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Obama's 2016 NASA Budget Status Quo, Funds Europa Mission
MarkWhittington writes The Washington Post reported that the NASA portion of the president's 2016 budget proposal is basically status quo though it does provide further funding for a mission to Europa. A Europa probe is near and dear to the new chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA, Rep. John Culberson. However, the $18.5 billion budget proposal also funds the asteroid redirect mission, which has come under increasing fire from both Congress and the scientific community. The Houston Chronicle suggested that the final spending bill will be considerably different once congressional Republicans get through with it.
But I was told not to attempt any landings there
Unless the lander is being built in your Congressional district.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Europa?!?!
Well that's it, we're doomed.
Thanks Obama
The budget that Obama submitted is basically a fantasy novel with lots of boring numbers in it. The House and Senate are going to shitcan it the instant it lands in their hands so they can pass their own budget instead. It's not even worth talking about the budget because it has absolutely nothing to do with whatever finally makes it through Congress.
I read the internet for the articles.
Private industry can barely get into orbit.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Europa is nice, but what I would argue is the following
1) asteroid redirect mission... go, we want another smaller moon, preferably one mostly made of useful metals, and that can be used as a counter-weight for a future space elevator
2) manned moon/mars missions... we got there once, we should go back to the moon and establish a colony, to advance both our understanding of low gravity environments and the challenges of living 'off world'. Also, the dark side of the moon would be a great location for any number of advanced telescopes, plus the moon would offer a lot of advantages for production facilities, including a large amount of helium 3. A Mars colony would secure the long term survivability of the human race and would free us from relying on the Earth for our survival.
3) Space station. Stop futzing around with the ISS and lets build a real station. I'm thinking 2001 or better. Maybe attach it as a waypoint on the future space elevator.
4) Asteroid mining, Either mine them in-situ, or crash them into the moon and then mine. Ok, yes, this is long term, but surely there's money to be made here.
That function is assigned to Congress.
So why should I care what a lame duck president who lost control of both houses of Congress has to say on the matter? The only influence he could have right now it propose every idea the republicans want to push through and watch them try to figure out how to not support him. Everything he's for they are automatically opposed to so they'd be stuck. It might be entertaining to see a congress person repeating "does not compute" endlessly until their head explodes. Kind of a cross between Mudd from "Star Trek" and "Scanners".
If you read it closely you'll see it's actually increasing the budget, not holding it constant.
Washington is the only place where increasing by less than 5% (I think that's what they've been using) is a spending cut.
And yet, they are close to being able to re-land the rockets. Which will keep costs significantly lower. Different attitude from the get go. One is far more wasteful fiscally...I'll bet it isn't hard to figure out which one....
And it you think I'm shitting you, please cite the last Democrat-submitted budget.
You mean like last year?
You can even read the budget and scroll and see the numbers and changes on that page. I'm pretty sure he did so for years prior to 2014 as well.
Obama has had budgets; the Republicans (and truthfully congress as a whole) have argued that budget, fillibustered it, not allowed it to pass, and have been surviving on continuing resolutions for years. But that isn't Obama's fault that our congressmen can't behave like adults and compromise.
And that same private industry leader is pushing electric cars and home-use solar panels. Sounds like quite the Republican...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
while the military spend of the US clears $800Bn - making it yet again the single largest military spender in history, outspending every other nation combined.
BTW when an increase doesn't keep pace with inflation + the CPI over the same period (which 5% doesn't, and providing that 5% counts annually it's short by about 0.2 for 2013/12-2014/12), then it's a cut.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Also, lets not forget that it is the job of congress to set the budget. The president gets to submit a wishlist, but it is up to congress to specify what goes in or not. Then, after they pass a budget, it is the president's duty to approve it unless there is something terribly wrong with it. Congress cannot shutdown the government if they pass a balanced budget, but the president can by not approving the one that was sent. So lets call the 2013 shutdown what it was, a democrat government shutdown.
Yeah, let's not forget the laugher that Obama sent in 2012, which the Democrat-controlled Senate rejected 99-0.
Yes, the GP may have been wrong about not actually submitting a budget in six years. In actuality, submitting budgets that can't even get a single vote from your own party is basically the same thing as not submitting one.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
it is the president's duty to approve it unless there is something terribly wrong with it.
$5.22 is allocated to [insert thing I don't like]. Vetoed!
Personally, I think it sounds like a good reason to bring back the line-item veto amendment. Obama can then veto spending on all of the Republicans' pork and pass the rest, and then the Republicans can do the same when it's their turn. Rick Perry's already got plenty of experience with this!
But then they'll try to fund a pipeline from Europa to American refineries so that they can sell the gasoline to China.
