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Mars Rover Opportunity Faces New Threat: Budget Ax
astroengine writes "NASA's baseline budget for the year beginning Oct. 1 pulls the plug on the 10-year-old Mars rover Opportunity, newly released details of the agency's fiscal 2015 spending plan show. The plan, which requires Congressional approval, also anticipates ending the orbiting Mars Odyssey mission on Sept. 30, 2016. 'There are pressures all over the place,' NASA's planetary science division director Jim Green said during an advisory council committee teleconference call on Wednesday."
It really overran the original 90 day budget.
Who's going to create one?
debunking that life only excists on Earth?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
For a monthly fee, they should allow commoners to send commands to the rover. Lets see how fast the internet can break it! Bonus points for getting to the scale of twitch plays Pokemon.
I think the whole "budget crisis on infinite earth's" is all fiscal voodoo...however if this has to happen, we should turn it over "to the community"
NASA should open the project to screened volunteers who maintain the basic mission functions.
NASA could set up an API & a simple prototyping program & let people download it for free. Best ideas get kicked up the ladder...eventually to NASA staff who could approve it.
This should be happening now...it would cost virtually nothing (on NASA $ scales) and get thousands interested & involved in space.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Well, you got the wrong president's name, but you do have a point.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
September 2016 is two and a half years from now. If NASA's lucky it'll wear out and stop functioning by then. If not then probably a big hue and cry will arise and funding will be found to keep it going.
If they give it a face, preferably with puppy or kitty eyes, finding continued funding for it should be no problem.
The question is up to what /price/ point is science worth it ?
If NASA can't afford to explore space with robots, then what's the point of funding NASA at all? That's certainly what some probably want, but I think it's utterly ridiculous that NASA can't afford to continue to use resources they've already developed and launched.
An expensive project with huge potential that died due to not putting up the funds to transport and fuel up the vehicle already built that could have both brought people there for a mission and nudge it into a higher orbit.
What is the expense of this thing at this point?
Everything being used is likely fixed and in use on or orbiting mars. The only things beyond that would be the transmitter/receiver on/above earth, the control room, and whatever you're paying the engineers to run it.
So of that, the only thing that should really cost money is the engineer's time... and I would think at this point you could get volunteers to do it.
Sorry, NASA's budget has no room for fat. These little projects add up to being a significant portion of a budget. I think the project should be maintained. But all the fat needs to be trimmed. Additionally, solicit donations and consider relocating the control room somewhere cheaper. Possibly a university somewhere would be happy to have graduate students control it and would pay most of the costs associated with maintaining it. After all, all the expensive stuff was already completed.
Farm it out to someone with room in their budget.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
This rover has been running ten years and has been used to do great science, far more than anyone ever anticipated. All the rovers have far exceeded their intended lifetimes. In other words, they're cheap. X number of dollars was spent to delivery Y amount of science and they got far more than they bargained for. Continuing the funding for the the rover means that this science gets even cheaper.
What Congress really ought to do is give NASA $10 billion, tell them to build and launch more rovers of this type, and send them all over Mars. $10 billion will pay for a lot of rovers.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Whomever volunteers to go on the first Mars mission should read this article, print it and stable it to the wall.
Guess what can happen when you are out there, the first glorious conquerors of Mars. You make by with what you have, rely on communication with Earth for guidance and support. Then a bean counter on Earth decides that you are too much of an expense...
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Let's do that, it will be fun to see those nukes flying. I'll keep the score from my homestead.
right...i know what you mean. this would be more in the "PR" realm, but educational "PR"...they learn the stuff you're saying they need to know! Realistically speaking it's highly unlikely that a workable idea for use would get "kicked up the ladder" from the community would be anything that wouldn't have been pre-planned anyway.
but don't discount "PR"...it's not just "PR" it's a **next level of involvement** in space exploration for anyone with an internet connection and that is absolutely priceless...seriously how many millions upon millions has NASA and the US gov't as a whole spent to get "kids interested in science"...well with my idea they can drive the thing themselves...and learn some of those "engineering support" roles you pointed out ;)
Thank you Dave Raggett
Thats the nearest equivalent jet in capability to the F-35 - and its actually in production and flying today. The Rafale looks nice buts its a bit long in the tooth now and not at the top of its game.
less than 1% of the Defense budget can run NASA at higher levels. WTF is wrong with the complete MORONS that were elected to be in Congress?
