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.

Comments

We still have the Russians

[muttoj]

This means that the joint venture between Europe and the USA will be cancelled. The next mission will be a joint venture between Europe and Russia? Or perhaps the Chinese?

Re:It's a good thing the military is still funded.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because who needs progress in science?

The 50%+ who are in love with government hand-outs and have forgotten how to provide for themselves are dependent. Cut them off and they're also desperate. Think "political suicide" desperate at best, "rioting in the streets" desperate at worst. So politicians are afraid to cut the real excesses which are the entitlement programs and they are afraid to fix the fucked-up tax code where 46% pay no income tax at all. If you must view that through your political lenses and get offended and hypersensitive, so be it, but it's the truth about why this situation won't change. When a nation gets into this kind of dependency hole for the sake of political power it's hard to get back out, just ask Greece.

It doesn't matter how you feel about the poor and how to best care for them. It doesn't matter when we can't afford to do it anymore, then no one gets much of anything you see. So they cut science to be seen "doing something" about the ridiculous debt that is now about equal to GDP.

Politics got us here. After all people will vote for the guy who gives them free money. Then they'll be scared of the guy who says maybe all that free money costs too much and his career goes *poof*. Something more reasonable than politics is the only way out.

Re:Confused

[Coriolis]

Manned space exploration != Mars. Obama wants industry to handle LEO, and NASA instead to focus on solving the hard problems of manned deep space exploration (with the implication that he expects industry to ride their coat tails to the Asteroid Belt). This is perfectly consistent with his stated goals.

To put it another way, if we needed to leave the planet in a hurry, Mars is utterly impractical. It will take centuries to terraform it, if it's even feasible. On the other hand, if industry can be persuaded to work out how to knock the kinks out of ground to LEO travel, and to learn how to build safe long-term habitats (for instance, hotels) with materials gathered from deep space, then we might just stand a chance.

Re:Underlying Issue

[TaoPhoenix]

Hmm, this is a slightly strange thread. Several of the key comments are AC.

Trying to be clear - we're talking about why we can't go to Mars, because it's "too expensive", right?

So then we're getting into expenses vs handouts.

So has no one noticed the *other* two colossal drains of money? The Security Theatre (Now Playing!) and the Big Brother Engine. We're spending money to watch ourselves not-spend-money. (Copyright)

What happened is that we have decided/proved we are not socially mature enough to avoid the Eternal Paranoia trap of the Post-911-World - on land!

Can you imagine how tight the conditions are on a Mars mission? All the AC's keep saying "what would a Mars mission teach us?"

Answer: How to survive on REALLY limited resources!