NASA's budget cuts

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frodo1008

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I started another thread based also on this information. Please feel more than free to go there and comment! It is" Planetary Society protest letter, please sign"
 
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spacester

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I read this article from Mr. Huntress and Mr. Friedman with interest, and I have some problems with it.<br /><br />I am a firm believer that if a problem is to be solved, it must be correctly identified. I think these gentlemen miss their mark. I don’t see where they offer a solution, other than venting their frustration on Congress, which is valid to a point, but I am interested in exploring ways to actually make a difference more directly.<br /><br />More than missing their mark, these guys appear to be willfully mis-representing the NASA Administrator’s words. The time for that approach is past. Mr. Griffin tells the truth and he is an actual leader, and it is time for the jaundiced leaders of “space clubs” to check their attitudes at the door to the town meeting we’re having on the future of spaceflight. Just because they didn’t get what they wanted when the leadership vacuum got filled doesn’t mean they have to lash out like this. They’re playing to their in-crowd I guess.<br /><br />They are careful to put the blame where it correctly belongs – the projected failure of Congress and the White House to come up with the cash to take care of the determined-at-long-last Shuttle Overrun, something Capitol Hill has seen coming for years. The finances at NASA were the worst imaginable at one time, but O’Keefe and Griffin have almost got it sorted out finally. Mr. Griffin found out what the overrun was and has presented the bill to Congress and his White House bosses and they made their decision for the FY06 budget. We are early in the budget process for FY07 so beseeching Congress in an election year is a valid approach.<br /><br />Until the people speak effectively enough to get the cash NASA needs to do the job right, what we’ve got is the law of the land. Just remember that if a one-time bailout is approved (I believe the number is $3.5B), Mike Griffin will have what he needs to get the job done.<br /><br />So they are correct that the Administrator is cannibalizing his agen <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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lbiderman

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Have NASA stated which science missions of the Mars Exploration Program will be deferred? If i'm not mistaken, Griffin said that the Mars program will continue as planned, but the question is what is that is "planned".
 
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j05h

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>the question is what is that is "planned". <br /><br />That is the point of the matter. What is "Planned" is to keep delaying and cutting until there is nothing but a hangar queen and some salaries. Whether that is "Planned" or "planned" I'm not sure, but is the direction they are travelling. I don't want to be cynical, but NASA is squandering everything. Griffin promised us no cuts in science, they are now doing just that. <br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>
 
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spacester

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Y’know, if you’re going to rise to the challenge, you really ought to read the question more carefully. <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /><br /><br /><font color="yellow">As for robotic missions not related to manned exploration . . . </font><br />That is not what I’m talking about. Yes, we who support manned exploration sometime sooner than the mythical “someday” will be able to extract useful information from robotic probes. But NOT because that was the purpose of the probe. To state it more plainly, at the risk of overstating it: probes are designed for maximum science value as defined by scientists who don’t give a darn about manned missions anytime soon. Show me one friggin’ instrument that <b>started off</b> with its purpose to be in direct support of manned missions.<br /><br />Read the challenge again please. And please note that I am not defending the Shuttle, I’m merely accepting the widely held view that cancellation is not gonna happen. I suggest you get over it.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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toymaker

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In NASA failures are awarded money, while missions that were succesfull are cut. Simply said the interests of Lockheed and others that will design the next go-for-the-moon pork ship are more important then the interests of scientists.
 
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askold

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The president should give NASA two budgets - a science budget and a manned-flight budget and not allow Griffin to move money from one budget to the other.<br /><br />Given the chance, Griffin will strip the science budget bare in order to keep his 70's clunker alive. Even if the clunker is up on blocks in the back of the garage surrounded by half-empty paint cans ...
 
