, with private money. Business people who have acquired tens of millions or more money tend to know how to hold people accountable. If you give some benevolent millionaires and billionaires the opportunity to invest, with the understanding that they'll receive plenty of recognition, or the ability to auction the access time scientists want to buy (money they can get when they request funding for their research), you might be surprised at how quickly they will pony up the money, and how quickly they will turn this project around by figuring out who knows what they are doing, and who needs to be gotten rid of, and make the priority getting this thing into space instead of whatever the bureaucratic incentives are within NASA and the government. If the telescope time were able to bring in $2 million per day, that would bring in $700 million a year. After paying for scientists, communications, paying back the investment, you could see 600 million a year in profits, maybe with the understanding that once they've doubled their money, the ownership of the telescope reverts to a foundation that lowers the price but keeps it high enough to fund development of the next great space telescope.

I think that sounds a lot better than tossing the whole thing on the scrap heap.

Re:I thought it was nearly built?

[zoobaby]

From what I've been told, it's basically done but in exhaustive testing. However, it's going to cost a couple billion more to proceed.

Re:I thought it was nearly built?

[lennier]

Fund it the old way, with private money.

Compelling Private Commercial Reasons To Observe Million-Light-Year Distant Stars In Higher Resolution:

1. Invest $1,000,000,000 in new hi-def ubertelescope
2. Wait 10 million years for first contact, sell star maps to Andromedan Consulate
3. Watch for galactic collisions which might affect us in 10 million years, sell galactic collision insurance
4. Observe supermassive galactic black holes colliding, learn how to slow time by 5% if we had two supermassive galactic black holes, sell blueprints
5. Postulate a new speculative theory about the early universe which we could perhaps test in 10 billion years' time, maybe, sell preprints
6. Detect 1000 possibly Earthlike planets which we will never be able to visit until long after they have decayed to dust, sell dust insurance to future colonists
7. Catalog 1,000,000 new stars which nobody except scientists will know or about, sell naming rights to a university
8. Create a "space bubble", convince the general public that they'll live in moon domes within 20 years if they invest in space, get out before the collapse.
9. ...
10. Profit!

Or

1. Don't invest $1,000,000,000, make $0 profit in the next millennium compared to $-1,000,000,000 profit in the next millennium, be $1,000,000,000 better off.

Re:I thought it was nearly built?

[SeeManRun]

Wise stuff. Spend billions making it, then cancel instead of a couple more billion to finish. Scrapping it will probably cost half a billion.

What about the Chinese?

[FhnuZoag]

Maybe we can get the Chinese to put this thing up? We can probably sell what's been done so far to them to take over. Be less wasteful than tossing it to the scrap pile.

Re:What about the Chinese?

[rubycodez]

the Chinese have their own space program with various observatories on earth and launched, with more planned

Re:What about the Chinese?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's in the proposed law also. NASA can't collaborate with China.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[Nadaka]

Not exactly the same.

The republicans are more honest about being authoritarian neo-feudal corporate welfare junkies and pander to radical theists.

The democrats are more subtle in their as authoritarian neo-feudal corporate welfare junkies and make futile token efforts at social programs to pander to the poor.

Don't cancel it

[C_Kode]

Don't cancel it, just go through the project management and fire everyone who was mismanaging it causing it to go so far over-budget.

It probably had illegal crap involved such and kick-backs and over-charging. This is one reason why letting private companies develop these types of projects rather than government do it is usually so much cheaper. I think the same thing happen to the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) down in Waxahachie, Texas when the budgeted $4.4B practically tripled to over $12B

Re:Don't cancel it

[Soft]

Don't cancel it, just go through the project management and fire everyone who was mismanaging it causing it to go so far over-budget.

AFAICT, the reason why it's going so high over budget is that the budget itself was massively low-balled to begin with, so that the project would have a chance of being approved. In other words: lie about the true costs, they'll have to give you more later, when it's too high-profile to cancel.

The "mismanagement" here is that it wasn't spotted earlier. You can fire them, but you'll still have to either double the budget or cancel it all...

