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White House Wants Devastating Cuts To NASA's Mars Exploration
The Bad Astronomer writes "The White House released its proposed NASA budget for FY13, and while much of it remains the same from last year, one particular program got devastating news: Mars exploration got a crippling $226 million cut, more than 38% of its budget. This means killing two future missions outright and threatening others. The reasons for this are complex, including huge cost overruns on James Webb Space Telescope and the Curiosity Mars rover, but it also points to a political lack of valuing science in America."
A followup to news from before the budget was released, this has details on the actual proposed cuts and re-allocations.
It's more lucrative to blow people up, than explore our solar system.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
NASA's budget was left close to intact, at $17.7 billion, down from about $17.75 billion this year. The main change wasn't overall funding for NASA, but reallocating where the money is spent within NASA.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Could it be you are mis-informed?
a) NASA didn't expend the $$$ developing the pen
b) It was needed because of fears that a broken pencil lead could cause damage to sensitive and life-depending machinery.
c) Americans used pencils too, at first. Then when the pen was developed the Russians used it as well...
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
This and this should clear up the confusion. NIST got a huge boost of funding, as well as renewable energy programs at the DOE.
In fact, Obama calls for spending a lot more money on NIH and NAS. The issue here is that republicans have called for cuts to private space development in hopes of pushing the monster SLS. To do that, the neo-cons will fund russia to the tune of .5B a year from 2015-2018 as well as pay 20-30B for SLS development which will finally launch 70 tonnes to LEO in 2020 (yes, it is already 2 years late). .5B. So, should NASA spend several billion to get one mission to Mars, OR should they spend money today to be able to get a number of CHEAP missions to mars a year earlier?
OTH, NASA wants the economical approach so that they can make a great deal more launches in the future. As such, NASA is cutting several missions that will cost billions, but is spending money on getting human launch going by 2014. However, with that, they will also be able to put red dragon (spaceX's dragon) on Mars with a 1 ton payload of equipment for
I do not like seeing NASA's budget cut, HOWEVER, kudos to Bolden. He is doing the right thing in getting ECONOMICAL private space going.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Oh look it's this lie again. Payroll tax. Sales tax. The "46% pay no tax" myth comes from income tax only.
In NASA funding, it seems the best you can hope for is that the politicians do the right thing (encourage private space transportation) for the wrong reason (it's cheaper). Obama is doing the right thing - the problem is Congress.
SLS funding enthusiasm is not so much partisan as it it regional. The NASA centers in Florida, Texas, Alabama, and California want SLS to continue so the jobs in their states/districts will continue. Those states may look like they're solid red or blue, but if you look at their representatives on the House Space subcommittee, they're surprisingly balanced - typically one D and one R.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
it's not? It pays oldtimers with money the newcomers bring to the table and promises today's newcomers that their turn will come. It's very sensitive to demographic changes (as in going belly up when numbers of newcomers dwindle)
It's a government mandated ponzi scheme at its core, period.
I have a comment that explains that there is no such thing as an 'income tax', it's a ruse. There are only 'profit' taxes, and individuals have no profits to pay any of that.
You can't handle the truth.