NASA Gets 2% Boost To Science Budget

sciencehabit writes For an agency regularly called 'adrift' without a mission, NASA will at least float through next year with a boatload of money for its science programs. Yesterday Congress reached agreement on a spending deal for fiscal year 2015 that boosts the budget of the agency's science mission by nearly 2% to $5.24 billion. The big winner within the division is planetary sciences, which received $160 million more than the president's 2015 request in March. Legislators also maintained support for an infrared telescope mounted on a Boeing 747, a project that the White House had proposed grounding. NASA's overall budget also rose by 2%, to $18 billion. That's an increase of $364 million over 2014 levels, and half a billion dollars beyond the agency's request.

Comments

2% is nothing

[Iamthecheese]

With massive proven returns on the dollar we need to more than double NASA's budget. I would rather see that extra money go to pure science but since that's just not going to happen at least put it where a lot of science is happening. I would suggest selling off 500 tanks and all the Warthogs and using the extra maintenance and upgrade budget.

Re:2% is nothing

[Irate Engineer]

Warthogs? A-10s are some of the least-expensive, easiest to maintain aircraft in the USAF inventory, and their role in CAS is unrivaled. Cut a handful of F-35s and you've saved about as much money and probably made our military more combat ready.

Re:2% is nothing

[hawguy]

Warthogs? A-10s are some of the least-expensive, easiest to maintain aircraft in the USAF inventory, and their role in CAS is unrivaled.

Cut a handful of F-35s and you've saved about as much money and probably made our military more combat ready.

Or just drop the F-35 program entirely, use drones and cruise missiles for most of what the F-35 would do, and keep the A-10's for close in air support.

Re:2% is nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

I would tell whoever came up with this scenario to stop confusing the economics of personal finance with the economics of large corporations & governments.

Re: 2% is nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

You are exactly right. What is most important at this time I think would be just the morale of the companies which support our military, like Halliburton. I think since it's specifically slated to help morale, it should just go to the leaders of those companies. If you make the leaders happy, the happiness tends to trickle down.

Re: 2% is nothing

[Tumbleweed]

Wrong timing for it, though. While our nation is under attack by Isis and Syria, this increase would be better spent on improving our dwindling military capabilities..

Dwindling? CITATION NEEDED.

Re:2% is nothing

[Tumbleweed]

Warthogs? A-10s are some of the least-expensive, easiest to maintain aircraft in the USAF inventory, and their role in CAS is unrivaled.

Cut a handful of F-35s and you've saved about as much money and probably made our military more combat ready.

Sadly, no new A-10s have been made since the mid-80s. I'm not against keeping the A-10 around, but to do so effectively requires re-starting long-dead production for planes and parts, which is no small - or cheap - matter.

Re:2% is nothing

[Ralph Wiggam]

The A-10s were cheap to build..back in the 70s. Keeping the A-10 program running in the 21st century actually costs $700M per year.

Re:2% is nothing

[Trepidity]

But then what will the F-35 pilots fly in?

Re:2% is nothing

[hawguy]

But then what will the F-35 pilots fly in?

They can sit in air conditioned rooms in Colorado and use the fly-by-videogame interface.

Re:2% is nothing

[sexconker]

But then what will the F-35 pilots fly in?

Coach?

Re:2% is nothing

[sexconker]

And I'd tell you that no amount of hand waving changes the numbers and their summation.

Re:2% is nothing

[TheCarp]

Sell off? Shit, here is a novel idea.... maybe they could pledge to next year ONLY approve the purchase of as much equipment as the military asks for?

Over the lifetime of the program, congress has approved the purchase of 5000% more C-130s than the pentagon ever claimed to need or asked for. That is just one type of junk that has been purchased for no other reason than to take up space and fill maintenance shifts.

And thats just one program. For how many years did the pentagon tell congress that the nuclear arsenal was big enough, and no new weapons were needed? How many more were ordered by congress in that time?

Man if some of that waste would just trickle down.

Re:2% is nothing

[Facegarden]

If the $10k was for his daughter to go to a mid-level college, but he was also spending $180k on gambling, buying guns he'll never use, and paying for personal protection far beyond what he needed, I'd suggest he cut those latter expenses before cutting the $10k for his daughter.