Re:Don't cancel it

[JamesP]

I don't agree with most of your comments, but I'm thinking about the over-budgeting thing.

The problem with NASA is that they want to do EVERYTHING from scratch.

New mission? New platform. New launch platform? new. New rover on Mars? Rebuild

Ares/Constellation. Money sink. Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild! And really, ARES looked like it suffered from NIH syndrome (maybe it should be called 'not invented by us syndrome'). And absolutely underwhelming.

Risk and cost goes up, payoff goes down.

Really, NASA should do a sattelite platform, an orbiter/flyby platform, a rover platform, and give the launch money to SpaceX. (Or Boeing/Lockheed).

Also, they should put money on BPP (http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/) maybe with missions designed specifically for things like the flyby anomaly, the Pioneer anomaly, etc. It's the only thing that, with research, can get us out of the planet without strapping people to a million pounds of explosives.

Re:Don't cancel it

[0123456]

Ares/Constellation. Money sink. Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild! And really, ARES looked like it suffered from NIH syndrome (maybe it should be called 'not invented by us syndrome'). And absolutely underwhelming.

The Ares problem was precisely the opposite: everything had to be shuttle-derived to 'save money' and as a result they spent more to put a fake upper stage on top of an SRB and fire it into the sea than SpaceX spent to design and build a new rocket engine and two new rockets and launch them into orbit.

Re:Don't cancel it

[Anonymous Coward]

A big reason for cost overruns is that this is all new technology and has never been done before. The telescope is very complex. How can you predict the exact cost of something this difficult and complex. Technically it's considerably more complex than Hubble. In addition nobody ever won a government contract by not being optimistic about the cost of a project. There is also considerable inefficiency in the management of the programs because a lot of players are involved, and the management/communication overhead is daunting, there is no way around this. The management of such a complex program is no easy task. Having worked on this project I don't get the impression that it's poorly run at all. If we launch this thing and it works then I would say this is the most technically advanced gadget ever built.

Re:Don't cancel it

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides which, I don't think there's any commercial or "private" point to the SSC or the JWT. That's why we have a gov't. Oh, wait... we barely do.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[compro01]

Don't worry. Harpo of the Reform party is working on that.

should rename it the 'anti terrorism telescope'

[decora]

and tell everyone you can spy on terrorists with it, it would have prevented 9/11, etc etc etc.

then it would get funded in a heartbeat.

i have heard that this is how eisenhower managed to get the interstate highway system built

Re:should rename it the 'anti terrorism telescope'

[Wyatt Earp]

The Interstate Highway System was always about strategic mobility in North America with a secondary role of commercial road network.

That's why it's name is - Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways

Eisenhower was involved in the first motorized convoy across the US, the 1919 Army Convoy on the Lincoln Highway, it took 4 months to get across the US by road.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_Motor_Convoy

Re:should rename it the 'anti terrorism telescope'

[SnarfQuest]

No, only groping gets funding as an antiterrorist ,ethodology. If you want this funded, say it is to prove that Global Warming(tm) exists and is caused by man. You can get extra funding if you cover it with elephant shit, or B&W gay porn, Dems really like that type of thing.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

If you despise people poorer than you, vote republican. If you envy people richer than you, vot democrat.

thanks for the post

[decora]

if more insiders spoke out maybe something could get changed.

Re:thanks for the post

[flaming error]

> maybe something could get changed.
Yeah, for example, the employment status of those insiders.

Re:thanks for the post

[RebelWithoutAClue]

Don't forget, NASA is basically the only game in town for Aeronautics, if they blacklist you, you're out of luck.

Space Belongs to China

[arthurpaliden]

The future of space research, exploration and exploitation belongs to China. This is because they have a government that can reliable implement long term plans. As opposed to us in the West who cannot because as soon as our governments are elected they have to start campaigning for re-election, which invariably means killing of the last government's projects, as opposed to effectively running their countries utilizing secure long term planing relating to all fields not just space.

