Next-Gen Mars Rover In Danger of Cancellation 210
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."
This is why I'll be voting McCain! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Bush Legacy (Score:3, Informative)
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:The US can't do big science (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 that project A is interesting, it should complete project A. When project A takes 12 years, and project B comes along after 2, and congress decides to switch funding from project A to project B...no project will ever be completed.
As I said, fire some bureaucrats, hire some auditors, help keep it on budget and avoid over-spending. But make sure the science gets done.
All that said, cooperating on international projects is a fantastic idea, and the US contributions to CERN should not be discounted. But a little competition greases the wheels of discovery.
Note that this year, the ITER [iter.org] funding was zeroed, and Fermilab was cut by $94 million, a change which required "voluntary" rolling furloughs [fnal.gov]. This was partially fixed by a supplemental funding bill in June, but due to the current budget crisis, the 2009 budget is passed under a "continuing resolution", which means that Fermilab is short and ITER is zero again, and we have to again grovel before our congress-critters for funding, which is highly unlikely since Wall Street is obviously more important than science.
The US is at a serious disadvantage.