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]

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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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: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: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!"

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.