NASA Tries To Save Hubble's Successor 134
Last month we discussed news that the James Webb Space Telescope, the planned successor to the HST, is on the budgetary chopping block. Now, an anonymous reader points out hopeful news from TPM's Idea Lab blog, which says NASA is trying to "spread the cost across the agency rather than just pulling from the $1 billion astrophysics division, with at least half of the funds coming from other areas of NASA's total $18 billion budget." According to Nature News, the decision resides with the White House's Office of Management and Budget, and support for the project depends in particular on Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD).
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Look. If they wanted certain approval and funding into the indefinite future, they should have named the telescope program "Infinite Freedom" or "Patriotism Chapter II" or "Frontier: American Majesty".
It would be unthinkable to stop it.
Re:Yay (Score:5, Funny)
Better still: The Ronald W. Reagan Deep Space Telescope.
Republicans would wet themselves like a little puppy getting its belly scratched. Or like Reagan himself during his last 2 years in office. But there would have to be a rider saying that the telescope would have to be built in Texas and absolutely no union workers could be used. And an amendment naming Genesis Chapter 1 as the Official Creation Story of the United States of America.
On second thought, it would still probably get filibustered until the White House is back safely in the hands of a white Republican man.
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Hubble doesn't just have a resemblance to spy satellites, the optics were made by spy satellite manufacturer Perkin-Elmer. This was the primary cause of the original mirror defect as NASA weren't allowed into the factory to check all was well. All this was pretty scandalous as P-E massively underbid everyone else at $60 million, with the final bill actually coming out at $400 million. So plenty of scope for 'unforeseen difficulties' and, one imagines, this is standard practice in sensitive govt. projects.
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Incidentally, would it have been crass for Kodak to send a little gift box containing a copy of the mirror spec and a pair of very strong reading glasses to Perkin-Elmer back when the optical problems were first discovered?
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Do you gargle with Glen Beck's bath water, too?
> For this administration to build it,
Hey! Funding an agency belongs to the legislative branch. It was even on Schoolhouse Rock.
> it will need to be called something like "Global Warming Explorer",
> "Rich People Killer", or "Bush's Fault"
Do you even investigate your opinions? You sound "tased and confused". Obama has funnelled more public funds into RICH, private pockets than Bush could have ever achieved.
Just one REGULATORY - not statutory - exampl
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I'm sure the deficit hawks will be right on this (Score:1)
Because clearly it's a worthless expenditure that will have no clear and definitive results, but will instead just serve as massive government waste since if this were worth doing, a private telescope company would do it.
Sarcasm mode off.
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But with the tax money saved from these wasteful government programs, every American will be building rockets and satellites in their own back yard!
Don't think of it as gutting science and social programs—think of it as the beginning of modern conservatism's great leap forward.
Re:I'm sure the deficit hawks will be right on thi (Score:4, Interesting)
But with the tax money saved from these wasteful government programs, every American will be building rockets and satellites in their own back yard!
JWST is expected to cost $6,500,000,000 if it doesn't go even further over budget. That's more than twenty times as much as SpaceX say they spent to develop Falcon 9.
So yes, if those billions were given to people building rockets then there'd be a heck of a lot of them.
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Which would be really cool. That way we'd have lots more rockets with which to launch ... uhm ... what, exactly?
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Which would be really cool. That way we'd have lots more rockets with which to launch ... uhm ... what, exactly?
Whatever you want.
If SpaceX can build Falcon 9 for about a tenth of what NASA estimated it to cost, they could probably knock out a couple of JWSTs for a billion or less.
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Definitely a case of apples and oranges - have Space X developed a space telescope? Does the JWST launch satellites? In both cases: no.
Its like saying "instead of spending this $100,000 on building this house, instead I'm going to give it to these people to build delivery trucks." It doesn't solve the problem the original amount was spent to solve.
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Keep your sarcasm mode off for a bit and answer this for me. What exactly are the benefits of it? Will it continue to cost money paid for either by NASA or the US government?
And if it is so worth doing, then why hasn't private enterprise or even private charities funded it or part of it?
Re:I'm sure the deficit hawks will be right on thi (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the JWST yields scientific knowledge that does not have immediate forseeable potential for profit, companies aren't going to be paying for it (other than possibly for PR purposes). As to private charities, it appears to me that most of philanthropies sponsoring science research are aimed towards promotion of causes like human health, renewable energy, etc. - daily, practical concerns. Nothing lofty like the JWST which will help us view the cosmos. Even basic biology research that might have a medical impact 50 years down the road won't get sponsored by charities, because there is way too much uncertainty involved.
