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NASA's Greatest Challenges In 2014
coondoggie writes "In its annual look at what challenges NASA faces in the coming year, the agency's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) this year outlined nine key areas it says will cause the most angina. Leading the way in pain is money. NASA's current money story starts off bad and just gets worse. From the article: '"Along with the rest of the Federal Government, NASA began FY 2013 under a 6-month continuing resolution that funded the Agency at FY 2012 levels. This was followed by a budget for the remainder of the fiscal year that reduced the Agency's enacted funding level of $17. 5 billion by $626.5 million, or approximately 4% due to sequestration. These financial pressures look to repeat themselves in FY 2014, with no annual budget in place at the beginning of the fiscal year and potential sequestration impacts that could reduce NASA's budget request of $17.7 billion by $1.5 billion to $16.2 billion. As the National Research Council noted in its 2012 report examining NASA's strategic direction and management, NASA's budget is 'mismatched to the current portfolio of missions, facilities, and staff,'" the OIG report stated.'"
All they need to do is drop an 'A'.
Not
Another
Sequestration!
Awww!!!
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Why do you think they killed the shuttle program before there was a viable replacement?
Two reasons: 1) because there never would be a viable replacement, especially while the Shuttle still flew, and 2) because the Shuttle and the rest of the manned space program had huge risks associated with it - bigger than the 2% chance of loss of crew (lose another Shuttle, the VAB, or the ISS and where is your manned space program?) which could be significantly reduced by not being dependent on the Shuttle.
Why do you think the Jupiter-Direct plan was never given a fair shake?
The plan had the serious defect of not throwing enough money at the usual contractors, particularly, ATK (Alliant Techsytems).
Second, what risks really are being taken? It's easy to talk about taking risks when you get easy money from someone else and have little accountability for what you do with that money.
You just won't get that from private enterprise, even a "Kickstarter-driven" kind of private enterprise.
Ever try?
Actually, NASA could dedicate all their computers for bitcoin mining, until it gets just even, and start spending again. Since it's internally generated money, they wouldn't have to budget for it. They could sell it to bitcoin purchasers outside for real $$$, and use that in the space program
np China took the lead anyway.
Firefighting isn’t profitable. Police services aren’t profitable. Parks and playgrounds aren’t profitable. Plowing the streets and sidewalks isn’t profitable. Public art isn’t profitable. Keeping the air and water clean aren’t profitable. Teaching children isn’t profitable. Maintaining our highways isn’t profitable.
Yet we spend our money on these things. Why? Would you volunteer to pay for fighting fires in a neighborhood on the other side of your town? Or how about to pay for a highway that connects two cities you’ve never been to? Or to educate someone else’s children?
People are selfish, obviously including you. We don’t want to pay for things that don’t obviously benefit us. But we still want to live in a world where we have things like clean water, educated children, and people to put out our burning homes. Paying for scientific research is the same thing. We have governnments that tax us so that they can provide exactly those services that nobody is willing to voluntarily pay for.
If you want to live without them, why not try moving to Sudan or tribal Pakistan? Try living without the modern society you’re accustomed to if you really don’t want to pay for it. Give it all up. When you have, maybe then you can come back and tell us about how everything should be paid for on a strictly voluntary basis.
Great, China and the rest of the world are catching up and will soon surpass us in space technology and capability and what do we do? Reduce NASA's relatively tiny 0.5% of the Federal budget even more.
By moving mills away from slicing the arms off children to being run by trained adults interested in mill work, those children got to have this thing called education. Instead of being a burden to others, they became valued members of society, including scientists and engineers.
The left was arguably a major factor in the Enlightenment, without which no science could be done except in secret from the conservatives.
A large proportion of schools and universities in Britain were founded, funded and run by the left. No left, no Faraday, no Rutherford, no Turing, no Crick or Watson - name something you can't live without and I can show those components that would not exist without left-wing establishments, left-wing idealists and left-wing philosophies.
Can you name anything, anything at all, developed because of right-wing ideology?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
There was a time in England when you paid fire fighters insurance. They marked the houses that had paid. Houses that didn't pay - well, picture two Mafia heavies sauntering up the driveway, making comments about how combustible things are and what a pity it would be if an accident were to.... happen. (Terry Pratchett made a reference to this in his books because it is such a sick, evil and yet utterly predictable outcome.)
The service became one of the first truly national services because organized crime syndicates, even firefighting ones, are not approved of.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Do you realize what site you're on, dufus? If you do, know that you're trolling and PLEASE STOP before every fucking comment you make is modded to oblivion. Now listen up, jocktroll, we're nerds. We LOVE space exploration and if you don't, you don't belong here.
Pay attention to all the folks who responded to you who are at least 25 points higher than you on the IQ graph, you may learn something if you're at least almost normally intelligent.
If NASA were privately funded, we might still not have walked on the moon, we would not have Hubble and the other space telescopes, we would not have robots on mars, we would not now have a craft exiting the solar system, we would not have a HELL of a lot of science we do.
If governments hadn't gone to space, you would not have a Space-X or Virgin Galactic today.
So why don't you just crawl back to your 4chan bridge, troll, and leave us nerds alone.
Free Martian Whores!