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frodo1008

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Spacester IS absolutely correct. What the rest of you people don't seem to realize here is that NASA, like all the other discretionary spending or the federal government is just beginning to come under attack! <br /><br />If we in the space support community don't start to show a far greater degree of unity than before ALL the programs supported by either the manned space advocates OR the pure robotic scientific side are going to go poof!!<br /><br />Now, this may supposedly make the pure private start up company people happy, but they should realize that even such a giant in that area as Burt Rutan now believes that it may well be at least five to ten years before even he will get his efforts into LEO. It will be at the very least 2008 before Virgin Galactic opens up travel to sub orbital space, and both they and Burt Rutan will need to both establish the reliability and profitability of even this effort before even starting on the problem of orbital travel to LEO! As for the other leader in the field, Elon Musk seems to be realizing more and more that just saying things is not doing things! Now don't take me for wrong here, I DO fully support all of these efforts, and I think that eventually they will become far greater than ANY governmental efforts, but it IS going to take far more time than some of the enthusiasts on these boards think it is going to take to get there. In the meantime NASA is the ONLY game in town for this country at least!<br /><br />What some of the robotic scientific types don't seem to realize (and even congress seems to be aware of) is that it IS the manned program that most average relatively non science educated American Taxpayers look forward to. This is because they can see their progeny possibly becoming astronauts living and working in space, but quite frankly (and even Bush seems to realize this), and unfortunately, becoming a scientist running robots on the outer planets is not even close! In this case, "No Buck Rogers, NO bucks!
 
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frodo1008

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I started a thread based on the supporters of the science programs at NASA going over to the Planetary Societies site and signing their very well written protest letter to CONGRESS! Not Griffin, who has NO MORE control over NASA funding than did the NASA administrators back in the 1970's that had to cut the heart out of the space program at that time because of cuts that CONGRESS and the then ADMINISTRATIONS gave them. THIS is what resulted in the magnificent, but admittedly flawed STS system!! Strangely enough the excuse given then is the same as today. We have to fight wars in distant places and so can't afford both guns and butter!!<br /><br />So come out of your little fantasy world and join the rest of us who like Mike Griffin are ready to deal with reality!!<br /><br />Neither congress nor the current administration is going to either immediately shut down the shuttle, or abandon the ISS!! THAT IS FACT, so live with it!! Also be careful what you wish for, you just may just get it!! If, congress were to separate the manned from the space science budget, it would be the space science budget that would suffer by far the worst! The average American taxpayer (congress ONLY boss) has already shown very little scientific knowledge, or even a desire for such knowledge, as witness the on going controversy with the Christian Fundamentalist Evangelists! And YOU want to give these people even more power over a science budget! Perhaps some of these little probes going out to concrete places like Mars might survive, but what does the average taxpayer give a hoot about studying pure science areas such as cosmic rays for anyway!! Believe me, the pure science areas wouldn’t just be cut back, they would very quickly be totally eliminated!! At least THIS supporter of all such program would consider this to be tragic!!<br /><br />Neither are they going to cut funding for the CEV! It is NOT Mike Griffin who determines these things!!!<br /><br />Now instead of whining and cryi
 
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qso1

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These points state the NASA budget situation and reality well. I just want to add that as Frodo1008 pointed out, NASAs peak budget was 4% GDP in 1966. It has hovered around 1% GDP since 1974. The shuttle program was hobbled from the start by a Nixon Administration budget cap. As for excuses, one of the most enduring excuses ever is that these budget cuts should be applied to such noble efforts as curing disease, eliminating poverty etc.<br /><br />The flaw in this argument should be obvious even to the most well intentioned, naive budget cutter. That flaw is the idea that the Government would ever put the money where it ought to go if we must cut NASA.<br /><br />Since 1974, a look at the record of Government which includes officials who made the very arguments that NASA spending should be cut to accomodate research into cures for disease, eliminating poverty, etc.<br /><br />Disease is doing better now than in 1974. Poverty and homlessness are still with us. The Government even magnaged to waste far larger sums of money on such dubious items as the S&L bailout of the 1980s which as I recall, was $500 billion. Deficits of the era ran routinely at $250 billion which works out to roughly what it is now or $400 billion.<br /><br />Even when the economy was said to be really good, the back to back economic booms of Reagan Clinton, there was always some excuse as to why we could not provide better funding of NASA human space flight. This is why we must rely now on private industry to prove getting to LEO can be done far more economically than NASA has been able to because NASA will never get the peak budgets of the 1960s that are apparently necessary to pull off lunar bases and humans to Mars unless some new compelling event pushes our society back in that direction.<br /><br />I would even go so far as to say that the Bush proposal will eventually wither away once hes out of office. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>
 
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