These decisions are not made in a vacuum. You can't chide a spender for putting money into science but fail to address the huge waste in other areas. And don't say "well yeah we need to cut both". Pick the optimum place to start, and start there first. Don't cut science while we're still dumping money into war. If we fix war spending (which is not investing money back into Americans), then we can discuss how much we spend on science. And funny thing... "your friend" wouldn't be in debt at all if it weren't for that military spending (yeah, mixing metahphor...), and you'd find the could spend even more money on science. In fact, doubling his science budget would be no problem.

So a better question would be:

You friend makes $400k per year. He spends $180k on himself, $180k on his house, $180k on stuff he likes, and $10k on his kids (meaning he loses $150k due to overspending every year). He says he wants to spend more on his kids because it pays off in the long term. Do you tell him not to? Or do you tell him to go for it and chill out on the stuff he likes so he doesn't go deeper into debt.

Interestingly, my sig has been this way for ~4 years.

Re:2% is nothing

[Irate Engineer]

A lot of them are getting re-winged, a pretty cost-intensive process. The airframes are really tired.

Re:2% is nothing

[AndyKron]

No, not the Warthogs! They have cool guns.

Re: 2% is nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

To keep the A-10 flying, the planes need to be rewinged and an avionics upgrade would need to be added to the bill. Neither of these were in the budget. Then you need to ask if the platform is survivable in the future battlefield and does it bring the capabilities required to win the fight.

I love the A-10 and it probably has some more legs, but the additional investment to keep it flying is not worth the modest capability that it actually has.

The problem with the F-35 is that it was made into a joint program. The historical record on joint aircraft procurements has consistently shown that the additional requirements complexity drives increased cost growth, wiping out any savings in the development phase. If you look at the original AF requirements that got folded into the F-35, they were quite modest and reasonable. Instead the AF is getting a much more expensive jet that is going to have increased logistics costs relative to the original requirements. In addition, the AF has the larger fleet size, thus the AF is paying a lot more relative to the Navy and Marines.

Re: 2% is nothing

[ILongForDarkness]

Now now. Don't you know that failure to give planned increases in military budget = defense cutbacks?

To the point: money/tanks aren't going to compensate for a) the lack of humint and b) the lack of willingness to take American casualties/cause large numbers of civilian "enemy" causalities.

Re: 2% is nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison
See the US Military budget is bigger than
China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and India combined, you see the glaring omission don't you, where the HELL IS NEW ZEALAND mentioned, Bloody hell we have seen Lord of the Rings, we KNOW how many Orcs there are.

Re: 2% is nothing

[Etherwalk]

http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison
See the US Military budget is bigger than
China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and India combined, you see the glaring omission don't you, where the HELL IS NEW ZEALAND mentioned, Bloody hell we have seen Lord of the Rings, we KNOW how many Orcs there are.

Yes, but the US also does more with its military than those countries combined. It is also facing different cost balloon problems than some of them--e.g. China and Russia--and has a larger portion of its budget that is declassified. China with 1/3rd of the US Military budget has a good chance of approaching par with the US Military in the next two decades, if they run an efficient program.

Re: 2% is nothing

[The Grim Reefer]

I love the A-10 and it probably has some more legs, but the additional investment to keep it flying is not worth the modest capability that it actually has.

Perhaps, but there is nothing to replace it. Particularly for close air support. While the AH-64 Apache Longbow has similar capability. It's rather delicate in comparison, They can be brought down, or rendered non-mission capable by rifle fire. While a SAM will render an A-10 non-mission capable upon its return, it takes a lucky shot to actually down one. In the first gulf war A-10s destroyed 1000 tanks, 50 SCUD launchers, 90 radar sites and several thousand vehicles. Only 4 of 174 were actually shot down.

The Air Force is enamored with high tech shiny things. They never wanted the A-10 to be built, and have been trying to scrap them for years. The A-10 is cheaper, more durable in both combat and in less than ideal environmental conditions. They are also easier to maintain, and can be serviced and rearmed faster than an Apache.

The armed services could probably redesign and build a thousand updated A-10 planes for less than the cost of one year of what's been spent designing the F35. But it's the tax payers money. So aircraft that are considerably less capable and orders of magnitude more expensive are the logical choice, of course.

