Why NASA's Budget "Victory" Is Anything But

StartsWithABang (3485481) writes 'Earlier this week, attempts to cut NASA's budget were defeated, and it looks like the largest space agency in the world will actually be getting nearly a 2% budget increase overall. While common news outlets are touting this as a great budget victory, the reality is that this is shaping up to be just another year of pathetic funding levels, putting our greatest dreams of exploring and understanding the Universe on hold. A sobering read for anyone who hasn't realized what we could be doing.'

Comments

Government fails again

[Kohath]

Maybe we shouldn't put our greatest dreams in the hands of government.

Re:Government fails again

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, Enron, JP Morgan, Bank of America, AOL Time Warner, Blackwater, Haliburton, Malaysia Airlines, ValuJet et al would do it much better and cheaper...

Re:Government fails again

[Anonymous Coward]

And making the post office pay for the retirement of people who aren't even born yet, and then claiming that the US post office is inefficient and needs to be dismantled.

Re:Government fails again

[TubeSteak]

Maybe we shouldn't put our greatest dreams in the hands of government.

6:30 a.m. You are awakened by your clock radio. You know it is actually 6:30 because the National Institute of Standards and Technology keeps the official time. And you can listen to your favorite radio station only because the Federal Communications Commission brings organization and coherence to our vast telecommunications system. It ensures, for example, that radio stations do not overlap and that stations signals are not interfered with by the numerous other devices â" cell phones, satellite television, wireless computers, etc. â" whose signals crowd our nationâ(TM)s airwaves.

6:35 a.m. Like 17 million other Americans, you have asthma. But as you get out of bed you notice that you are breathing freely this morning. This is thanks in part to government clean air laws that reduce the air pollution that would otherwise greatly worsen your condition.

6:38 a.m. You go into the kitchen for breakfast. You pour some water into your coffeemaker. You simply take for granted that this water is safe to drink. But in fact you count on your city water department to constantly monitor the quality of your water and to immediately take measures to correct any potential problems with this vital resource.

6:39 a.m. You flip the switch on the coffee maker. There is no short in the outlet or in the electrical line and there is no resulting fire in your house. Why? Because when your house was being built, the electrical system had to be inspected to make sure it was properly installed â" a service provided by your local government. And it was installed by an electrician who was licensed by your state government to ensure his competence and your safety.

Your greatest dreams are in the hands of the government everyday.
And those are just the ones from the first 10 minutes after you wake up.

Re:Government fails again

[rockout]

Because without government we could never accomplish these things. I'm sure if this guy eventually gets dressed and drives to work you'd bring up the roads, too, another impossibility to do without our benevolent rulers. :)

yeah, we COULD accomplish these things. Problem is, we wouldn't. Except in that one country where there's no government and they have clean water and clean air and electricity, and yes, even roads that you can safely drive 70 mph on. Where is that again? RIght, in the figment of an AC's mind.

Re:Government fails again

[ArsonSmith]

Government is always good when choice is bad.

Corporations are always good when choice is good.

Some may try to argue that choice is always good, but it isn't. Five competing roads with 20 different owners that I have to use to get to work would not be a good thing. A single government planned road is not the best but it is better than the alternative. Many things can compare to this, usually where it requires stepping on property rights, such as running power/water/gas lines, building roads, and similar. Otherwise keep the government out of it.

Re:Government fails again

[NeutronCowboy]

Bullshit. The government has done more in my lifetime in the way of killing my dreams than any other single entity.

You are free to move to any of the great countries around the world that have a very small central government and whose reach barely extends past the capital. Wait, you're still here? It couldn't be because of the entirely predictable problems that those countries face, wouldn't it? No, I'm sure it's just because John Galt is still slaving away in some factory, held down by the man. It's just a matter of time - Galt's Gulch is just around the corner, I'm sure of it. And then you'll show us all poor sheeple just how awesome government-less life is, and how screwed we all are without you.

Go ahead, I'll wait. Just like I'm still waiting for the Communists to really do their thing.

Re:Government fails again

[Luckyo]

I present to you Somalia, the country without effective government. It lacks all those things.

Strange correlation if this isn't causation, wouldn't you think?

Re:Government fails again

[SuricouRaven]

"You get in your car and check your sticker. Your local road was built by Freetrans, your state's #1 private road construction company. Fortunately your toll sticker is good for another two weeks before you need to pay another $300 for the monthly renewal. Sure, it's a steep price, but you only have one road to your driveway - so whatever Freetrans wants, you have to pay. There used to be a bus service, but Freetrans declined their license years ago - individual car tolls are just more lucrative."

Re:Government fails again

[Luckyo]

It takes a genuinely insane person to make such a claim.

Re:Government fails again

[Luckyo]

On the opposite, most of the regulation was repealed over last thirty years. Regulation against current risky investment banking? Repealed. Regulation against collusion of media and concentration of its ownership? Repealed. Regulation of monopolies? Severely weakened.

Yours is the argument that is spoon fed to you by an aggressive and long standing PR effort that doesn't stand even basic scrutiny once you look at the actual facts of the matter in the history. Certainly there's must bad regulation in place - regulation that is now being built by that business to keep them in power now that they got in, after the regulation that prevented them from getting powerful was repealed, thanks to people like you.

You're like the chukcha in the old russian joke, sitting on the branch happily sawing it off the tree and not understanding the warning that if you keep doing that, you'll fall and hurt yourself. And when you do fall, instead of understanding your actions led to it, you instead transplant blame on the person warning you about it.

Two Percent?

[Ignacio]

2% isn't a victory, it's an "oh my f*cking god, we survived being killed off by the skin of our teeth".

Pittance

[mfh]

A scrap of funding for such a vital tool for human survival. Is it that our technology could never allow us to escape the confines of Earth, or is it that the government would rather lock horns with rivals on a pebble in a sea of pebbles? KUNG KUNG KUNG...

Re:Pittance

[hawkinspeter]

This planet might not seem confining to you, but it's most definitely a case of all of our eggs in one basket. There have been extinction level events in the past and there will be in the future. On a long enough time-scale, humans will certainly be in a lot of trouble if we only exist on this one planet.

You're argument seems to be "it's okay to have all your eggs in one basket as it's a really big basket. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to the size of the earth, listen...".

Re:our greatest hopes

[SEE]

There's no "safe place to sleep" on a planet unprotected from large asteroids, any more than there's a safe place to sleep in the caldera of an active volcano. There's merely hoping the statistically inevitable won't happen in your lifetime. Space can't wait.

Inflation is Simple

[evilviper]

You don't need to know anything complicated about the situation to realize this is bad. ALL you need to know, is that INFLATION in the US stays around 3% year over year.

So, a 2% budget increase, is really a 1% cut.

Keep this in mind at work, when you're getting your annual performance reviews. If you aren't getting at least 3% each and every year, you're getting your pay CUT.

Companies with a policy that pay increases can't be more than 3% (or less), absolutely infuriate me. Those smart enough to intelligently object, usually get the problem worked-around. However, it's still a company policy that says, in no uncertain terms, that every employee who has performed superbly, must get penalized, year over year, as a punishment for remaining employed by that company. They're encouraging you to jump ship and get a higher salary elsewhere. Then, you could possibly come back, getting signed-on at a much higher starting salary than they were willing to give you while you stayed with the company.

Institutional knowledge is valuable, and companies go out of their way to destroy it. </rant>

Closer Look

[strack]

Dont count your cookies just yet. Senator Shelby has inserted a poison pill amendment into the spending bill to put onerous accounting requirements on spacex missions for NASA, in order to make them less competitive with the SLS, a lot of which is being developed in Alabama, Senator Shelbys state.