That's why government funding is necessary to sponsor basic science research - for those areas of science which are so far down the road in terms of turning a direct potential benefit to humanity, that can either radically change our view of the world and our way of living or simply be an interesting piece of trivia. Most of the time it's somewhere in between, in which even the interesting factoids will provide bits and pieces of the puzzle on our way to the Next Great Invention or Theory (TM).
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And if it is so worth doing, then why hasn't private enterprise or even private charities funded it or part of it?
Writing a statement like that on the internet which was, of course, started by the government, is like saying "Keep the government's hands off Medicare!". Breathtaking in its ignorance.
Have you ever heard of Google? Well, it was started by a grant from the US Government's National Science Foundation.
And take Akamai. It now delivers between 15 and 30% of all web traffic, and is used by all of the top 20 eCommerce sites. But when the founders tried to start it, no company or investor was interested. Inst
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No, not at all. The internet have a strategic value to it that was important to military and the research/contractors working with it. BTW, Private businesses did fund parts of darpanet which became the internet. So let's not pretend its the same statement at all.
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OH GOD I am so tired of this argument - 'If it's worth doing then why isn't the private sector doing it, or funding it'. Private sector absolutely is beholden to the shareholders and the quarterly profit cycle. That's exactly why lots of tropical diseases that are imminently curable go unaddressed - oh, they don't have money? No new drugs for them.
If you were honest with yourself, you could fire up Wikipedia, or open up a history book, and make a list of 'things the government did first that private indu
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Is there a reason why this project can't wait for 5, 10, 20 or even 100 years? When there is actually money for it? Is the universe going to just go away? Are we going to miss something really, really important? Is JWST going to do anything at all to improve the average citizen's life or the economy? Or is it a luxury? And why not have it funded by philantropy? Telescopes used to operate that way and this is certainly doable by Gates/Buffet/Slim/etc.
Danger! (Score:3)
As Alan Stern pointed out on NASA Watch earlier today, this is a very dangerous move for the space science community.
The science program has worked hard to put up firewalls to prevent the manned program from raiding them for funding when the going gets tough. By breaking that firewall in the opposite direction it opens the science directorate to future funding losses when things get bad on the manned side, (as they are sure to when the already obvious failures of SLS come calling).
Between these two massive programs whose budgets keep growing I fear for the interesting smaller programs on boh the manned and unmanned sides...
Re:Danger! (Score:4, Insightful)
As Alan Stern pointed out on NASA Watch earlier today, this is a very dangerous move for the space science community.
The science program has worked hard to put up firewalls to prevent the manned program from raiding them for funding when the going gets tough. By breaking that firewall in the opposite direction it opens the science directorate to future funding losses when things get bad on the manned side.
What manned program? The Russian one?
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Ares1/x, Ares V, SLS, factions in congress that wanted to add 2 to 5 shuttle flights while COTS got underway (at a cost of ~7 billion)....just because we're not flying anything doesn't mean we're not burning huge amounts of money pretending that we are.
Re:Danger! (Score:4, Insightful)
My understanding was that the entire constellation program has been canned. Obviously no more shuttle flights, they're being shipped off to museums.
The problem is that Congressthings keep trying to push Constellation back in through the back door. Hence the current plan for NASA to develop a heavy-lift launcher for which there are no missions.
So I guess we're back to the question, "what manned spaceflight program?"
The one where you buy launches from private companies so you don't have to waste money building your own rockets that cost ten times as much per pound to orbit and can therefore spend it on doing useful stuff in space instead?
But that won't happen while space cadets keep demanding that NASA must build and fly its own rockets and the rockets used by the rest of the world to launch billion-dollar satellites just won't do. I mean, NASA is OK with launching a $6.5 billion dollar satellite on a commercial launcher, but we're supposed to believe it's too risky for astronauts?
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ISS, CCDEV, COTS, SLS. There's more to human spaceflight than the space shuttle.
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A good quality machine lathe can duplicate itself. I suppose we need aliens to teach us that knowledge because our school teachers no longer do.
I think that speaks more about the quality of the education system in this world than the need to search for aliens.
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While this thread is going off-topic from discussing the politics of space-based telescopes, self-duplication is a critical issue in terms of the fact that it is through this process that modern society exists. You had better believe that it is very helpful.
In a world where machines can't ultimately duplicate themselves (with trained technicians operating those machines), you simply would not be able to create new machines, and the entire concept of a machine would be "magic". At some fundamental level, y
Just tell Romney that it'll be able to see Kolob (Score:2)
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Romney just wants to be the president of the council of the twelve sealing a couple in the celestial room while orbiting above Kobol.