Re: 2% is nothing

[RightwingNutjob]

The other part of the problem is that the air force acquisitions is run by accountants and scientists, not engineers or combat pilots. And one of the things that you don't learn as a scientist or an accountant, or even as a combat pilot, is the hidden cost and complexity of doing two things with one aircraft by "fixing it with software," as opposed to the upfront cost building two types of aircraft. It's a serious problem, and it leads to bad acquisitions decisions, not just for planes. That said, having new F-35s that can do more of some things isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Re:2% is nothing

[cold fjord]

Or just drop the F-35 program entirely, use drones and cruise missiles for most of what the F-35 would do, and keep the A-10's for close in air support.

You can do that as long as you're willing to start replacing all of your C++ compilers for application development with NTFS filesystems and X-Windows.

Those weapons platforms don't really overlap that much in their capabilities. Maybe by 2115 instead of 2015 .....

Re: 2% is nothing

[morgauxo]

How are we under attack? When did Isis or Syria ever even send anyone to our hemisphere let alone specifically our nation? I think AC has inhaled a bit too much Faux News.

Re:2% is nothing

[DerekLyons]

With massive proven returns on the dollar we need to more than double NASA's budget.

[[Citation needed]] - from an independent source, not just one that repeats NASA's propaganda spin.

Re: 2% is nothing

[meerling]

Really?! Last I heard they were attacking parts of the middle east, and hadn't even taken over an entire country yet, much less put out a rowboat to try and cross the ocean.

Re: 2% is nothing

[cold fjord]

Wrong timing for it, though. While our nation is under attack by Isis and Syria, this increase would be better spent on improving our dwindling military capabilities..

Dwindling? CITATION NEEDED.

CITATION PROVIDED

Budget cuts to slash U.S. Army to smallest since before World War Two
A New Army Drawdown: This Time Is Far Worse
General: With cuts, Marine Corps will 'cut into bone'
AIR FORCE PREPARES TO SEPARATE 25,000 IN SERVICE'S LARGEST DRAWDOWN

"Over the next five years, about 550 aircraft and about 25,000 Airmen will be gone from the Air Force.

Mind the elephant, sir, it has been known to bite people in the ass.

Re: 2% is nothing

[cold fjord]

Now now. Don't you know that failure to give planned increases in military budget = defense cutbacks?

And how do you refer to the actual reductions in head count and budget cutting that has been going on?

Budget cuts to slash U.S. Army to smallest since before World War Two

Re: 2% is nothing

[cold fjord]

Let us know when you are willing to be paid at Chinese rates. Most people in the West aren't. The same thing does for costs of finished goods.

Re:2% is nothing

[cold fjord]

And funny thing... "your friend" wouldn't be in debt at all if it weren't for that military spending (yeah, mixing metahphor...), and you'd find the could spend even more money on science. In fact, doubling his science budget would be no problem.

The "funny thing" is you don't know what you're talking about. Military spending in the US is dwarfed by social welfare spending, and that was before Obamacare.

Re:2% is nothing

[Drethon]

Cut two F-35s and keep all the remaining A-10s flying. Cut a squadron of F-35s and we can build a few new Orion spaceships. Cut all of the F-35s and we could colonize Mars (not sure how much I'm exaggerating...)

Re:2% is nothing

[Drethon]

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, even if it is a tad (lot) under weight.

Re:2% is nothing

[ranton]

The "funny thing" is you don't know what you're talking about. Military spending in the US is dwarfed by social welfare spending, and that was before Obamacare.

How does social welfare spending have anything to do with whether military spending should be cut? My spending on a new tablet, phone, and computer every other year is dwarfed by my mortgage, grocery bill, and car/life/health insurance payments. But if I lost my job, I would skip buying the iPad Air 3 long before I would skip paying my mortgage.

Military spending as a percentage of our total budget is not that important. US military spending as a percentage of worldwide military spending is much more important. I would still feel quite secure if our military budget was twice that of the 2nd highest spender in the world, and that would still cut our military spending by over 40%. It would also allow us to increase NASA funding by 15x its current level, although I wouldn't advocate putting all of the savings there.

Re: 2% is nothing

[dywolf]

Yes....because they clearly outmatch our capabilities.

Re:2% is nothing

[JWW]

The real fact is that budget deficits in upcoming years will only be solved by cutting military, welfare, medicare, and social security spending.

The fact is that basically all other spending is a rounding error compared to those big four items.

People are exactly right. Even completely zeroing out NASA funding would have, in practical measures, absolutely NO impact on the national debt.

