Slashdot Log In
Next-Gen Mars Rover In Danger of Cancellation
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:43 AM
from the infinite-possibilities-finite-taxpayers dept.
from the infinite-possibilities-finite-taxpayers dept.
OriginalArlen writes "NASA's next-generation rover, the nuclear-powered, laser-equipped Mars Science Laboratory is reported to be at a serious risk of cancellation due to budget and schedule overruns, including non-delivery of vital parts by a subcontractor. Costs are running over $2B so far, and the already thin schedule of Mars missions planned for the next decade — with budget ring-fenced for an outer-planets flagship mission — is in danger of further cuts."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Nuclear Powered? Laser Armed? (Score:3, Funny)
Anyone else thinking that this is just a smokescreen to develop the most awesomest Battlebot ever?
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone else thinking that this is just a smokescreen to develop the most awesomest Battlebot ever?
It could be. That's certainly what the Martians think, which is the real reason it's being canceled. They were okay with us sending a few probes and rovers, but nuclear-powered laser-bots are where they draw the line. So in the name of interplanetary relations the project has to die. Budget overruns is just the cover story, since they can't very well admit that the whole "looking for signs of life" thing is
Re: (Score:2)
I think I'd like to hear the Martian Defense Minister's comments on this story. Haven't heard from him (her? it?) in quite some time.
iraq war is killing the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:iraq war maybe killing NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Or a few days of Medicare.. (Score:2)
Tell grandma to get a job and pay for her own pills... I want a rover!
Re:iraq war is killing the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
The Iraq war is just a small part of it. We are currently 11 Trillion in debt when you include our bailout of the financial system. I am a fiscal conservative who voted for Bush in 2000, and regretted it by 2002. I believe in a small government, but I also understand that the feds do have important roles to play. Given the option of low taxes and deficits versus higher taxes and a balanced budget I will go balanced all the way.
The fact is the debt costs us every day. The last I check, we spend over $1Billion per day just to finance the debt. That could very well double in the next decade as our credit worthiness goes down, and our debt goes up.
The fact is, no matter how much we earn, we will every satisfy every want that we have. However, when your paycheck goes to debtors, you have to go without more. Space exploration and scientific investment is very important to me... as close to a need as you can get while technically still being a want. However, it must invariably be and has already been curtailed because of our debt.
Iraq will eventually end. Our expenses there will drop. But our debt will hang around our neck like a lead weight. Future generations will have to dig themselves out from under it before investing in the important things, or they will continue to let it balloon as my generation has.
I am truly ashamed that my generation will be the first to leave the country in a worse state than what they received.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
I am truly ashamed that my generation will be the first to leave the country in a worse state than what they received.
I take this to mean you are a baby boomer, and I appreciate that at least some boomers realize that the world will continue to exist after they're gone.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I am 35. I am a few years younger than the baby boomer generation. However, you can really view the problems that I see from 1965-today, with a recent spiral in the past 15 years. Some might define the dates differently. The fact is, someone has to stand up, take responsibility and do something to correct. Instead of pointing elsewhere, i would rather point the finger in the mirror and say to those around my age that they need to view leadership much differently.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The Bush Legacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone else notice that Bush's term is leaving the US space program without a Space Shuttle or alternative for staffing or servicing the Space Station that we paid more than our share to build, and actually devastating the manned missions to Mars that would keep our lead among our global competitors? Remember when Bush ran for reelection in 2004 promising us a Mars mission, though everyone knew he was "kidding"?
What we'll have left, after Bush's term is done (in which he put Star Wars scientist and CIA venture capitalist Michael Griffin [wikipedia.org] in charge of NASA) is a space program that mainly launches spy satellites and promotes "space supremacy" for the Pentagon and the CIA. Military satellites now used to spy on Americans [arstechnica.com].
Re: (Score:2)
I'm no Bush fan, by any stretch of the imagination. But, in this case, he is HARDLY alone among U.S. presidents. Every president since Nixon has made grandiose promises about all the great stuff NASA is going to do, while continuing to fund it at a *fraction* of the funding they had during the 60's (leaving NASA in a perpetual "do a few cheap things every year, just enough to keep justifing our funding" mode).
Obama will do the same thing. He'll stand at some podium, talk about how NASA is going to the moo
Re:The Bush Legacy (Score:4, Insightful)
Will he? Funny how you extrapolate Obama, a Democrat, from Bush and Nixon, the two most partisan Republicans in history. Despite the records of Kennedy, Johnson, and even financially crippled (by the Nixon/Ford legacy) Carter, and Clinton, too, which show that NASA is a Democratic programme that Republicans lie about and steal from.