Oh wait, Loren Green already beat him to that, didn't he?
Repeat after me..... JWSB != Hubble successor (Score:1, Informative)
This fact alone steams me up to no end, where this meme needs to be killed for once and for all. The Hubble Space Telescope is a fine instrument, but the James Webb Telescope is not being designed to do the same mission and is not a replacement for the Hubble. It is flat out misleading for those in the NASA space exploration directorates to keep repeating this lie.
There may be a good reason to have the James Web Telescope too, but defend it for its own mission and don't be riding the coattails of Hubble e
You better get NASA on the horn (Score:5, Informative)
Repeat after me..... JWSB != Hubble successor
I hate to "steam" you even more, but NASA disagrees with your "JWSC !- Hubble successor" belief.
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Re:Repeat after me..... JWSB != Hubble successor (Score:4, Informative)
You are right, JWST is not Hubble. But there seems to be no reason at all to replace Hubble with an identical instrument. In that regard, as a spaceborne science telescope that can help capture the public's imagination of sights across the universe, the JWST *is* the Hubble successor, and it's useful to keep calling that.
Hubble's mission became largely irrelevant half way through it's lifetime. The purpose was to achieve detail which was impossible for ground based instruments that were trapped below miles of distorting atmosphere.
After Hubble was launched, researchers perfected techniques to work around atmospheric distortions. They fire a laser up and observe how the atmosphere distorts the beam. Using this data, a computer reverses the distortion of the atmosphere that the telescope is observing. Clever and effective. There are now dozens of earth based stations that are better instruments than Hubble.
So JWST is designed to do what ground based stations can never do: observe parts of the spectrum that never reach the ground. No amount of computer trickery or laser distortion detection will make infrared light reach the surface. The atmosphere blocks most of it. So in that respect: A space based telescope designed to do what ground based stations CAN'T, it *is* a successor.
This also ignores the fact that Hubble is enormously popular. There is power in this. Why would NASA not leverage that popularity and say "Remember that great program we started in the early 90s with the space telescope? Congress wants to axe funding for the next one that will be EVEN BETTER!"
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The JWST is a nightmare in terms of the management of that project, where engineering changes alone due to a lack of vision about what exactly it was supposed to do in the first place are causing enormous grief and huge budgetary problems. There reaches a point where you simply have a pull the plug on a poorly run project.
I would argue that killing the JWST and instead taking the current design goals, sending it out to bid on a new project with new construction, would bring the project in at a cheaper pric
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That didn't happen with the previous Centennial Prize competitions, but when "big bucks" seem to be on the line that does tend to happen in Washington. Most of the previous Centennial Prizes are typically less than a million dollars, but it has been a very successful program thus far and I do believe it could be used for something this large. See also: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/early_stage_innovation/centennial_challenges/index.html [nasa.gov]
The advantage here is that not only will we have more than one tele
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That's only one of Hubble's missions and it still excels at it. (It's also the mission that those who rely on dick size to evaluate a mission focus on.)
But Hubble can still see fainter objects than ground based scopes can. Hubble can also see IR and UV wavelengths that don't penetrate th
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there seems to be no reason at all to replace Hubble with an identical instrument
I wouldn't be too sure about that. Access time to the Hubble is very desired, and in very short supply.
(well, obviously not identical one)
Hubble is not strictly a one-of-a-kind deal already, there is presumably some family resemblance to Keyhole spysats [wikipedia.org]. I can see a case for a more or less constant, low-intensity production of Hubble-likes - one to be launched every few years, incorporating latest imaging instruments, on an inexpensive expendable launcher; making scientists happy.
Potentially making a
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One thing to remember is the farther things are away from us the older they are and the more red shifted they are. So in order to see farther you have to be able to see fainter , longer wavelengths.
Considering (Score:2)
Considering the current situation, we (the US) are literally stuck between a rock and a hard place.
It's a shame that political divides politics and greedy assholes paying political figures is causing the downfall of not only the US, but science among other things.
Not true, we have plenty of money (Score:2)
Science isn't being stopped; just some of it is being slowed down.
Nasa only amounts to a few bucks on most people's taxes. We can afford to fund it easily. Its a drop compared to the ocean of debt the crooks have racked up.
The stupid public continues to let these games be played and falls for the propaganda. The banker's didn't just blow a hole in the economy, they are stealing our money to fill the hole before the next explosion.
The debt is never allowed to be paid off and it's compounding interest is kill
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Umm, no.