The other ironic thing is that NASA, by far, is one of the few federal agencies that actually can lead to technology and science findings that truly benefit the American people.

But the idea that NASA is getting an increase, even though it is a slight one, is good news in my book.

Re: 2% is nothing

[ILongForDarkness]

Not being at war anymore?

Re:2% is nothing

[ranton]

The real fact is that budget deficits in upcoming years will only be solved by cutting military, welfare, medicare, and social security spending.

While I do agree this is the most likely solution, it is not a fact that this will be necessary. Increasing research and education spending would have a positive impact on our economy. A better economy increases tax revenue, which could balance the budget without cutting any programs. The Clinton administration did not balance the budget by being fiscally conservative, they just rode the wave of the technology boom (although it is debatable if the budget was every truly balanced). A new technology wave from the biotech sector, to pick one possible example, could have a similar effect in the near future. But only if we spend the necessary research dollars.

The way things are going now it is becoming more likely that another country will take advantage of the next technology boom, not the US.

Re:2% is nothing

[TangoMargarine]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

48% vs 35% is not "dwarfed." It's not even half-again.

P.S: Admittedly I'm a bit suspicious of that graph. The graphic says 2013, the page title says 2011, and the caption says 2012. WTF.

P.P.S: Oh--I should have known better. It's cold fjord.

Re:2% is nothing

[TangoMargarine]

Ah crap. Got deer in the headlights for "Non-Defense Discretionary" since it had "Defense" in the title :P

Okay, so my original point is invalid. That doesn't change the fact that we spend as much on our military as the rest of the world combined, and a number of countries in Europe also tax their populations a hell of a lot more heavily so by % they may spend more on welfare stuff.

Re:2% is nothing

[hawguy]

Or just drop the F-35 program entirely, use drones and cruise missiles for most of what the F-35 would do, and keep the A-10's for close in air support.

You can do that as long as you're willing to start replacing all of your C++ compilers for application development with NTFS filesystems and X-Windows.

Those weapons platforms don't really overlap that much in their capabilities. Maybe by 2115 instead of 2015 .....

2115? They still won't have the F-35 combat ready by then.

Re:2% is nothing

[Coren22]

AC-130 Specter. Now can we please get rid of the damn A-10 already?

AC-130 has a longer loiter time, more/more powerful weapons systems, and a better attack design (circle the target pounding the shit out of it the whole time, vs sweep over target firing for a short time then swing around for another attack pass)

Re:2% is nothing

[Coren22]

If you want cool guns, check out the AC-130 Specter.

Re:2% is nothing

[Facegarden]

I'm gonna have to throw this one back at you buddy... You don't know what you're talking about. Military spending is about half of social welfare spending (a good rule of thumb for our budgets is about 1/3 Military, 1/3 Medicare/Medicaid, and 1/3 Social Security). That has been true for a while now. See this graphic for actual data: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/defa...

But the thing is, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are all programs where Americans pay into a program and then get that money back at a later date either as direct cash or as medical care. Military spending, on the other hand, is money that goes nowhere. Sure, we employ Americans, but if your plan to promote jobs is to just give everyone a government job then we might as well be socialist. Hundreds of millions of dollars of military spending goes to bombs we literally vaporize. A shitload of money in the last decade went to building those big ass MRAP trucks that cost $1m apiece that we ended up handing to local law enforcement around the country for free because the military never actually needed them. The US bought $485m in new jets from Italy for Afghanistan and then scrapped them for $32k because they didn't work. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/f...
US Military spending is RIFE with pork.

Do you know how large the military budget is? It is way too big. In 2010 the budget was $700 Billion a year. In 2000 it was only $300B a year, and we were still BY FAR the world's largest military. We've added $400 BILLION dollars to our YEARLY military budget in the last 14 years. And it wasn't Obama that committed to that military spending, it was Bush. The president who committed to massive wars without paying for them (actually decreasing taxes at the same time).

This is how our military spending stacks up to the rest of the world.
http://cdn1.globalissues.org/i...

If Obama wanted to add $10B a year to helping Americans, you'd probably flip. But unchecked spending on the military is just fine by you?

The budget that is going through the House tonight has $490 Million for a fighter jet that doesn't work and the military does not want. Meanwhile, we are cutting $92 million from the food stamp program.
http://bulletin.represent.us/5...

