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NASA's Competition For Dollars
An anonymous reader writes: We often decry the state of funding to NASA. Its limited scope has kept us from returning to the moon for over four decades, maintained only a minimal presence in low-Earth orbit, and failed to develop a capable asteroid defense system. But why is funding such a problem? Jason Callahan, who has worked on several of NASA's annual budgets, says it's not just NASA's small percentage of the federal budget that keeps those projects on the back burner, but also competition for funding between different parts of NASA as well. "[NASA's activities include] space science, including aeronautics research (the first A in NASA), technology development, education, center and agency management, construction, maintenance, and the entire human spaceflight program. The total space science budget has rarely exceeded $5 billion, and has averaged just over half that amount. Remember that space science is more than just planetary: astrophysics, heliophysics, and Earth science are all funded in this number. Despite this, space science accounts for an average of 17 percent of NASA's total budget, though it has significant fluctuations. In the 1980s, space science was a mere 11½ percent of NASA's budget, but in the 2000s, it made up 27 percent."
Because NASA did all the heavy lifting half a century ago?
"endless replaying clips of their glory days."
That's pretty much 99% of all space-related news. It's a place to put satellites and send probes now and then. That's it.
All this geek paranoia about asteroid defense is sci-fi nonsense.
Has anyone ever just tiled their roof in titanium shingles "just in case" a meteorite smashes through their roof?
No? Then why do you expect the entire "species" (to use Space Nutter parlance) to pay for your delusions?
"If we're going to explore space then we have to face the fact that it's unlikely we're going to get there with NASA as it exists today."
We're already "exploring space" from our computer chairs. No one needs to go anywhere!!! The universe is billions of light years across, how does sending a few test pilots on the Moon for 45 minutes help at all?
You're also "reliving the past glory years" if you don't understand that there's simply no reason to put people in space.
There never was.
You're just hanging on to some emotional propaganda. "Explore space". Give it a rest man, it's not like Star Trek where you meet a new species every week for an hour.
You guys and your space delusions. Just wow.