Congress Cuts NASA's Budget On Apollo Anniversary

colonist writes "A House appropriations subcommittee voted to cut NASA's budget request by 7 percent on the 35th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the Moon. The panel also cut environment and science programs, but increased funding for veterans' affairs. NASA would get $15.1 billion next year, $229 million below this year and $1.1 billion below the President's request. Most of the cuts are on new initiatives. The subcommittee is the first step of a long budget process and major changes to the bill are expected."

Oh yea, right.

[AltGrendel]

The subcommittee is the first step of a long budget process and major changes to the bill are expected.

But most likely not any changes that will actually help NASA.

Re:Hmmmm.

[Entropius]

I live in Huntsville, AL--Rocket City USA.

There's nothing sadder than engineers who've been chomping at the bit for years wanting to do some *real* space work hearing about Bush's Mars plan, maybe even getting to work on preliminaries, and knowing that it's all a political game and nothing will ever actually get off the ground.

Mod the Parent Down

[prgrmr]

NASA's human rights injuries [worldnewsstand.net], be damned.

There is pleanty to critisize about the government, so lying to support a tenuous point is hardly necessary. The link you supplied discusses abuses foisted on the American public by the Pentagon and a few other government agencies. NASA is mentioned once, in passing, with no direct references or credibile, verifiable sources to support their inclusion. The phrase you chose to reference the link directly implies otherwise.

Yes, Congress has to deal with paying for the outrageousness of the Bush administration's poor decisions regarding Iraq, and personally I think that is the real driving issue, along with the medicare fiasco. The rest is complete supposition. While I don't doubt some find it interesting, there's no need to create contention by being dishonest when we already have more than enough to go around.

Re:No Mars Mission?

[HeghmoH]

You misspelled "billion". IIRC, the total cost for the rovers was around $800 million.

A realistic (i.e. not done by the incredibly bloated NASA bureaucracy) plan to put people on Mars would cost something like $20-40 billion. So for 20 to 50 times as much, you can put actual people there, and probably get at least 100 times as much done, if not more. That's a better return for your dollars. The only trouble is that it's a much higher initial investment, and NASA is completely incapable of thinking about putting people on Mars for less than a trillion dollars.

Re:No Mars Mission?

[Glock27]

We put two rovers on Mars for less than a hundred million; people on Mars would cost tens of billions.

The research and engineering to get to Mars might cost billions - of course there would doubtless be the usual useful spinoffs and breakthroughs that'd make billions.

The actual mission might be quite affordable if the right breakthroughs happen along the way. For instance, what is the total flight time if a .01 G continuous thrust engine is available? Check out:

http://www.engr.psu.edu/antimatter/documents.html

(Hint: my back of the envelope calculation shows that one month in each direction is about right for a reasonable geometry - quite a bit better than a ballistic trajectory. Perhaps the ship could even be robust enough to include decent radiation shielding.)

Re:Good

[orcrist]

People were saying these things and freaking out just like this when Reagan passed his tax cuts and less than ten years later the debt was gone, grown out of by the huge economic boom they inspired.

What?????!!!!! *Boggle*

No wonder people voted for Reagan and Bush Jr. believing shit like that.

The debt has constantly grown for at least a century and practically tripled under Reagan. The deficit has mostly grown as well, except for the years under Clinton where it finally went down and was just about to become a surplus before Bush passed his tax cuts.

See:
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm [cedarcomm.com]
http://www.littlepiggy.net/deficit/index.php [littlepiggy.net]
http://members.tripod.com/~zzpat/graphs.htm [tripod.com]
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html [brillig.com]
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/5Debt.htm [huppi.com]

FYI: Translation for the clueless.

[LordPixie]

I'll readily admit, I had to google for the meaning behind your post. Here's some info for those more lazy.

The spiel mentioned above is the message that the Yucca Mountain design is intended to convey to future civilizations. Namely to those that show up 10K+ years from now. (Yucca being the designated site for the United States' Radioactive waste. It will be quite hazardous for an amazingly long amount of time.) The text is not really supposed to be an inscription per say, but simply the overall concept behind the structure of the entire complex.

The original research was done by Sandia national labs. A significant portion of the document can be found here [downlode.org].
Madcap googling resulted in an easy to read summary here [constantly.at]. May god have mercy on the poor soul that gets slashdotted.

BTW Tackhead, kudos on the obscure (?) reference. Forced me to learn. =)


--LordPixie