Military spending in this country is fucking insane man, you literally have no idea. I can tell by your invocation of Obamacare as somehow a significant force in our debt that in fact you have no idea what you are talking about. Obamacare doesn't move the needle. And don't just shout that you know otherwise. You've been lied to and you've eaten it up. Go find the factual data that says Obamacare increased our budget by even 1% of our military spending. It's okay, I'll wait.

Re: 2% is nothing

[ILongForDarkness]

Sort of. My understanding it is it more of: 1) by votes by creating loopholes or wide spanning tax reductions 2) As a matter of principle be against tax increases including closing loopholes without also reducing revenue from somewhere else. Those two oscillate back and forth till the government is no longer able to meet its legal obligations.

Re: 2% is nothing

[ILongForDarkness]

Oh also I think it is totally rediculous that a law can be pasted and then congress can turn around and refuse to fund it or approve the managers for the department etc. Now you don't like the law after you got all the good karma in an election year from passing it? Okay fine then get rid of the bill, modify it to fix its flaws etc. But as long as it is the law congress should have to fund it. IMO only discretionary spending (ie expenditures not already tied to a law/required to enforce/implement an already approved program) should be controlled by the budget committee. Anything else they want to touch should go through a normal bill process.

Re: 2% is nothing

[The Grim Reefer]

That said, having new F-35s that can do more of some things isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I agree. The problem with the F-35 is that they wanted it to do way too many things. So it doesn't really do anything well from what I've seen. It's a hell of a step backwards for close air support compared to the A-10. That was part of why the A-10 was built to begin with. The jets that were used for CAS in Vietnam were too fast to be effective and had very little loiter time.

The F-16 on the other hand, turned out to be a very capable general purpose, multiple role airframe.

Re: 2% is nothing

[cold fjord]

Although your answer is flippant it is wrong. The US will be fighting al Qaida and friends for decades.

How much is that in F-35s?

[BenJeremy]

For all budget discussions, any program, should always couch the monetary amounts in terms of how many F-35s it equates to.

Re:How much is that in F-35s?

[rtb61]

Budget discussions should also cover whether this is revolving door funding, making it's way out of NASA to private for profit contractors faster than it made it's way in.

Re:How much is that in F-35s?

[Tailhook]

For all budget discussions, any program, should always couch the monetary amounts in terms of how many F-35s it equates to.

Ok.

Since 2008, NASA's annual budget has been cut the equivalent of 7.3 F-35's in nominal dollars. 18.8 F-35's in inflation adjusted dollars.

The 2015 NASA budget increase is about 2 F-35's, at $132 million per low-rate production F-35.

The unit cost of a Eurofighter is $112 million. I wonder if Europe has malcontent little punklets demanding everything be priced in Eurofighters.

Re:How much is that in F-35s?

[cold fjord]

I wonder if Europe has malcontent little punklets demanding everything be priced in Eurofighters.

A fair number of people that post on Slashdot fit that description already, but they are generally willing to accept F35 units and do the conversion.

There are bonus participants for many other parts of the world as well.

Re:How much is that in F-35s?

[DirePickle]

It's about 3-5, depending on whether we're taking cost/per of the initial runs or cost/per for later (~2018+) ones.

Re:How much is that in F-35s?

[tomhath]

Incremental cost of an F-35 is far less that that. Plus the technology will be used on other aircraft for several decades

Neil deGrasse Tyson wants NASA to have a 2x budget

[Khopesh]

Neil deGrasse Tyson's video pleas We Stopped Dreaming and its follow-up A New Perspective proposed we increase NASA spending to 1% of the US Federal Budget (current spending: 0.5%) suggests we could go to Mars and innovate the way we did in the 70s, so there's a long way to go (a 2% boost leaves us 98% shy of Tyson's goal).

NASA is already trying to plan a manned mission to Mars or an asteroid in the future. It would be nice if they were funded for it.

Anti-science Republicans

[Tailhook]

There they go again. Killing off science in the US by defunding NASAs science programs. Guess they want a theocracy where everyone worships the sky daddy in a 2000 year old universe.

Oh.

Wait.

Time to start hating on NASA I guess. I mean if those racist bible thumping warmongers want to fund it it has got to be wrong. So, lets look in the playbook and see what we have..... Ah ha! That money is better spent here on Earth to hep the poor. We need to fix our own planet before we worry about others!