They want to save money, call all the troops home and end the frigging police actions.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Has nothing to do with the F-35. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the payouts we give to individuals in this country. It's at a record high of 70%, and those programs (unlike military spending) will never be cut, ever, because it'll be political suicide for anyone who tries. Massive expansion of social programs is what kills science spending.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
to republican leaders? science has zero value.
Pork bellies is where it's at!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Actually no one gives a monkeys about the planetary science program, its deeply unpopular because it uses genetic medicine and genetically modifies organisms to survive drought and it supports evolution and it ends the war on drugs - it is fundamental Science.
NASA should spend more money on that Russian space station, because we get live moving pictures back which make the news. Air time gets funding.
Actually America is just about done now and the rest of us are just waiting for the Chinese to take over the role of leading the world in real science.
See they have this dictatorship that doesn't need tv ratings to do things.
I despair.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Have you ever actually looked at the us budget? They're available online, so there is no excuse.
Try comparing the budgets from circa 2000 and then follow the next decade. It's pretty obvious where the hole is. Hint you're very wrong.
I did believe / understand this at first. We have hardware on ANOTHER PLANET that works and we want to abandon it?
Get Kafka on the phone, new story idea.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
It makes sense the NASA budget is tight, they don't have a lot of jobs that can just be handed to anyone's nephew, and its hard to dupe a bunch of engineers into buying expensive equipment they don't need that may or may not even work as intended.
This makes NASA a piss poor government program from the POV of politicians. What is the point if they can't make some kickbacks or repay a large campaign donation with favors? Duh. This isn't rocket science.
I bet if they found a reason to buy full body scanners and found some jobs that don't actually require showing up or doing anything, they would have far less funding issues.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
fuck a mars rover, gimme tax cutssssssssssssss
Or we can keep the program going. You can send me a self addressed, stamped envelope and I'll send you the fraction of a cent that you will have to contribute to the mars rover for this year.
Go ahead if you can pay for using Deep Space Network: http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/
I thought the same thing...seriously. NASA usually delivers good bang for the buck, and this is the best way to fund efforts for the common good in our cyberpunk dystopia.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yeah.
Let's donate millions of dollars of multi-purpose infrastructure, tied into secure NASA systems, operating over radio communications towers costing millions of dollars to operate, relaying over satellites around both Earth and Mars and sucking up the most expensive bandwidth in the solar system, that we could use for something else, so that kiddies can drive a remote control car on Mars.
If just anyone had the power to talk to the Mars Rover, we wouldn't need all these expensive relay satellites and huge ground stations.
That's probably why the kids are going to grow up smarter. *You* won't be around.
Fact is, space exploration is THE MOST COSTLY thing you can do except possibly a) go to war, b) let your populous get sick, c) educate your populous (I'll let you draw your own conclusions about quite where your money is being pissed away). And it's not a one-off cost, but a huge, enormous, ongoing, suck-the-budget-dry background infrastructure cost.
politicians will
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
For those that are not aware how this works... Every time there is a new budget proposal, NASA first suggests axing its most popular projects... usually Hubble, but sometimes other things... and they send that up to the hill... Congress panics "They can't shut down Hubble! It's the only sciencey thing we do anymore!!!" and they give NASA a bit more money. It's all part of the game. BTW, you're supposed to write into your congressman angry about how NASA doesn't get enough money right about now. I'm not saying you shouldn't... they really don't get enough money... but you should at least know the game that's getting played.
Skylab was a lot of effort for work carried out very briefly and with care it had potential to last like Mir. Bullshit about the mission being done is just revisionism to justify abandoning the project just after it started.
If you look up in the sky long enough you'll see the ISS - productively carrying on the sort of work that could have been done on Skylab.
This country pisses away billions of dollars a year funding its war machine and can't fund planetary science which serves as a legacy to be passed down to future generations. It will be very clear in the years ahead where our priorities were.
Even though I have no love for Obama, this is one case where he doesn't deserve the blame. He's actually big on funding NASA. The blame is squarely on Congress, who insist on funding the SLS (aka Senate Launch System), for no other reason than to keep Shuttle-era pork jobs in their states, and have actually been cutting NASA's non-SLS budget. They've also been cutting the budget for private companies like SpaceX and Sierra Nevada to develop human crew launch vehicles. This delayed the contracts for private crew launches to ISS, so we're dependent on the Russians for another three years. SpaceX is probably going ahead on their crewed capsule anyhow, but Congress sure is being the opposite of Progress here.