Addressing Congress:
With all due respect, the only way (dramatic pause) to create a pipeline between two orbiting bodies to recover oil in such a fashion cheaply, is through funding of
wormhole technology which my research and development already has a line on. All that is needed is your continued funding to help me pursue and apprehend (second dramatic pause) John Crichton.
sincerely
Scorpius
You're an idiot. Who do you think built the rockets that got men to the Moon? Hint: it wasn't NASA or the government, it was a company called Rocketdyne.
Today's private spaceflight companies like Orbital Sciences and SpaceX are mostly doing the same thing: they're vying for government contracts for things like ISS resupply missions (in addition to commercial contracts for satellite launches; they didn't have commercial communications or other satellites back in the 60s).
If you're wage covers less and less purchases, particularly NON-DISCRETIONARY purchases (like food, clothing and housing), then the effect is a pay cut. When wages do not roughly follow inflation, it is an effective reduction in wages.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It is a decrease in buying power. Which is equivalent to a reduction in your historical wages, true. But that's not the way the terms are used by the general population, and the bureaucrats switch between real and actual dollars in order to disguise what they're doing. Walk out on the street outside of Washington and ask 100 people "if my budget was 50,000 last year, and it's 52,500 this year, did it get cut" and probably all 100 will say "Hell no, it went up". At least outside of that fantasy land called Washington DC.
So we end up with "anything less than 5% increase" being cried about being a "cut", or "anything less than what we asked for" also being a called a "cut". It's disingenuous bureaucrats looking to expand their empires. The military's as bad as anyone- this isn't unique to NASA.
If you want to talk "real dollars" vs " actual dollars", that's fine. Keep your labels straight and be transparent and honest. But lose the bureaucrat speak. If businesses operated the way the government operates they'd go out of business in a hurry.
the base rate of inflation (AKA core inflation) is the amount of currency in circulation against a fixed amount of a nonvolatile commodity (gold). When the amount of currency in circulation goes up, for example after a bout of quantitative easing, the value of the commodity stays the same but the value of the currency goes down - resulting in a higher peg. That's your core inflation. The consumer price index is the core inflation measured against the marketable value of a given amount of a volatile such as sugar, coffee, oranges or oil. The CPI is ALWAYS higher than inflation since volatiles availability depends almost entirely on the input of human effort.
Now, are you going to put a name to your comment? Or am I going to continue to make your AC arse look stupid?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
That's all beside the point, which is that "the government" doesn't do that much, it contracts it out to private corporations to get done.
But in addition to that, there's no commercial reason to build Europa probes and the like. There is a commercial reason to build and launch communications satellites, but it only happened after all the technology was developed at government expense for other purposes (sending men to the moon and having ICBMs).
No, but the insinuation was that a vote for the Republican was a vote for private enterprise. Musk is proving to be successful without the kind of sweet-deal contracts that the existing military-industrial complex has enjoyed with regard to space launch technology. That was my point, he's not Republican.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I'm biased the Asteroid mission was the first mission I had been looking forward too in a long time.
It would have been a step down the road to actually getting off the earth and establishing human civilization elsewhere in the solar system. Europa ? It's about on a par with looking for life in ocean vents or the deep lithosphere. Except there is less chance of finding life on Europa.
You cannot filibuster a budget vote. Most of the time Reid wouldn't even allow Obama's proposals to even come to the floor because he understood how terrible they were.
Budgets (in the Senate) are passed with a simple majority vote of 51 but none of Obama's proposals have ever been able to get more than 5 Democrat votes (in most cases 0) let alone 51 and the Senate, under Reid's leadership has failed to even propose a budget for most of Obama's 2 terms.
The Republican led House has passed several budgets, but like most other House created legislation, once it reached the Senate it died. Usually, if the Senate had a valid budget proposal at that point the two would be debated on and an attempt would be made to work out a deal. This negotiation might fail but at least there would have been an attempt.
So rant all you want but if you want to point fingers the complete failure to pass a real budget for most of Obama's presidency has little to do with the Republicans, despite your wishing it so.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Correct. And I would add:
It wasn't long ago that Obama heralded the glorious "privatization of Space". He handed out big money to all his friends. There was big fan fare about the dawn of a new era. Private companies were going to replace those nasty rooskies charging us an arm and a leg to get into space, remember?
What happened? The new NASA budget shifts money into... wait for it... A way to get astronauts to the Space Station.
But I am sure the bribes were repaid handsomely, and a nice chunk of taxpayer dollars found their way back to the Democratic Party coffers. Because at the end of the day, that is what this Administration and party truly excel at.
Murphy was an optimist
The line item veto was fought tooth and nail... by the Democrats.
Murphy was an optimist
So why does Obama's proposed NASA budget take money away from some programs to finance a way to get astronauts to the Space Station?
Murphy was an optimist