Re:Space Belongs to China

[CrimsonAvenger]

The future of space research, exploration and exploitation belongs to China. This is because they have a government that can reliable implement long term plans.

As I recall from my childhood, the same thing was being said, with "USSR" replacing "China".

Alas, it turned out that the dictatorship of the proletariat was no more capable of long term planning than we were...

Re:Space Belongs to China

[perryizgr8]

ussr!=china
chinese govt officials are on record saying that their ultimate goal is a democracy. that the present situation is a compromise to make the chinese people ready for supremacy when it knocks on their door.

Typo: "my" should be "by"

[SMoynihan]

"...the 2012 budget still has to be voted on my the House and Senate"

Should be:

"...the 2012 budget still has to be voted on by the House and Senate"

Unless the author owns them, which would be awesome.

mod parent up

[decora]

there is so much garbage being funded by 'homeland security' but we cant get basic science research done.

without jews, fags, and gypsies

[decora]

there would be no space program.

(apology to Mel Brooks)

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[bravecanadian]

I know :(

I find it strange and disconcerting how the neo-con groupthink has swept through the media and public here now.

Because Govnt can't cut Military and Entitlements

[rcb1974]

We spend trillion+ dollars per year on entitlements to people who don't work, and financing unjust foreign wars, yet we cannot afford to spend a few billion to complete the tool that will allow us to better understand the history of the universe? Come on... End the wars, cut off the entitlements, gradually shrink government to 75% of its current size, give all the money back to the taxpayer, and most importantly, end the Federal Reserve system which is a tax on anyone who holds wealth in dollars. Funding the James Webb project creates jobs for scientists and engineers -- the real people behind progress -- who create new technologies to improve everyones lives. This goes to show just how dumb the Obama administration and Congress can be. Ron Paul 2012.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[h4rr4r]

When Argentina defaulted it did not take out the economy of all the major powers. Also Argentina is not doing swimmingly, they are a third world country. A US default would kill the economy of many nations and put the US into third world economic status.

Write Congress Now

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Now's the time to put your money where your mouth is Slashdotters. Time and again we bemoan on this site that our politicians (in the U.S.) piss our tax dollars away on pork-ridden bills and unnecessary defense spending at the expense of science. Now is the time to let Congress know just how important we nerds find science like the JWST to be. There are at least two open letters to Congress written by folks on the internet. They can be found here and here.

You can find your Congress-critter's mailing and contact information here and here.

It won't take you more than 10 minutes to print on of those letters, fold it up, stamp it, and mail it to your representative or senator. We 'dotters bring down entire websites when we care enough about an issue to RTFA. Now is the time to bring Congress's mailroom to a standstill by declaring, in one unified voice, "You won't ransack our science research anymore!"

If we can afford two wars in the Middle East, Medicaire, Medicaide, and tax cuts for the rich assholes who are driving this country into the ground, then we can afford to build this telescope, not just for America, but for the continued progress and exploration of humanity in general.

idiot boomers ruined everything

[Thud457]

That "greatest generation", i.e. the "boomers",

Wrong. The "greatest generation" was the generation who gave birth to the boomers.

Well, at least they have that failure on their record.

Re:Taking the Cake

[ColdWetDog]

Just take out Washington DC. Then nothing of value would be lost.

Construction versus Maintenance

[mbone]

NASA has, over time, become more and more dominated by the people who want to spend money on stuff, as opposed to the people who want to do stuff. This is not just increasing bureaucratization, but a form of corruption that the US government is prone to across the board. I have heard it naked expressed that the real purpose of NASA is to make sure certain DOD contractors make a profit.

In other words, and to be blunt, building things shovels money into the pockets of politically well connected contractors. Running things, not so much.

However, the flip side of this is that it is much easier to shut down a not-yet-built program, than to shut down an existing one. So, the Hubble Space Telescope (which is still functioning well, and could probably be kept going for decades), is viewed as obsolete, and is shut down by NASA managers. The Webb (which is not intended for on-orbit servicing, and so will only last 5 years or so), is beloved by NASA managers, but is an obvious target for cost-cutters in the Congress. What's worse to me is that, if it is funded and launched, it will probably be late, and will die well before any replacement, thus causing huge gaps in our ability to observe from above the atmosphere.

