Like this is a surprise? One of the weirdest jobs in Washington has to be science advisor to the administration. You have to ignore acres of scientific research (like with Yucca Mountain), work with religious fundies who believe in ID over evolution, and so on, while trying to spin complex mainstream science into single sentences to people who still won’t understand you because it interferes with their political drivel.
New Budget Delays or Cancels Much-Promoted NASA Missions
Some of the most highly promoted missions on NASA’s scientific agenda would be postponed indefinitely or perhaps even canceled under the agency’s new budget, despite its administrator’s vow to Congress six months ago that not “one thin dime” would be taken from space science to pay for President Bush’s plan to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars.
Among the casualties in the budget, released last month, are efforts to look for habitable planets and perhaps life elsewhere in the galaxy, an investigation of the dark energy that seems to be ripping the universe apart, bringing a sample of Mars back to Earth and exploring for life under the ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa as well as numerous smaller programs and individual research projects that astronomers say are the wellsprings of new science and new scientists.
The cuts have alarmed and outraged many scientists, who have long feared that NASA will have to cannibalize its science program to carry out the president’s vision of human spaceflight.
The new cuts, they say, will drive young people from the field, ending American domination of space science and perhaps ceding future discoveries to Europe.
“The bottom line: science at NASA is disappearing — fast,” said Donald Lamb, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and chairman of a committee on space science for the Association of American Universities.
I don’t think we will be seeing any meaningful advances out of NASA. The political landscape makes long term planning practically impossible.
It will be up to private companies to lead the way.
Throughout history, the most scientifically advanced societies flourished while the least advanced floundered and collapsed into depression. I agree that when money is tight we need to be responsible, but let us keep a keen an eye to the lessons of history as well.
Last time I checked, the Congress still creates the final budget, regardless of what is proposed by the President. So if they want to continue funding exploration, nothing is stopping them from doing so. If the President still decides to veto the bill, he can then explain to everybody why it was so important to not spend the money on that project.
Mike – you’re absolutely right!
It’s about time this country takes a civics lesson! I’m tired of hearing people blame the president on spending, the national debt, or any other fiscal issue. It’s not the pres that sets budgets, it the fools in the House. The president can only propose budgets and spending. If he get’s a majority to agree in congress, good for him. But in the end, it’s people like Sen Ted Kenedy (D-MA), and Rep. Chabot (R-OH) that are responsible for what we spend and how we spend it.
I think you should have to pass a government test before given the right to vote… Then, and only then, will people know what they are voting for…
Max
Mike & Max,
You are, of course, correct. This means we should always assume the prez is lying when he promises anything related to the budget since he has no power (other than veto) to fund anything. Of course, when something, by sheer chance, gets funded in the way and at the amount he said he wanted on a particular day to a particular audience, he will claim this shows he keeps his word.
It’s funny that GW’s father was known as the Veto-President because of this budget nonsense sent to him by Congress. His father caught all kinds of flack from stopping the stupid spending and the add-ons (pork) to bills.
What does he care what he promises to people now? He’s into his second term,it’s not like he cares about getting re-elected.
Write this down: the proposed moon missions will also go! They’ll take forever planning them, just like the space station, and then nothing will happen…
The future of space exploration is in Europe. Not even China, they are in it mostly for showing off.
I think its smart. People don’t really care about probes to distant worlds, except maybe to Mars. Manned missions get the headlines and win the hearts and minds of the people and congress. Also with China now shooting for the moon, it reinvigerates the old space race. Its great that we send probes all over, but we need to know how to send men there and that is not going to happen with the shuttle and the ISS. The biggest mistake this country did was give up Apollo system for the shuttle. It set manned space fight back decades and discarded a platform that could have been expanded for a Mars flight in favor of a overpriced, limited and dangerous POS know as the shuttle.
Hey.. we are broke… the King spent all of our money, and we are stuck paying for a foreign ‘adventure’ from which we have no easy way out. Something has to go, things like science, education, arts, competitiveness research, social support…. you know, the minor stuff that can be cut. After all, we wouldn’t want to ask the Lords and Earls to contribute from their coffers.
But we have an expanded for new Nukes, because it’s a new world afetr 9/11, and we need Nukes to fight them terrorists.
Here’s a simple number:
$6 Billion per month for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We have money, but only for certain things. Do you know how fast you could clean up New Orleans with $6 B per month? Civic infrastructure, science, and education are not on the A-list anymore.
We have to ask ourselves exactly what we want out of a space program. Are we in it for the science (in which case unmanned probes serve us admirably)? Or are we out to prove something (which we did with Apollo 40 years ago)? Unless we plan to build permanent, self-sustaining colonies on the moon and Mars (costing untold trillions over many decades and probable loss of life), manned space travel is simply showboating.
Unmanned probes, on the other hand, provide enormous scientific and technological payback at a relatively low cost, and can go where no human can possibly venture. Studies of the surface of Venus (800 deg F and atmospheric pressure equivelent to that of the ocean floor) could only be accomplished via orbiters that painstakingly map the surface and landers on “suicide missions.” They also last for years; we’re still hearing from the Voyagers three decades after their launch. And if one goes haywire, it’s a disappointment but not a national tragedy.
Space exploration’s future lies with China, not with the United States. Painful as it may be, while Americans’ real income levels have stagnated over the past twenty five years, Chinese real incomes have soared an estimated 12% per year and there does not seem an end in sight to this situation. Any exploration is based on economics, and the signs are clear.
Plus China’s culture is increasingly a highly urban one while the U.S. is firmly entrenched into a suburban reality. An increassingly wealthy, intelligent, and vigorous culture verses a stagnating, aging and anti-intellectual culture: there is a contest???