I didn't say that Bush was alone. But we can have high expectations of Obama, despite the knowledge (that I'm offering here) that Bush is leaving Obama with a crippled NASA and a devastated budget and economy to fund it from.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Bush Legacy (Score:4, Interesting)
Politics aside, Michael Griffin has been in the space business a long time and is a very intelligent person. He also happens to be borderline rabid on Mars. I took a class on space guidance and navigation (basically a graduate level orbital mechanics class) and our part of our final exam was a Mars mission flight. I was long gone from NASA before he took over, so he could be an administrative nightmare, but he does know his stuff.
As for the Bush promise - yeah, but anyone who understood what was necessary knew he was blowing smoke. I put the mars mission at about $2T, based on previous high profile projects; I might have underestimated by a hair, but I don't think I'm too far off. And, of course, you should never trust any project for which the substantial portion of money will be spent _after_ the politician is certain to be out of office.
Parent
This is why I'll be voting McCain! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is why I'll be voting McCain! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, Bush had a "decent policy on our space program" too, like a manned Mars mission. But, like McCain is on anything else he's saying this campaign season, he's going to continue the Bush policies he voted with over 90% of the time this decade, and just bait & switch us to some Pentagon/CIA boondoggles instead of NASA's space mission.
You're voting for McCain because you're a Republican. You voted for Bush twice, too. It's not rocket science to see that you're a bad decider. Vote McCain if you want to see him "take up space" in the White House the way that Bush did: get in the way without doing anything useful.
Parent
Not Surprised. (Score:2)
Odds are that that Congress will send the little thing away. Sad, but not surprising. Politicians are myopic opportunistic creatures that managed to stuff 100 billion of porked, unrelated projects into a 700 billion economic bill. Talk about a lopsided understanding of budgeting.
The government is intent on phasing out the Space Shuttles in favor of the Orion, or, based on its appearance and supposed existence no earlier than two years after the Orbiters stop flying, I call it the Disappearing Pencil Trick.
N
Where the hell (Score:4, Insightful)
Are the pork barrel last minute additions to the $700 billion buyout package for this kind of stuff? NASA doesn't have lobbyists? No congressmen from Florida or Alabama have this kind of pull?
Not $2B Over (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to clarify, the rover is not $2 billion over budget, which is the impression I got from the summary. It is $500 million over its $1.5 billion budget, and part of that is due to inflation.
If we try to delay the launch, the delay will cost us an extra $300 million. If we cancel the launch, we just spent $2 billion on nothing, and the science it was meant to do remains undone. This shouldn't be a hard decision:
1. Pony up and get this thing launched.
2. Investigate how this happened so we can avoid overruns like this in the future.
Not to late to save it (Score:4, Funny)
Couldn't it just be repurposed to fight terrorists?
Why not more MERs? (Score:2, Insightful)
non-delivery of vital parts by a subcontractor (Score:2)
The US can't do big science (Score:5, Interesting)
The US is in a very bad position with respect to "Big Science". The problem basically is that any congress can't tie the hands of any future congress, and the consequence of this for science is that every single project faces cancellation, every single year. This has led to the cancellation many projects, a prominent example being the Superconducting Supercollider [wikipedia.org].
Science has a much longer-term view than congress. Congress, at most, has a view that lasts 2 years (to the next election), and practically it's much less than that. The US needs to devise a scheme to keep these projects going through hard times, and through fickle congressional actions. A constitutional amendment is unlikely, but how about some creative financing, of the "trust fund" variety? When things run over budget, bring in auditors, fire some people, but at all costs, make sure the science happens.
I'm at CERN, where the funding comes from member states as a fraction of their GDP. As a consequence, CERN has an extremely stable budget compared to US labs. If a project runs over-budget, the lab can simply delay the project. They also have a large permanent staff, so when new ideas come up, they can very quickly move to answer scientific questions, without building entirely new facilities. The expertise already exists here.
Canceling a project has disastrous consequences. Not only do you lose the science that would be gained, you may also lose the scientists, and technology developed along the way. It really is selling out future generations, and sacrificing technological advancement on a long timescale. It's very hard to see what will happen 50 years in the future, but I don't think human colonies on Mars are out of the question, perhaps spurred by the discoveries of the Mars Science Laboratory. Basic research has always paid off in the long run.
The US will lose out on the discoveries that will be made by the LHC. The US could have done it with the SSC a decade ago. How many more times does this have to happen before the US realizes it's a bad idea to cancel projects, and fixes the problem?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm to young to really have a full comprehension of the politics at the time...but the cancellation was due to both some financial mismanagement, and competition with the International Space Station, which ran to 100 billion. I hear stories about how biologists were going to their congress-critter's office complaining about how the "proton racetrack" was going to cause them to loose all their funding. It's disgusting that different disciplines have to compete in this way. But if congress decides one day
Overspending (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd rather over spend a little on a space program than on a war.
