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Computing a Winner, Fusion a Loser In US Science Budget
sciencehabit writes "President Barack Obama has released a $3.901 trillion budget request to Congress, including proposals for a host of federal research agencies. Science Magazine has the breakdown, including a big win for advanced computing, a big cut for fusion, and status quo for astronomy. 'In the proposed budget, advanced computing would see its funding soar 13.2% to $541 million. BES, the biggest DOE program, would get a boost of 5.5% to $1.807 billion. BER would get a 3% bump to $628 million, and nuclear physics would enjoy a 4.3% increase to $594 million. In contrast, the fusion program would take a 17.6% cut to $416 million—$88 million less than it's getting this year. Although far from final, the numbers suggest another big dip for a program that has enjoyed a roller coaster ride in recent years. In its proposed 2013 budget, DOE called for slashing spending on domestic fusion research to help pay for the increasing U.S. contribution to the international fusion experiment, ITER, in Cadarache, France.'"
The Association of American Universities has issued a letter disapproving of the amount of research funding. The Planetary Society has broken down the proposed NASA budget.
Lets see how this comes out of the congressional sausage factory before we get too excited. Much of the spending is going to be contested. Budgets are also common places to stick unpopular riders, so there will probably be a few nasty surprises snuck in.
Solar power did work - but the utilities suddenly saw it was eating into their peak demand profits.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
The donors and bundlers were in solar. Get some in fusion.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Or let's look at a source that doesn't specialize in enema tasting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
25% federal budget goes to Medicare and Medicaid, 23% to Social Security (totalling 48%).
Defense spending is 18%.
I'm sure the numbers are skewed more towards Medicare/Medicaid and Social security for Obama's 2014 proposal.
Now go back to your hole and stop getting news from the biggest shitrag in the world.
> Maybe advanced computing can be used to simulate fusion reactors
They've been doing that since the 1960s. The simulations say it all worked 25 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LASNEX
I'm not convinced more simulations will help.
Another way of looking at it would be "I wasted a lot of political capitol on solar power, and all it got me was a lot of trouble. Lesson learned: Americans do not care about clean energy. Thus, I don't either."
Citizens get the government they earn. I hear more hate about the billions spent on solar power than I do about the trillions wasted on Bush's wars. If Obama were a smarter man, he'd invade Cuba or something, dump the rest of the budget into coal, and get elected a third and fourth term.
25% federal budget goes to Medicare and Medicaid, 23% to Social Security (totalling 48%).
That's misleading. Social Security is paid for with Social Security withholding-- it actually pays more into the budget than it pays out.
Likewise, Medicare is paid for by a separate fund, which goes into the medicaid trust fund..
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Seriously? Computing can handle itself. Just don't piss off the community which is willing to output most research for free. The US government should be looking at curtailing copyright laws so that people can study and learn from older technologies, in order to produce better, more stable technology for the future. These increases in budget are modest at best anyway. If the USA were serious, they'd cut the defense budget, quit threatening countries they don't belong in and start contributing to the ivory tower in a more meaningful way by reallocating those funds to real research.
The DOE (yes, not the DOD) is currently refurbishing as many as 2,000 submarine-based W76 warheads at a cost of roughly $2 million each.
Make of that what you will.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Breeder reactors may very well work out well. We'll see.
Wind power is a very nice supplement to use when it's windy, so it works well in addition to base power in certain geographical areas. Wind is NOT base power simply because it's not windy all the time. When it happens to be windy, you can dial back your natural gas or nuclear generation (base) for an hour.
Solar electric is great for locations where you can't easily run a power line, like a vacation cabin in the wilderness. However, it costs over ten times as much as natural gas or hyroelectric. Your monthly electric bill is probably around $150 right now. If you switched to solar, it would cost $1,500 / month. That just doesn't work. Direct solar preheating, on the other hand, works well in many locations. (Let the sun warm your water before it goes to the water heater.)
For electricity and vehicles, there are two / three choices for base load - fossil fuels or nuclear. Fossil fuels can be divided into traditional (coal, heavy oil) and cleaner (natural gas).
The point, I believe, is what does having a military that big actually do for us? Let us beat soundly upon a bunch of cobbled together resistance in a desert country nobody cares about except for their oil, giving the local terrorist groups a massive shot in the arm with our abuses and cowardly combat tactics? (Yeah, sure, drones and airstrikes may be more efficient in terms of friendly lives spent and the corresponding social backlash back home, but from the opposite perspective what sort of man slaughters people without even giving them a chance to fight back?)
Cut the military 20% and you wouldn't change our strategic position notably, while freeing up tons of funds that could be spent on things that may actually help the country. We'd still be spending more on the military than the next many, many countries combined, most of whom are allies.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
THEY HAVE SPENT ALL THAT MONEY.
Who are "THEY"? The people running Medicare? No, that's not right.
The point is not that "we're fine"; we're not.
