NASA Think Tank to be Shut Down

Matthew Sparkes writes "NASA will likely shut down its Institute for Advanced Concepts, which funds research into futuristic ideas in spaceflight and aeronautics. The move highlights the budget problems the agency is facing as it struggles to retire the space shuttles and develop a replacement. The institute receives $4 million per year from NASA, whose annual budget is $17 billion. Most of that is used to fund research into innovative technologies; recent grants include the conceptual development of spacecraft that could surf the solar system on magnetic fields, motion-sensitive spacesuits that could generate power and tiny, spherical robots that could explore Mars."

Re:% of $17B/yr That is Wasted?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny... I thought it was the new Iraqi government that hung Saddam...

Re:% of $17B/yr That is Wasted?

[evilviper]

[...] against a medieval set of ideas based on forced conversion not of just people to their religion, but indeed also the conversion of the entire worlds law and governmental systems to Sharia law.

Yeah, Iraq was really on the brink of taking over the world...

Sure, they were just about the most liberal and secular Muslim country in the world, but you know, as soon as they'd taken over, BAM! Islamic law everywhere!

You can't lump Afghanistan and Iraq together. The two couldn't possibly have been more different.

Re:Can somebody give us a list...

[delepster]

That's the sole problem with fundamental research. When you do not come up quickly with answers having practical use for ordinary people, your budget gets cut.

Re:% of $17B/yr That is Wasted?

[Irvu]

The problem with NASA isn't a lack of efficiency it is a surfeit of "guidance". Unlike many large budgetary bodies (i.e. the DOD) Congress has taken an express delight in "fine-tuning" parts of NASA's budget over the years through specific mandates. Each mandate sets aside some subset of NASA's overall budget for a selected enterprise out of the control of NASA's administrators. In recent years these mandates have grown increasingly diverse and porcine up to and including a NASA run aquarium.

This has also caused problems in terms of long-term projects (i.e. Shuttle replacements) as, despite pleas from NASA, money that is needed over a period of many electoral cycles to fund such research is constantly redirected. The irony of Congress taking the NASA budget for a shuttle replacement away multiple times and at the same time hauling NASA administrators in to grill them over the costly delays has not been lost on anyone.

What this looks like to me is NASA officials being forced to strip monies from one of the few programs they can still control to fully fund another basic long-term mission. A mission which they are expected to meet despite constant budget cuts.