Re:Anti-science Republicans

[d34thm0nk3y]

Um, you realize all those new Republicans haven't taken office yet, right?

Re:Beyond request?

[Trepidity]

The budget request isn't really NASA's request of how much they think they need, but rather the White House's request on behalf of NASA, acting in its role as head of the executive branch. The White House makes decisions about how much it thinks each agency and/or program needs, and presents that budget request to Congress. Congress, having the ultimate spending authority, can allocated either more or less than the request in various categories, if they have different ideas about how much should be spent on what.

Re:Beyond request?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Every new dollar spent here is another dollar or two...or three spent elswhere because of tit for tat negotiations. Look for it.

When Bush requested $700 billion for bank bailouts, it was over $800 billion, the extra being negotiated pork to buy votes.

Think what that means: If the bailout was necessary, some in Congress were ready to cancel it unless they got something. If the bailout was not necessary, some who would have rightly stopped it got bought out to go along.

Re:I for one

[crunchygranola]

Those aren't your tax dollars. Our country spends twice what it takes in.

According to this Conservative-run Federal budget reference website the current Federal budget deficit is $483 billion on a $3504 billion dollar budget, or 13.8%. That is a far cry for "twice what it takes in". Smart to remain anonymous, you would not want to reveal your math skills to those who know you.

That notorious Marxist rag The Wall Street Journal concurs.

Awesome news

[passwd]

Planetary science lost hundreds of millions in the past few years, so this is welcome news IMHO.

The Planetary Society has some commentary on this news here. They're not exactly impartial observers when it comes to planetary science and they've long advocated for $1.5b/year of spending. This budget brings the funding up to $1.437b, so we're very close to what the advocates are asking for.

It's really good to see congress listening to the space science people and recognizing the tremendous value-for-dollar they get out of their robotic spacecraft. The US is the clear world leader when it comes to space telescopes and planetary science missions, and we're in a golden age for that kind of science right now. This money will hopefully keep up the pace that's been set for the past while.

One especailly exciting detail of this new funding: a chunk of it is earmarked for a mission to Europa. Quoting the Planetary Society again,

Europa gets its own special mention, though its increase is contained in the $1.437 billion for planetary science. Why? Because once again the actual law, not just the committee report language, directs NASA to spend money on Europa. This mission does not officially exist, though the Presidentâ(TM)s budget did request $15 million this year to study low-cost concepts (a step in the right direction). But $100 million is a considerable increase, and piles on top of last yearâ(TM)s $85 million provided for the same effort. The accompanying committee report directs another $18 million in technology development for Europa as well. NASA would be crazy not to use this funding to start a real mission, but that decision likely lies with the Office of Management and Budget, which approves their funding requests. Letâ(TM)s hope they get the message in time to request a new start in 2016.

Re:Awesome news

[R3d M3rcury]

I'm sure the Congressmen from Boeing had something to do with this. After all, if they're sending a rocket to Europa, how's it going to get to get there without the Senate Launch System? "See? We have to spend that money now! We've got a bunch of science missions that we've already spent money on waiting for it!"

I thought my raises sucked

[ILongForDarkness]

but even NASA gets cost of living. Who knew?

Re:Beyond request?

[Art Challenor]

and clearly Obama vehemently opposed aspects of the program just to ensure that Congress would fund them.

How much of that money goes

[mark_reh]

to paying administrators higher salaries?

Anti-science Democrats

[cold fjord]

Clinton Makes Mistake In Cutting Nasa's Budget

Nothing better captures the decay of the Clinton presidency from the change-friendly, innovative liberalism promised in 1992 to the reactionary liberalism of today, determined to defend the welfare state at all cost, than Clinton's newest "reinventing government" initiative. Unveiled late last month, it promises to "reinvent" NASA with huge budget cuts.

In 1992, Clinton-Gore campaigned as the Atari Democrats. Unlike the hidebound Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis locked in to the Democratic past, they posed as futurists dedicated to global competition, high-tech/high-wage jobs, and cutting edge science. So where do these two change-is-our-friend Democrats go for budget cutting? Farm subsidies? Welfare? Inflated government construction costs, a legacy of the egregious 1931 Davis-Bacon Act (that the administration has just promised to retain)?