I think that end-of-lifing of the Hubble ST is a major strategic blunder by NASA - just try getting that money re-established now. As far as what is to be done, I am not sure. I wish that we would stop electing so many bought and paid for politicians, though. That would be a start.

Re:Construction versus Maintenance

[PvtVoid]

NASA has, over time, become more and more dominated by the people who want to spend money on stuff, as opposed to the people who want to do stuff.

Perhaps true of the manned space program, but missions like the Webb are the real deal and have widespread support in the scientific community.

What's worse to me is that, if it is funded and launched, it will probably be late, and will die well before any replacement, thus causing huge gaps in our ability to observe from above the atmosphere.

I think that end-of-lifing of the Hubble ST is a major strategic blunder by NASA

HST was a wonderful instrument, but it is simply not capable of doing the science that needs doing next, for example constraining the properties of Dark Energy or exploring the end of the cosmic "dark ages" at redshifts of 5-10. And repairing HST was never cost-effective: the repair missions cost roughly as much as building a new telescope.

Re:Construction versus Maintenance

[robot256]

I have heard it naked expressed that the real purpose of NASA is to make sure certain DOD contractors make a profit.

And I've heard that the NASA divisions of certain DOD contractors never turn a profit. They only do it for shits and giggles, somewhere to stick people without a contract, and can charge enough in contract overage to cover their costs.

In other words, and to be blunt, building things shovels money into the pockets of politically well connected contractors. Running things, not so much.

No argument there.

However, the flip side of this is that it is much easier to shut down a not-yet-built program, than to shut down an existing one. So, the Hubble Space Telescope (which is still functioning well, and could probably be kept going for decades), is viewed as obsolete, and is shut down by NASA managers. The Webb (which is not intended for on-orbit servicing, and so will only last 5 years or so), is beloved by NASA managers, but is an obvious target for cost-cutters in the Congress. What's worse to me is that, if it is funded and launched, it will probably be late, and will die well before any replacement, thus causing huge gaps in our ability to observe from above the atmosphere.

The only reason Hubble kept going was because of the shuttle servicing missions. It cost about $2b to make. For the price of the five servicing missions (>$4b) we could have built and launched several new telescopes with the same or better upgraded technology and much less risk. The only reason it was designed to be serviced was as a manned spaceflight experiment and to give the ill-conceived space shuttle something to do.

I think that end-of-lifing of the Hubble ST is a major strategic blunder by NASA - just try getting that money re-established now. As far as what is to be done, I am not sure. I wish that we would stop electing so many bought and paid for politicians, though. That would be a start.

The reason Hubble is being decommissioned is because the shuttle is being decommissioned (because it is too costly and dangerous) and can no longer service it, not because it is obsolete. And they aren't going to throw a working telescope out, they're going to wait until it breaks again and then not fix it.

Re:Construction versus Maintenance

[lennier]

HST was a wonderful instrument, but it is simply not capable of doing the science that needs doing next, for example constraining the properties of Dark Energy or exploring the end of the cosmic "dark ages" at redshifts of 5-10.

And this science "needs doing" because it will lead to... what breakthroughs, exactly?

Given that space is big, and we will never get to even the closest star within anyone's lifetime, meanwhile the Earth is going through an existential weather and economic crisis... exactly why does this science matter?

Saying "because knowledge, no matter how arcane and without application, is its own reward!" doesn't quite seem to cut it. Why is this kind of science more immediately useful than cataloguing Pokemon?

Re:Construction versus Maintenance

[PvtVoid]

Given that space is big, and we will never get to even the closest star within anyone's lifetime, meanwhile the Earth is going through an existential weather and economic crisis... exactly why does this science matter?

Ten thousand years ago, I am sure somebody was saying "Why waste time painting pictures of caribou when we need to be out hunting to feed our families?" Turns out representational art formed the original basis for written language, which stands as one of the seminal breakthroughs in human evolution. Nobody painting on a cave wall knew that at the time.

