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NASA Gets Its Marching Orders: Look Up! Look Out!
TheRealHocusLocus writes: HR 2039: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act for 2016 and 2017 (press release, full text, and as a pretty RGB bitmap) is in the House. In $18B of goodies we see things that actually resemble a space program. The ~20,000 word document is even a good read, especially the parts about decadal cadence. There is more focus on launch systems and manned exploration, also to "expand the Administration's Near-Earth Object Program to include the detection, tracking, cataloguing, and characterization of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects less than 140 meters in diameter." I find it awesome that the fate of the dinosaurs is explicitly mentioned in this bill. If it passes we will have a law with dinosaurs in it. Someone read the T-shirt. There is also a very specific six month review of NASA's "Earth science global datasets for the purpose of identifying those datasets that are useful for understanding regional changes and variability, and for informing applied science research." Could this be an emerging Earth Sciences turf war between NOAA and NASA? Lately it seems more of a National Atmospheric Space Administration. Mission creep, much?
Seriously. The real story with this bill is that the republicans are defunding the climate monitoring programs. It will take decades to regain the capabilities we'll lose by defunding them now. There's no turf war between NASA and NOAA, just one between republicans and science.
Nice job trying to write a summary for geeks that attempts to bury the real story.
If he isn't a shill he is a Republican robot.
Useless is best one can connect to the crap he spewed in the summary.
Article should be removed.
Seriously. The real story with this bill is that the republicans are defunding the climate monitoring programs. It will take decades to regain the capabilities we'll lose by defunding them now. There's no turf war between NASA and NOAA, just one between republicans and science.
Well I agree, while purses are open and plenty funding is available for all, there's no reason for conflict. It is refreshing to see that climate research funding is becoming subject to the same level of debate and scrutiny as other items. For too long climate angles have been a literal bill-stuffing no-brainer.
And what about that space stuff? Remember the space stuff?
Nice job trying to write a summary for geeks that attempts to bury the real story.
The paid shill canard is getting shrill. Damn right nice job. If I had managed to communicate the way I truly feel about NASA participating in terrestrial climate research, my summary would not have been accepted. I was pissed when NASA (jointly) fronted the "2014 Warmest Year On Record" statistical flapdoodle, saw it as a clear sign we are on a bad road. They've jumped on the 'big tent' climate bandwagon to aggregate and homogenize oodles of surface measurements, some of which are in dispute, while the clear signals of their own satellites are lightly weighted.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
NASA spent more money studying climate change in 2014 than it spent launching men into space
Good. Climate change is one of the most important things to study. Sending men into space is one of the most useless things to do.
If Democrats are so insistent on studying climate and are really so convinced that it is woth the money, they should pony-up the cash for NOAA to do that work (double the size of NOAA, perhaps?) instead of continually siphoning billions of dollars away from the aeronautics and spaceflight work of NASA.
A simpler solution would be to just increase NASA's budget, so they can do both. Or let SpaceX worry about getting men in space. Unlike NASA, they can do stuff in space, while making a profit.