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

[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.

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.

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.

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.