Five hundred years ago, I am sure somebody else was saying "We have the plague to contend with, wars, political chaos. Why should we waste money figuring out whether the planets orbit in circles or ellipses? What possible use is that?" Turns out understanding the structure of the universe (at the time, just the solar system) paved the way for Newton to formulate his laws of motion, which utterly revolutionized every aspect of human civilization and formed the foundation for our modern technological society. Nobody at the time could possibly have foreseen that.

Why fund basic research, or art, or music, or theater, or literature? Because it's what great civilizations do, and the moment they stop doing it is the moment they enter an inevitable phase of decline. Civilizations grow on their ideas, and nobody can say in advance which idea is going to be the one that pushes humanity forward into a new phase.

This saddens me.

[SwampChicken]

We don't do anywhere near enough space programs as it is.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

When Argentina defaulted it did not take out the economy of all the major powers.

Then maybe those other major powers shouldn't have continued to give credit to a country that continually showed it wasn't going to be able to do anything but service the interest?

Also Argentina is not doing swimmingly, they are a third world country.

Non sequitur. Argentina has less debt issues and has been able to get most of their debt at lower interests than before they defaulted. So, in comparison to their defaulted state they are doing quite swimmingly and have a better credit rating than they had before that.

A US default would kill the economy of many nations and put the US into third world economic status.

Because you think the US has any realistic chance of paying back what is approaching $15 trillion in debt any time soon? Sometimes you need to learn to cut your losses and start over because what you have going on now is not sustainable.

and China cuts corners there rail systems have

[Joe_Dragon]

concerns about debt.

corruption

Experts have questioned the safety

There is also so much wear on the tracks that costs for daily inspections, maintenance and repairs go up sharply.

they have been slowed down

high costs have resulted in at least some trains operating almost empty, industry experts say.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[0123456]

If you despise people poorer than you, vote republican. If you envy people richer than you, vot democrat.

The right don't hate people poorer than them, the left do. The right want to make everyone rich, the left want to make everyone but the commisars poor; who do you think would vote for left-wing politicians if everyone was rich?

Of course they cancelled it

[Anonymous Coward]

It would have allowed the general public to know about the spaceships coming our way near the end of 2012.

Re:Because Govnt can't cut Military and Entitlemen

[robot256]

So...you're saying we should eliminate most of the government *except* NASA? Is that the one thing out of everything the private sector can't do? Just curious because I totally wasn't expecting that from a Ron Paul supporter. Most libertarians say things like "sell it off" or "starve it to make it more efficient". And yes, I did just skim through several pages on the subject.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[compro01]

Yeah, I know. I feel like I'm in an ocean with all the blue around here (Saskatchewan).

Furthermore, we've got Tom Filibuster Lukiwski, who I would dearly like to get rid of, but that seems highly unlikely unless something interesting happens.

eliminate the manned space program.

[Anonymous Coward]

Telescopes and probes, like the James Webb telescope do lots of science. People in orbitng tin cans, do not.

Re:eliminate the manned space program.

[perryizgr8]

they actually do.

Re:eliminate the manned space program.

[Overzeetop]

Actually, per dollar spent, putting men in orbit is very inefficient for the science gained (except, perhaps in the case of scientific research about the effects of extended space living on the human body...but that's a niche case). At one point, I believe more than half of the agencies budget was more or less dedicated to the manned program, and yet the returns (in science) were in the 10% range. Now, that's really a hard-to-quantify number, but I would not find that exceptionally out of line, because the overhead associated with safety, space, mass, and personnel support for manned missions is enormous.

Note: I was once a former astronaut candidate hopeful, and would sign up in an instant. I like manned flight because I think it's good for public morale and nationalism, and it drives dollars to the other research missions of NASA. Let's face it - Manned Flight is just plain fucking cool. But it's cost is disproportionate to the science is generates.

