Science Eviscerated In NASA Budget, Planetary Society call to action Options

[Redstone]

There is a good summary of the overall NASA budget situation, produced by the House Science Comittee staff, at spaceref.com.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19645

[dvandorn]

...What we should be hearing are calls for NASA to be given more money in general. Trying to take money from one NASA pot to give to another is merely a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul...

To give him credit, that's exactly what Griffin tried to do last year. In an appearance before a Congressional committee, he said that he cannot accomplish everything on NASA's plate without significant funding increases.

I'm assuming that the White House changed the message they gave to Griffin, at first telling him that VSE would get the political support to get funded independently of the unmanned side. But the new Bush budget proposal shows that the White House hasn't kept its word -- instead of providing the ramp-up funding levels needed to begin the VSE development, Griffin is now being told to do exactly what he told Congress last year he cannot do: maintain both sides of the house, with the necessarily rising VSE development costs, on a fixed budget.

I would have to think that, if Griffin was telling that to Congress, he was also telling it to the White House. So, all I can say is, it ain't Griffin's fault he had to change his tune.

Let's all hope Congress can bring themselves to give NASA the money it needs to accomplish *everything* it's been tasked to do. In spite of the Administration's inability to try and do so.

-the other Doug

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Well, I won't. There are, lest we forget, lots of other uses for that money, and -- at the risk of harping yet again on the subject -- I can think of a lot more morally (and strategically) justifiable than a bloated manned-spaceflight effort, or for that matter an oversized unmanned space program. But then, I'll go so far as to say that NASA should be dissolved and its functions redistributed among other, more appropriate government agencies -- which is what would have happened from the start had it not been for the historical freak of the Moon Race.

[Stephen]

Well, I won't. There are, lest we forget, lots of other uses for that money, and -- at the risk of harping yet again on the subject -- I can think of a lot more morally (and strategically) justifiable than a bloated manned-spaceflight effort, or for that matter an oversized unmanned space program. But then, I'll go so far as to say that NASA should be dissolved and its functions redistributed among other, more appropriate government agencies -- which is what would have happened from the start had it not been for the historical freak of the Moon Race.

"[F]rom the start"?

1. NASA was formed in 1958 back in the days of Eisenhower. It had thus been operating for several years before Kennedy's famous announcement which led to "the historical freak of the Moon Race".
2. Before NASA was invented America had not one space program but three: one run by the Army, one run by the Navy, & one run by the Air Force. Each had their own rockets, probes, launch sites, bureaucracies, and boffins. That had the potential--in the fullness of time--to lead to three manned space programs and three unmanned ones, much as the army to this day buys and runs its own helicopters and the navy operates its own (carrier-borne) jets--despite the existence of the air force.

Regarding your comments about disbanding NASA...

Are you proposing a return to the days of multiple space programs or "merely" the fragmentation of a single American space program (or at least its space effort)? Eg one agency launches rockets, another operates space probes, a third designs and builds the bits and pieces that go into space probes, a fourth picks and trains astronauts, a fifth operates the DSN, etc etc.

And what are these "more appropriate government agencies" anyway? You presumably mean pre-existing agencies like the US military & the FAA.

As for the "bloated" or "oversized" remarks...

Manned spaceflight was not and is not ever going to be cheap. Trying to do it on the cheap is merely a recipe:

1. For more Challengers and Columbia's; and/or
2. To stay in LEO. (Going beyond LEO is hardly going to be cheaper.)

Similar things might be said of claims for America's unmanned program being "oversized". If you want to explore (say) Europa at the same time as you're sending probes off to Mars & the Moon, putting research satellites around Earth, and space telescopes in orbit, then of course you're going to be running a sizeable unmanned space program. If you want landers as well as flybys, and rovers & sample return missions as well as simple fixed landers, you are talking about expensive missions which have the potential to either gobble up a budget or inflate one.

In short, do your comments amount to a suggestion that America is being overly ambitious and should cut back on what it is doing with its space program? (Disbanding NASA and farming out its functions to other agencies could be interpreted in the same fashion. Instead of a single agency with space travel & exploration as its primary rationale you would seem to prefer America's space exploration be handled by a variety of agencies each with own (possibly conflicting) priorities; and where space travel & exploration, or providing support for the same, may in any case be one of a number of functions they are required to perform, and not necessarily at the top of their "to-do" lists.)

======
Stephen

[Jeff7]

All the complaints about shuttles taking money from space science and grumbles about how there would be more for science if only Griffin would retire a shuttle strike me as naive. NASA's new mandate to send people to the Moon & Mars is also consuming money. Why not cut that back instead, or delay its schedule?

It might not be an entirely popular viewpoint here, but I do oppose the manned moon mission, and moreso the one to Mars. If just getting people to the moon is this expensive, getting to Mars could make the Iraq war look cheap.
Some day, yes, we'll land people on Mars. I just don't think that now is the time to get started on that particular goal.

[ljk4-1]

From Bob Park's latest What's New newsletter:

"Bush asked for another $72 BILLION for the war on terror and $20 BILLION for Katrina relief."

Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org

[JRehling]

Manned moon missions and manned Mars missions are going to be even more expensive even if the CEV itself is cheaper than the shuttle. What happens a decade from now when inevitably the budget cutters strike again? The shuttle will no longer be around to act as whipping boy. Will we instead be hearing calls from this board for fewer manned missions to the moon and/or delays in the manned Mars program, not to mention complaints about what a bottomless pit the CEV is and how we ought to have less of them to free up funding so they can start planning for that nice Triton orbiter everyone is talking about?

======
Stephen

Good question. The cynically-delayed ramp up in Moon/Mars costs is a bomb that will go off, but we can only speculate as to how the world will look after the explosion.

The simple answer is that we will not send people to Mars on anything resembling the proposed timeline. On the other hand, a measured return to the Moon is at least conceivable if it were given the SS/ISS budget and then some.

In the classic film "Paths of Glory", a colonel orders infantry and artillery to undertake a suicidally impossible assault during World War I. As soon as the order is given, the failure of the assault is assured. The only thing to watch is how things proceed during and after the failure. This manned Mars business is the same deal, minus all the immediate bloodshed.

If robotic exploration is put in the behemoth's path, it could be entirely gutted. At least, it cannot compare in size to the shortfalls the behemoth will create.

One of the nicer ways this could fail would be to have people return to the Moon at enough of a "little at a time" approach that this goal could be met, the successes could distract us from the Mars goal, and robotic exploration could continue its up-and-down life cycle.

JIMO died in a nice way: Before much of the money (and organizational misdirection) had been devoted to it. That's how bad ideas should die. (Well, even sooner, but that's overly optimistic.)

ISS is dying in the worst way: Taxing more resources than any of us could even estimate (esp. in opportunity cost). It's even a major resource drain when it is clear that its farcical goals will be discarded.

What we have to hope for is that the Mars mistake dies like JIMO and not like ISS. If the latter, we'll get to the year 2030 with some huge not-useful-for-anything infrastructure having blanked the organizational priorities before it dies under its own weight like a whale in a parking lot.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

The fact that Shuttle and ISS are so big that Congress is reluctant to cancel them despite their wastefulness reminds me of what Rep. Spark Matsunaga (D-HI) said in 1970 about Lockheed's ultimately successful demand that the federal government bail it out: "It reminds me of a dinosaur that wanders into your yard and says, 'Feed me, or else I'll die -- and then what are you going to do with 40 tons of dead, stinking dinosaur in your front yard?' "

[The Messenger]

The fact that Shuttle and ISS are so big that Congress is reluctant to cancel them despite their wastefulness reminds me of what Rep. Spark Matsunaga (D-HI) said in 1970 about Lockheed's ultimately successful demand that the federal government bail it out: "It reminds me of a dinosaur that wanders into your yard and says, 'Feed me, or else I'll die -- and then what are you going to do with 40 tons of dead, stinking dinosaur in your front yard?' "

I have sat through budgets sessions, and gasp when my manager has ranked a sacred cow much lower than less important projects. His strategy is simple: We will get money for these other projects, if I tell corporate everything above the sacred cow is more important than this sacred cow that you wouldn't dare cut.

Usually it works, but not always. I wonder if this is not what is happening to some extent, with Griffiths knowing full-well congress will kick in more money for science.

Another possibility is that the W is punishing scientists for being godless heathens.

[The Messenger]

-- NASA Decides to Reverse Cuts to Astrobiology
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1106

NASA has decided to reverse (at least in part) its decision to drastically cut funding for Astrobiology.
Details have not yet been released - but will be discussed this evening at the Astrobiology Science
Conference in Washington, DC.

[The Messenger]

Mar. 27, 2006 | 11:28 PST | 19:28 UTC
Dawn has been reinstated!Permalink: http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000509/

NASA just issued a press release (copied below), and conducted a very hastily assembled press teleconference to announce that the Dawn mission to the asteroids Ceres and Vesta, which was canceled abruptly on March 2, has been reinstated.

Way to go, Emily

[Jeff7]

What of any plans for Europa missions? Are they included in this restored budget?

"He then said that based on input he had been receiving that it was 'clear that we should money back [into Astrobiology]" and that "we have decided to put money back - and we will be doing that as soon as we can.'"

Input, like from most of the UMSF forum perhaps?

[mars loon]

What of any plans for Europa missions? Are they included in this restored budget?

"He then said that based on input he had been receiving that it was 'clear that we should money back [into Astrobiology]" and that "we have decided to put money back - and we will be doing that as soon as we can.'"

Input, like from most of the UMSF forum perhaps?

Clearly there was no logic to these science cuts in the first place. reason may yet prevail

Pehaps a restoration of the top priority Europa orbiter will follow

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

What of any plans for Europa missions? Are they included in this restored budget?

"He then said that based on input he had been receiving that it was 'clear that we should money back [into Astrobiology]" and that "we have decided to put money back - and we will be doing that as soon as we can.'"

Input, like from most of the UMSF forum perhaps?

We should be so lucky.

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

It's the Earth, Stupid
NASA's new budget blows it.
By Gregg Easterbrook
Slate.com
Posted Wednesday, March 29, 2006, at 12:27 PM ET