700 billion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, that's only $350 *illion difference, so it sounds like they're paying most of the bailout with a Mars rover. Sounds reasonable.
NASA's budget compared to some other federal progs (Score:5, Informative)
Coincidentally, I threw together this chart yesterday when arguing with a friend about NASA's budget and how space exploration is "a huge government waste".
http://foofus.com/amuse/public/Fedspending-2008-linechart.jpg [foofus.com]
(disclaimer: I do work for NASA).
Most interestingly to me is that if NASA's budget stayed the same, it would take 47 years to spend as much money as the 2008 wall street bailout - which would be the retirement date for a brand-new, young hire.
Re:Love space, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
"It may be time to put NASA brains on some more immediate problems, like alternative energy, and studying the causes of the continuing decline of every ecosystem on earth. Visiting Mars may be a lot nicer knowing that the astronauts have a habitable planet to return to."
2 comments:
1) Neither alternative energy or biodiversity is in Nasa's purview. we can debate whether it should be the business of the Federal Government at all, but NASA's not the place for it.
2) Per Larry Niven, "The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program". If one views the survival of the human species as important, rather than the survival of the ecosystem per se, then having an escape plan is ALWAYS good policy.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
1) Neither alternative energy or biodiversity is in Nasa's purview. we can debate whether it should be the business of the Federal Government at all, but NASA's not the place for it.
Right. Let the free market do for the environment what it's done for the banking industry.
I would be in favor of temporarily suspending the NASA program, utilizing those resources to come up with new energy technology, and then licensing that technology to help fund the resurrected space program.
2) Per Larry Niven, "The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program". If one views the survival of the human species as important, rather than the survival of the ecosystem per se, then having an escape plan is ALWAYS good policy.
Strange. I thought the dinosaurs died because they were unable to adapt to a changing environment. Is the sensible solution spending a huge amount of resources trying to invent an environment has an extremely low pr
Re:Love space, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Than banking industry is NOT free market, the rent of money is set by the Federal reserve, you need a license to do banking... where do I start ?
Most environmental problems can be traced back to state intervention and lack of property rights. Not all, but most.
As for space colonization, it's the best bet against catastrophic events. Redundant systems are good.
Parent
Re:Love space, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be in favor of temporarily suspending the NASA program, utilizing those resources to come up with new energy technology, and then licensing that technology to help fund the resurrected space program.
Sorry, but this sounds like a classic bad management decision. Take folks off Project A in favor of Project B. Here is the problem... the folks who do Project A might not be the right people for project B. Some will. Some won't. Now, all those smart folks without a job. What do they do? They are smart, they find other jobs. Now, open Project A back up. Those folks just jump at the opportunity to go back to that project, right? If you think so, you know little about human behavior. Those folks will be settled in to a new life, fund a different way of being happy and making a living. You have just lost decades of wisdom and knowledge about a very specialized area of knowledge.
And subcontractors. Think about them. There are a lot of businesses that give NASA what it needs in terms of components. Some, this is their only (or main) job. Some it is a division of a larger corporation. cancel all NASA projects for a while. Now reopen in a decade. You are going to have to rebuild that supply system again. It doesn't happen quickly or cheaply.
Now is research into cleaner energy important? Yes. But don't destroy another system because of it. There are more intelligent ways of going about it.
Parent
Re:Love space, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, remember, the people at NASA might not have the skillset we need to look at issues like biodiversity and alternate energy. The engineering and aerospace skills the people have may not translate. MBAs might look at people as fungible [wikipedia.org] goods, but the guy who has been doing extensive research into orbital mechanics might not actually know much about things which are applicable.
The problem with that is, if you suspend it, and you ever wanted it back ... there's a huge ramp-up time to get your space program back on line. There's also a lot of stuff that you need a space program for -- we've become highly dependent on communications satellites and the like. You don't want to give up on that.
I think governments (or anyone) should avoid looking at is as "either we invest in space" or "we invest in alternate energies". We should continue to invest in both, because there is a need for both.
If you're really looking to save money, I bet there's an awful lot of defense and other spending you could look at.
Well, as much as it's a fairly glib quote from Niven, it's not really that opposite to what you said.
In a lot of ways, investing in a space program and investing money in basic scientific research can be looked at as trying to learn how you'd adapt to a changing environment. Only, it's what you do when you have opposable thumbs and frontal lobes instead of waiting for evolution to sort it out for you.