Re:Because Govnt can't cut Military and Entitlemen

[rcb1974]

I think there should be in existence somewhere on the planet an organization that does what NASA does. However, I think it would be difficult to get sufficient funding from the private sector to fund certain NASA projects such as the James Webb Space telescope (JWST). Do you see anyone in the private sector offering to buy up the JWST project at a reasonable price if NASA abandones it and were to offer it for sale? If you think it is important to get answers to questions surrounding the history of the universe, and there is not enough support from the private sector to make that heppen, then government can do it. I'm generally in favor of small government except when it comes to things like certain NASA projects and protecting the environment.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[perryizgr8]

he's been doing his bit to _contribute_ to the problem, and that is not excusable. at a time when your govt should refrain from further debt and drastically curb expenses, he wants to borrow even more money to pay off existing debt! as an analogy, consider that you have fallen into a debt vortex and owe 1 million dollars and have no way to pay them back. do you:
a) get a new credit card, put it into an atm and borrow cash at ridiculous interest rates to pay off existing debt?
or
b) cut up all your credit cards and spend significantly less, saving money to pay off debt?

so far, obama seems to prefer (a), just like all his predecessors. i am not an expert in economics, but this policy looks suicidal to me. also, i care about this because a collapse in us economy means devaluation of my assets and decrease in my standard of living, even though i am not an american.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

despise != hate.

Re:Because Govnt can't cut Military and Entitlemen

[perryizgr8]

no you should curb expenses, not eliminate everything. try to save on things like fucking airconditioning tents in afghanistan.

Re:Hope no. Change, not the way you wanted

[PvtVoid]

End the wars

OK, with you there.

default on your debt and rebuild the economy from their.

The U.S. debt is currently about equal to its GDP, which is a cause for concern, but not a reason for default. I owe roughly as much on my house as I make in a year, and I am far from in a panic about my debt level.

Failing to raise the debt ceiling at this point is so stupid it boggles the mind. It's like trying to fix a nosebleed with a hammer.

Its already bad

[Anonymous Coward]

JWST is only called Hubble's successor because that will sell; its actually much closer to SST (Spitzer)'s successor. There is no true successor to Hubble in any pipeline; after the two SIC/DH units on Hubble fail, the era of continuously visible sky is over.

Re:Better yet - put it in the TSA

[Overzeetop]

Tell them it can detect terrorists carrying weapons onto an aircraft and they'll order one for every major airport in the US.

1993 all over again

[recharged95]

Sounds like the JWST is the modern version of the SSC (Superconducting Super Collider for the young'ins).

Re:Because Govnt can't cut Military and Entitlemen

[Anonymous Coward]

Bwahaha! Ron Paul? Ron Paul has announced that he will not be running for Congress again. That means, after he makes a pitiful showing in the presidential nomination contest he will settle down to write books he can sell to his fanboy cult. Are you at all familiar with how Paul has voted on funding NASA and scientific research? That's what I thought.

Re:Because Govnt can't cut Military and Entitlemen

[lennier]

yet we cannot afford to spend a few billion to complete the tool that will allow us to better understand the history of the universe?

And "better understanding the history of the universe" will help us do... what, exactly?

Re:Because Govnt can't cut Military and Entitlemen

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I think the gist is that we should let the private sector handle the routine sorts of things that need to scale up, where competition can actually exist, and there's a need for assembly-line like processes. Take rockets for example. We've (humans) been building them for decades and the current (solid and liquid) fueled types are pretty well understood. It's a low risk project with relatively good margins.

Let government focus on the new, the untested, the high risk. This is how drug development works. Gov't funds the 20 year long, usually fruitless but occasionally history-changing, search for a molecule that can cut the impact of a disease by x%. It then gets licensed to private companies which put it into consumable form, test it, produce it, and market it. The gov't bears the risks that private companies would be unable to because the fruits really do benefit humanity.

NASA should shift to these one-off science missions with little monetary payback, high risk missions like setting up infrastructure for asteroid and interplanetary exploration, and new aeronautics work such as a full sized BWB demonstrator.