NASA Budget Cuts

[mooware]

Found this on Spacedaily<br /><br /><font color="yellow">Washington DC (UPI) Nov 29, 2004<br /><br />U.S. analysts Monday said Bush administration proposals to send astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars should be put on the budget chopping block.<br />The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's fiscal 2005 budget gives it wide latitude to direct money toward Bush's new space vision but Alice Rivlin, former White House budget director under President Clinton, and Bill Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute, both told a Brookings Institute forum on domestic policy in the second Bush term the plans are a waste of money.<br /><br />I think we can learn much more about the universe much cheaper from unmanned vehicles, said Rivlin, now a Brookings' analyst. She added unmanned exploration also would improve safety.<br /><br />The most important lesson we've learned (from the manned space program) is how difficult it is to put a man in space and how little we've learned that could not be learned by satellites ..., said Niskanen, who has a more conservative policy outlook.<br /><br />Both analysts said it was unlikely Bush will reach his stated goal of reducing the federal deficit by 50 percent by fiscal 2009 but added NASA is one place where cuts could be made easily.<br /><br /></font><br />

 

[johnsje]

Of course they would say that. they are anti-bush all the way. If Bush wanted to cure cancer in the next 10 years by spending 200 billion on it, thwy would be opposed to that as well. These people don't care about space or its direction, they just want attention.

 

[backspace]

Bill Niskanen and the Cato institute. <br /><br />What a joke. The Cato institute is a libertarian organization that quite often gets investigated for the way they give money to PAC's. Niskanen himself is a bit of a drooling idiot when someone asks him to expand on something. Further, I am not surprised that spacedaily posted this. Between articles like this and Jeff Bell I have no idea why anyone reads that trash site anymore.

 

[backspace]

Oh, and Rivlin has exaclty ZERO qualifications to be speaking as to the scientific returns of any type of mission (btw - she was on record during the Clinton administration as suggesting that NASA's budget be HALVED and all manned spaceflight discontinued... The lady's always been anti-space... probably back to the apollo era).

 

[mooware]

It seems to me that since the NASA budget is so small, that any cuts wouldn't even put a scratch on the surface of the deficit..<br /><br />

 

[backspace]

Exactly. $16Bn is unfortunately a drop in the bucket. It makes you wonder what political motivation makes people unload this kind of nonsense.<br /><br />

 

[mooware]

She also seems to be implying, Sending humans into space is hard so we shouldn't do it at all..<br /><br />

 

[mooware]

Speaking of budgets and what not. And this is just a rant of mine..<br /><br />Whenever talking about a NASA mission or probe they always have to say how much it cost. Usually, in the first sentence.. <br /><br />you NEVER hear, "The Army lost a 10.2 million dollar Blackhawk today..... Blah, blah, blah..

 

[mooware]

The problem I think is that people don't put this into perspective, and the media doesn't help..<br /><br />What percent of the National Budget does NASA get? I think it's about 1%. How many people realize this? <br /><br />There have been arguments saying that a 6% increase in any budget is incredible, and NASA shouldn't get it. You know, if you think of it like that it does sound like a large amount of money. But it's not so incredible if you think of that 6% being a percentage of the 1%. <br /><br />it really is negligable when you consider the military budget at 28%

 

[erauskydiver]

What really irks me is that people talk about the cost of spaceflight in the sense that we are literally loading millions of dollars into the top of a rocket and shooting it into space. <br /><br />Why dont we realize that what goes into space is just metal and platic and wires, etc. We are launching money into space, we are putting it into the hands of the people that build this stuff. It pays for food, mortgages, education, etc. It all comes back to the government in the end, so they need to stop their biznitching.

 

[chmee]

Exactly,<br />Even with a failed mission, the money was not "wasted". The money went to go pay highly trained engineers, scientists, and others to manufacture and launch a probe. <br /><br />A failed mission means that the scientific goals of a mission were not accomplished, not actual $100 bills in neat stacks launched into outer space and then lost.<br /><br />

 

[backspace]

Isn't it still less than 1%? like... .6%?

 

[no_way]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Even with a failed mission, the money was not "wasted". The money went to go pay highly trained engineers, scientists, and others to manufacture and launch a probe. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />There's a logical fallacy here. What if you still gave this money to your engineers, scientists and others but would not let them manufacture that failed probe ?Instead, giving em time off, would the money still not be wasted ?<br />What if you took your entire NASA budget, paid it out in contracts and salaries and would not ask anything in return. Would the money still not be wasted ?

 

[erauskydiver]

I'm sure there would still be some technological gains from designing a probe and not building it. Companies design crap all the time without building any actual hardware. It creates new ideas/ thoughts/ directions. All of this new stuff eventually ends up in an end product in some way/ shape or form. So no, I dont think there is any wasted money in that.<br /><br />I'm not sure why NASA would ever pay out their entire budget without asking for something in return. It wouldnt be smart, and they'd probably be put of business real fast. However, I still dont think it would be a TOTAL waste. That money will still be used by somebody somewhere to come up with new ideas and it will still end up on somebody's dinner table at the end of the day. And it will eventually end up back in the government's wallet through taxes.<br /><br />Money is a nontangible concept that people came up with. Money never gets wasted... it only causes other things to be wasted.<br /><br />