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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.
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/
As well it should, compared to designing, building, testing, and launching a new probe manning the ground station has to be downright cheap so as long as they are getting useful scientific information out of it it seems shortsighted to cut the funding.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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.
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
I keep seeing the argument of what we get for a dollar funded to NASA. I ask what we get for a dollar funded to professional sports. I get to see some grown man chase all over some field trying to snare a ball.
I admit a lot of kids see this and dream of becoming a sports star or rock star. Is this a productive use of a human lifetime? Some say it is, some say it isn't, and I am not qualified to state. All I know is advancement of science is a dream to me. As far as I am concerned, Space Exploration is to science like programming games is to computer science. Its the stepping stone, the common basis of knowledge, from which we spring off whatever comes up.
NASA has always been an icon for me - an entity who is actually doing something that has never been done before. Will I benefit from a romp on the moon? Probably not. Would I benefit from stronger alloys, higher energy density batteries, more sophisticated CAD systems, and legions of kids which were motivated by the Scientists at NASA. I believe I will.
Our society seems to be quickly succumbing to what the economists refer to as "tragedy of the commons", where everybody is in it for themselves regardless of the cost to others. Our government is passing all sorts of laws encouraging "rent seeking" ( ownership benefits ) at the expense of production ( job creation ), leading us into a welfare state. I see big social problems ahead with this leadership model, as the ownership faction will run amok, leading to enormous wealth disparities between those who labor and those who own. We are setting ourselves up for a civil war between the worker and the politician/banker classes.
We seem to have no problem funding enormous salaries for someone to hit a ball with a stick. Here we have fostered an intelligence great enough to have placed a part of ourselves on another planet, and we bicker over whether we can even fund manning the operation? I am quite sad over this whole affair. It seems the only idols we are given is all this bread and circus crap. No more Spock, Scotty, or Steve Squyres.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Still only a tiny fraction of what the government spends blowing up civilians in other countries.
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.
then they can pay for their own fricking stadiums.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
NASA projects involve basic science.
The ROI on basic science is so enormous it's difficult to quantify because it's hard to know where to stop. How do you even try to attach a dollar value to the entire Internet and everything it has created and touch in order to answer "What was the ROI of the DoD's investment in ARPANET?" With the corporate sector having, in the last 50 years, become utterly blind to everything more than 3 months out, it's up to the government and associated entities (national labs, universities) to keep funding and doing basic research.
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.
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; }
Dude, people are lining up to pay $150k for five minutes in "space" on Virgin Galactic...
New idea: Get rich idiots to pay Nasa $150k for one hour of "driving" Opportunity, complete with "I drove on Mars last week-end" NASA-certified bumper sticker.
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."
We're gearing up for the cold war with China.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once