It's still a few years before SLS gets its first unmanned test, then a few years more before it goes up with humans inside. But there's no mission for it. It's too big for LEO (such as trips to ISS), and Congress is solidly against using it for Mars. They want to go to the stupid moon again, which really has little reason for humans to go right now. (IMHO we should be sending up a lot more unmanned missions to the moon, especially since the remote control lag is only a few seconds!)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
BAD MOD: Not everyone will agree with this, but that doesn't mean it's flamebait.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
You're so cuuuuute, I could just pinch your cheeks! I'm gonna slap a big [CITATION NEEDED] on that. How exactly can anybody with the TP, who can barely get the time of day in Congress, where Republicans actually have a majority, have any ability to affect NASA's budget?
Hint: try looking at the very incumbent pork-barrel politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle who are cutting NASA's budget for everything but the prime pork of SLS.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Last year the Obama Administration tried to effectively end planetary exploration at NASA by proposing a 300 million dollar cut. This administration has been the worst for planetary science of any in recent memory.
So what, no Republicans voted to fund NASA or the NSF and Democrats don't vote for pork? This isn't MoJo, around here someone will call you on it when you engage in mindless political cheerleading.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
The Admin tried to cut 300 million from the NASA planetary science budge last year. This Administration is hostile to planetary science. Check the Planetary Society web site for details and he weasel-y things the Admin and NASA/Houston have done to try to kill planetary science.
this would be an easy funding battle
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Bet you only get to count to one...
Amazing! The worst of the over-zealous, milch-cow, PC-correct HR departments from huge corporations has infected NASA. Ugh.
Yes...I did!
Because it *does*
$13 million per year...that has to be cut
You exhibit your lack of management experience by your framing of this idea. It's people like you that have made NASA suck for anyone trying to do real space exploration. Every idea is an opportunity for you to exercise your pedantic asperberger proclivities to bolster your ego.
**MY IDEA COULD BE DONE FOR LESS THAN 1% OF THE ORIGINAL BUDGET**
you could fund it from money for PR & promotion of space among citizens...there are all kinds of ways to make it happen, asshole
you take my words completely out of context b/c it's the only way your obstructionist mindset can integrate & shoot down my idea...
yes...$13 million a year is alot...$15 billion is alot
but for an agency that spends that much money...they money to do **MY IDEA** is well in hand
mostly with already existing staff
Thank you Dave Raggett
Wrong about Obama, mostly wrong about Congress. The Obama Administration tried to cut 300 million from planetary science at NASA last year effectively killing exploration: http://www.planetary.org/blogs... "White house proposes ~$300 million of cuts to Planetary Science in 2013."
Do you have some expense figures for these idiotic HR programs?
Yup. Obama has been trying to kill planetary missions at NASA: The Obama Administration tried to cut 300 million from planetary science at NASA last year effectively killing exploration: http://www.planetary.org/blogs... [planetary.org] "White house proposes ~$300 million of cuts to Planetary Science in 2013."
Generally, it's considered bad form to learn how to operate multi-hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment on the very equipment you'll be operating - not without strict supervision by trained and experienced individuals. The very trained and experienced personnel you've already fired because they're too expensive. The same goes for stuff "kicked up the ladder", not only is there not anyone pre-planning anymore (they've all been fired, remember) there isn't anyone up the ladder to evaluate the idea (they've been fired too).
And I haven't even mentioned the problems of volunteer burnout, turnover, and empire building.
*Sigh* there's not one single shred of evidence, and we've got a half a centuries worth, that PR for space activities has any concrete result. Zip. Zero. Nada.
BAD MOD: Not everyone will agree with this, but that doesn't mean it's flamebait.
Anyone who needed to have that explained to them is demonstrably resistant to facts and so-called "common sense" and is therefore a lost cause. Mass numbers of non-individuals agreeing with you bandwagon-style is the only thing they would find persuasive.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
This project deserves not to have an experienced crew sacked in its late phase, which would most certainly kill it. It also deserves the best people, and not limit itself to those who can afford to work for free. Society throws large amounts of money at fools for going round a track really fast, for yodeling into a microphone, or generating graphs from spreadsheets somebody else filled in. So if anything, those engineers are paid too little. Anyone who thinks otherwise has so little sense of priority that I wouldn't entrust him with managing two guys with leaf blowers. Why was this modded insightful? It's the most bleak, insight-less, accounting-troll-ish thing I can imagine.
Then I'd terminate the program outright and task those engineers with helping on curiosity.
I'm sorry, but this project has largely run its useful course. It is now a curio. Let the universities play with it and maintain its budget. NASA can afford the transmitter time. Beyond that, let private funding handle it.
NASA's budget isn't big enough to sustain these macguffins.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
We're gearing up for the cold war with China.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Uterus rover.