Cheers
Parent
Re:Love space, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Alas, it is in the nature of politics that if NASA's budget were "temporarily suspended", it would never be unsuspended. What you're essentially wishing for here is that NASA cease to be, and the USA get out of space travel/exploration.
A changing environment precipitated by a honking big rock falling from the sky.
Note that we're not quite up to diverting a dinosaur killer. But we ought to be capable of doing so within 20 years, if we don't give up on space travel/exploration now.
Which means there's a really good chance we'll never "go the way of the dinosaurs". We may make ourselves extinct in other ways, but we should be immune to falling rocks within my lifetime.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Love space, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times does it have to be repeated...."you never know what kind of benefits this research may bring! It needs to be diverse!"
Parent
Re:Love space, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, biblical?
Ray: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor... real Wrath-of-God-type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies.
Venkman: Rivers and seas boiling!
Egon: 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanos.
Winston:The dead rising from the grave!
Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together... mass hysteria!
Parent
Re:Love space, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
It may be time to put NASA brains working for the private sector, following price signals instead of vague planning, and tax dollars back in banks^H^H^H^H^H people's pocket.
I'd love to live and see at least the beginning of terraformation of Mars but I don't see it happening without a business plan.
Re:Love space, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
There have been major problems on Earth ever since there has been civilization. If we waited to go exploring and discovering until we eliminated war, poverty, crime, and pollution, we would never go anywhere. We'd also miss out on the chance to learn things which could help us to deal with those problems more effectively.
Besides, this is a false dichotomy. We don't need to visit Mars OR save Earth. Earth is more essential, but if we are able we should do both.
Parent
NASA Already Leading Those Projects (Score:5, Insightful)
The time to start putting NASA brains on alternative energy solutions, and studying the causes of global ecosystem decline was in the 1960s.
Good thing we did just that. Fuelcells, solar PV, and pushing mechanical efficiencies to their theoretical limits has been among the best Return on Investment from our NASA budgets ever since the Apollo Program. Global ecology might not even exist without NASA satellites both inspiring the public and gushing data to scientists. Innovation in energy engineering and ecology science has been falling back to Earth for about as long as NASA has been lauching devices off of it.
In fact, the R&D for visiting Mars has lots of "dual use" in delivering "survival tech" here on Earth long before we ever get to Mars. And of course the systems on Mars will need efficiencies and exploitation systems that will work here on Earth, Mars' sister planet. Plus, studying Mars' "parallel evolution" more directly, especially after its climate has evidently catastrophically changed from one more like ours today, is an unequaled opportunity to study what looks like our possible future, without either waiting or having to guess.
These are the main reasons to love space, and NASA's exploration of it. Because Earth is in space, too. What NASA teaches us about space, we learn about ourself. And since NASA primarily teaches us about machines for living in space with extremely limited resources, while we push ours at home to the brink, we need more of exactly what NASA has already given us now more than ever.
Parent
We love space because it is there. (Score:2)
There's no need to rationalize NASA. You can't calculate an economic return for it any more than you can calculate the return of a brilliant song, but we sense that those are needed to enrich the human spirit. There are some challenges that great nations must undertake to further the human condition and understanding, like, as the Egyptians built massive monuments, so too the USA must lead the charge into space. When NASA sends back pictures of far away places, when Americans plant a flag on the moon, al
News Flash (Score:2)
All energy is "alternative."
If you're trying to say we need to use something other than gasoline to drive, I agree.
But every erg of energy we have comes from the sun, directly or indirectly. Natural gas comes mostly from coal fields, for example. Sailing to work is not likely to happen, sadly.
Not all of it is portable and/or desirable, such as having a small fission reactor in your car. It's there, however.
As are billions of gallons of oil sitting for the taking in a few pieces of tundra.
Re: (Score:2)
It may be time to put NASA brains on some more immediate problems...
You're assuming that:
1. There aren't already lots of brains at work on these problems, and
2. Throwing more brains at the problems will solve them significantly faster.
Also keep in mind that you could pull all of the smart brains at NASA, Intel, Google, Pixar and a thousand other groups to work exclusively on the immediate problems of the day, only to find out that the problems they are no longer working on were a lot more important than you
Re: (Score:2)
That should be a Democratic Argument (Score:2)
I think that, now that government intervention in the economy is now on the table as a policy instrument, that's a good argument for Democrats to make. Let them be the party that wants to curtail forward looking science missions and exploration in favor of more short term social priorities.
On the other hand, let's have Republicans that instead of putting all of the science into the hands of the marketplace, recognize that government spending on the sciences and on technological infrastructure and educatio