The point is that trotting out Social Security and Medicare as examples of why our budget is broken is misleading. These programs are funded through separate withholdings, withholdings that exceed the cost of said programs. Perhaps these programs are "too much", and we should decrease their scope along with their respective withholdings. Perhaps they're "not enough", and we should increase their scope along with their respective withholdings. Perhaps they're "just right", and we should leave them alone. In any case, these programs have very little to do with our current budget woes, as the funds to pay for them are being collected just fine.
That the money collected specifically for these programs is instead misappropriated or borrowed against is no indictment of the programs themselves. Yes, the money has already been spent. No, the money has not already been spent on these programs. You can start pointing at social welfare programs as the primary drivers of deficit spending once you show me how gross tax receipts are sufficient to cover defense spending and all the other shit that's paid for out of the general fund. I say that as someone who works in the defense industry.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Let us beat soundly upon a bunch of cobbled together resistance in a desert country nobody cares about except for their oil
That's a HUGE "except" right there, until we're weaned off the stuff in the next few decades (hopefully).
but from the opposite perspective what sort of man slaughters people without even giving them a chance to fight back?
You can't seriously think that's the terrorist perspective. In asymmetric warfare, the smaller group rarely gives the bigger group a chance to fight back, or they'd be destroyed pretty quickly. Most tactics in asymmetric warfare involve hiding before the enemy can retaliate, and using surprise attacks to your advantage. Not to mention terrorists have no problem attacking people who have no capability to fight back (women and children, wounded people in hospitals, etc) even if you did give them the chance.
We'd still be spending more on the military than the next many, many countries combined, most of whom are allies.
I haven't read a study about this, but common sense says that comparing our dollars to China's dollars and Iran's dollars doesn't make sense because they have different purchasing power. One of the big costs in the military, even today when it's so driven by technology and equipment, is manpower. If China's soldiers cost 1/5 what we pay, then we may be outspending them but not necessarily getting more for it. You can't necessarily use economy-wide purchasing power parity figures either because I suspect a lot of military expenditure falls outside the normal economy, especially in some countries.
The Social Security Trust Fund and Medicare Trust Fund are illusions.
In both cases, the money goes into the General Fund to be spent, and is "replaced" with an Interest Free Intragovernmental T-Bill.
Which means that when SS/Medicare start spending more than they take in (within ten years, unless they raise SS/Medicare taxes on you young people), the Trust Funds will redeem those T-Bills, which will be paid for by borrowing from the public or raising taxes.
Note that if the Trust Funds did not exist, when SS/Medicare start spending more than they take in, they will be paid for by borrowing from the public or raising taxes.
If the net effect of something existing is exactly the same as the net effect of it NOT existing, it can safely be assumed that it doesn't actually exist.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
In both cases, the money goes into the General Fund to be spent, and is "replaced" with an Interest Free Intragovernmental T-Bill.
Wrong, the debt that the Social Security Trust Fund purchases is not interest-free. You can see that here: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progda...
If the net effect of something existing is exactly the same as the net effect of it NOT existing, it can safely be assumed that it doesn't actually exist.
Even if the special issue bonds were interest-free, that criticism wouldn't make sense. That would mean the Trust Fund is giving the government interest-free loans, and then being paid back later. That is completely different than if they didn't save the money to begin with, but still had to be paid back later when they're out of money.
The Trust Fund will run out of money one day and we'll have to cut benefits or divert general funds to pay make it up or raise SS taxes, but that is quantitatively different from if there was no Trust Fund to begin with.
but from the opposite perspective what sort of man slaughters people without even giving them a chance to fight back?
Well, such things are useful to winning wars though there are plenty of examples throughout history of that not being a sufficient condition for victory. But there is also the other side of the coin, what have these people subject to slaughter done to deserve a fair fight?
There's only one budget. There are no "separate" funds. Social Security doesn't actually pay more into the budget than it pays out. And no one in government has ever done a proper accounting of these programs.
Again, this is the relevant graph when you're trying to understand why we don't have fusion yet. It's not an impossible 'holy grail,' it's an underfunded project that is doing surprisingly well.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Let us beat soundly upon a bunch of cobbled together resistance in a desert country nobody cares about except for their oil
That's a HUGE "except" right there, until we're weaned off the stuff in the next few decades (hopefully).
We are actively preventing weaning ourselves off the stuff right now. Point the first, the USDOE proved in the 1980s that you could make biodiesel from algae cost-effectively by the time biodiesel hit $3/gallon with the most basic of technologies. Point the second, a patent war between GEVO and BP/Dupont's shell company Butamax is currently preventing us from being able to purchase Butanol, a cleaner-burning 1:1 replacement for gasoline which can be made from any organic material. Point the third, the federal government actually sued California to prevent us from instituting more stringent emissions standards which would have increased the demand for vehicles which use less or no oil.
We have the technology right now to sharply reduce and eventually (in a decade, not decades) eliminate our need to burn petrochemicals for energy. We are actively preventing it, presumably to preserve profits for entrenched interests.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"