They go to space, the one area where the United States has the greatest technological advantage-an advantage that can be quickly lost without serious sustained effort. Under the euphemism of "reinvention," the administration is cutting the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to pieces.

Isn't Hillary planning to run in 2016? What an indictment of the US political system, that she could possibly be competitive.

all science funding increases

[TMB]

Most importantly, it's not just NASA -- the NSF and NIH also have above-inflation budget increases, after several years of stark cuts. I was worried that this was going to be cannibalizing one science for another, but that doesn't appear to be the case!

[TMB]

Re:Neil deGrasse Tyson wants NASA to have a 2x bud

[ProzacPatient]

... and innovate the way we did in the 70s

Don't get me wrong I love science and the idea of space exploration but unfortuantely I believe a lot of the early innovation in space exploration was just political chest pounding grandstanding with the Soviet Union. With the Soviet Union gone the U.S. hasn't been really been fearful of looking inferior to a rival nation capable of destroying the planet let alone our own country.

While it is fortunate that the constant threat of total, and possibly nuclear, war is gone unfortunately it also has had the consequence of resulting in less attention to the space program. It is rather unfortunate that war is the biggest cause of major innovation, for example; I really don't believe we would be where we are today technologically had it not been for the two World Wars which brought with it all kinds of innovation as a side effect of an escalating arms race between powers but the cost was that those wars ended millions of lives.

US inflation is expected to be 1.7% in 2014

[shani]

I checked briefly and I didn't see anything indicating that this increase was inflation-adjusted. (Perhaps I missed something in TFA or some other source?)

With 1.7% inflation throughout 2014, a 2% increase is basically keeping the funding the same.

SOFIA!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot of Debbie downers in this here thread so I want to shed some light. One of the projects mentioned in TFA is called SOFIA(Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy) - the infrared telescope in the back of a 747. It's still in development, technically speaking, but it has also started flying real science missions. It has already produced lots of papers and some really interesting imagery. Some of the most notable things I can recall: It has observed a ring of dust around the super massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and it has observed Pluto's atmosphere during an occultation(the plane flew inside Pluto's shadow as Pluto passed between the Earth and a distant star).

One of the super cool things about SOFIA is that it's capable of having different science instruments strapped on to it, and switching out science instruments is easy since the telescope is in the back of a 747 instead of in orbit where a space walk would be necessary. It flies high enough in the atmosphere that atmospheric distortion is nil, and it's far more powerful than any orbiting telescope, with the possibility of being upgraded as we develop better optics. It's one of my favorite NASA projects.

I agree that NASA deserves more funding, and TFS and TFA stating "For an agency regularly called "adrift" without a mission" is dead wrong. Head to NASA's site and you'll see TONS of missions that have on-going support, are being built, and are planned for the future. NASA mans all sorts of missions, most of which most people(even the science savvy people here on /.) ignore. They are not 'adrift'. They are not 'without a mission'.

Re:Beyond request?

[butchersong]

I would be interested to see some auditor reviews of NASA's budget. I'm sure they have smart people there but those that I have met have not been very impressive. They basically fill space and know next to nothing about the technical aspects of their jobs. One guy I worked with had to spend quite a while explaining the difference between mv and copy on a file to someone that worked in their network security some years back... This was a high level technical role not a manager. So I've always wondered how much of their budget was massive overspending due to incompetence and payroll for people who effectively dodge work all day and do nothing but navigate that bureaucracy.

Re:Doesn't matter, it won't be passed.

[TangoMargarine]

From the EPA comment at least, I'm guessing you're referring to Republicans proposing this?

They will control both houses starting at the new year. When does the budget get voted on?

"boatload of money"?

[whitroth]

Who is this idtiot OP? If you do the simplest websearch, the inflation rate for the US in the last year is 1.7% (which, off the subject, is higher than the "raise" I and my coworkers got), so in other words, NASA's funding is absolutely static.

But then, the GOP secretly believes that the world is flat, and was created 4004 BCE....

            mark

Human boots or nothing

[CauseBy]

I don't support sending robots to other worlds using tons and tons of tax dollars. NASA was and should be about putting humans on other worlds. That part of the mission has been dropped and without it I don't support NASA.

Shut it down. Send everyone home. Shutter the agency if they cannot put human beings onto rocks in space.

If we want to fund science, then wonderful, transfer NASAs budget to the NSF or whatever.