Posted on 03/14/2006 6:12:18 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Part of me wish we could fund NASA more. Another part of me realizes that NASA accounting has not been very good in the past and as an agency it needs to realize it must live within a budget. What do others think?
That's because it's already been cast in stone by President Bush.
It doesn't make sense to pump all that money into a dead-end program.
Waaaaa. And in the old days, circa 10 years ago, you would have taken your layoff, pension and career and found another job.....boo effing hoo. Make sure you have a strong case BEFORE you flame......I'm itching for a throwdown.
By all means, we shouldn't listen to the best and brightest, but let all the politicians decide our scientific course. /s
Funding science marker
For starters, here are a couple threads, just click on the keyword NASA, and scroll down a couple months is where I found these.
NASA Budget Cuts Jeopardize Environmental Satellite Missions ^
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1591031/posts
New Budget Delays or Cancels Much-Promoted NASA Missions ^
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1588250/posts
Faster?, Better?, Cheaper!
Yes. The curator at the Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. is the star pupil of the scientific community. I'm sure he REALLY knows the insides of NASA./s
Translation - I can't afford enough graduate students to do the work FOR me.
I think that looking for germs on Europa is an interesting idea but not a pressing national priority. Europa's not going anywhere, the germs can wait.
I dunno if the space shuttle is producing much more than something that would find whales under Europas oceans..
The space telescope project that would find earthlike planets around other stars has been cancelled. That is probably the big one in longterm importance if not in dollars.
I have always thought that the search for life in the solar system, while admirable, might not be the best way to spend our dollars.
That's not exactly how it works. These people are getting grants for their grad students so they can do the reasearch they need for their dissertations. The government is not going to award the money to do the research to the students alone, without professorial oversight. And it's in this pool of young fresh minds that a lot of the innovation comes out. And they are cheaper to hire, to boot, so it becomes a win-win.
There are abuses, but these students would never get their projects funded without the system.
For the last THREE full years the shuttle program has burned through how many hundreds of billions of dollars? And you have ONE puny launch to show for it. Continuing to pump money down the rat-hole that is the shuttle program at the expense of actual science is a losing proposition.
As a person who defended the expenditure of tax dollars for NASA for around thirty years, I had to accept reality around ten years ago.
I don't have much to say about this budget mess. I hear a lot of talk about the best and the brightest, but I'll be damned if I can see anything so remarkable about NASA's last 35 years. Oh sure, NASA has had it's flashes in the pan. Along with others I apprediated a number of achievements.
The question is, where are we today, and how in the sam hell did we wind up in this dire mess?
Having failed to answer for their criminal negligence in the past, I don't have much use for NASA any longer. We basicly have a crap shoot of a launch system. After lying to the public for months about improved systems, the last launch suffered from the same problem the ill fated shuttle did.
One thing I will say in NASA's favor that is in the current news, I'm glad it's governor gave the next shuttle crew a two month reprieve. Still it would have been better and a lot more humane if they'd have commuted their sentences to life on earth, or until a safe lauch vehicle was developed.
Throw 25% of the NASA budget at private enterprise groups and we'll have a safe profitable lauch system within five years. Nice knowing you NASA.
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