"Entitlement" has a specific meaning in Federal law. You cannot be denied Social Security once you reach retirement age for any reason, therefore it is an "entitlement". Ditto Medicare.
Note that applying means testing to Social Security and Medicare would change them from ent
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try reading for a change:
http://www.johnperkins.org/?page_id=52 [johnperkins.org]
Not the only source, stuff like this has been getting out for decades; but its extremely rare to have people who were involved speak out.
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we (the US) are literally stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Forgive the off-topic, but: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally [theoatmeal.com]
You people and your petty problems (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You realize taxes won't fix this, right? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Note that the National Debt increased EVERY year during the '90's. Actually, it has increased every year since before I was born (in the the '50's).
Which suggests strongly that there wasn't really a surplus. HINT: you're not running a surplus if you have to borrow more money to pay the bills.
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But when we lower taxes, it trickles down! (Score:1)
Re:You realize taxes won't fix this, right? (Score:4, Insightful)
If people are evading taxes, the proper response is to put them in prison, not give them a tax break. Similarly, taxes hurt the economy, but so does unregulated banking, subsidies, and bailouts (yes, they do, really). You argue as if any raise in income is physically impossible, which seems to have become a meme among the fascist right. Taxes do not have an immediate or even pronounced effect. They have a slowing effect IF the money is not well spent after it is collected. However, an increase in taxes will always yield a an increase an income, until you get to absurd levels (which pretty much by definition are going to have to be higher than Europe...).
"It's a historical fact. Let me repeat it again: every time they raise taxes, they raise spending even more, so they still will have deficit spending and won't have enough for the telescope."
This is not true*, but for the sake of argument, lets say it was. Doesn't it stand to reason that if spending is lowered, that taxes will be lowered, and the deficit will remain the same? Ah, but that's what you want... the government to not be involved in economic matters. Let the poor fend for themselves. Sorry, we tried that for the last 3 decades, and it got us here. Now is not the time to try to destroy the country with even more of the same failed ideology, it is time to try something new. You are welcome to sit down and shut up.
* Our modern deficit was built by Reagan and the Bushes.
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* Our modern deficit was built by Reagan and the Bushes.
Have you bothered to look at what Obama has done during his short time in office? It dwarfs what Reagan and the Bushes did.
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1. I would hardly call slightly more "dwarfing." [usgovernmentdebt.us]
2. Obama actually had an economic downturn to deal with, largely created by Reaganomics. Bailouts, stimulus, etc. Bush and Reagan had huge economic booms, such as the dotcom boom. Yet, still ran a massive deficit.
3. I'm tired of the double standard. Tax and spend is always evil... when it is a democrat doing it. Teatards spend days sol
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1.) "slightly more?" Are you looking at projections for the coming years, based on his economic policies? Why do you think they were so set on raising the debt limit?
2.) Guess what-- the economy runs in cycles. Bush had to deal with the effects of the dot-com burst and 9/11. Do you really think it's fair to say he inherited "economic booms?"
3.) Obama is running up a huge unrecoverable deficit that we *can not pay for.* We can't afford it even if we tax the rich into the ground. The economy was bad during a
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Because we already committed to spending money and hit the debt limit? Only a zero deficit could have averted borrowing money. You do realize there is a difference between deficit and debt, right?
Re:You realize taxes won't fix this, right? (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you bothered to look at what Obama has done during his short time in office? It dwarfs what Reagan and the Bushes did.
Well, clearly you haven't, because what you claim is completely false.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms [wikipedia.org]
I know, it's an article of faith with you, and there's no point in trying to change your mind with facts. Arguing economics with Republicans is like arguing biology with creationists.
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Seriously? That takes into account 1 or 2 years of Obama's presidency. It's a fact that his policies will create many more trillions of dollars of debt in the coming years (even by him. Why do you think they want to raise the debt limit so much?)
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If people are evading taxes, the proper response is to put them in prison, not give them a tax break.
I didn't realize that electing to not buy a product which had taxes raised on it qualifies as tax evasion.
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Please explain how this would have anything to do with, say, going to a progressive rather than a flat capital gains tax. current 15% up to the first million/year, up to say 75% for personal capital gains over $25 million/year. If anything that tax structure should encourage reinvestment in things that stimulate the real economy and/or pay dividends.
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Umm, no. Our modern deficit has been going on much longer than that.
It should also be noted that every single budget in the history of this nation was passed by Congress (as required in the Constitution).
And the Congress during the majority of Reagan and the Bushes 20 years in office was controlled by the Democrat Party.
Note also, for the record, that the Congress that brought the deficit down to near zero in the Clinton years was...Republican (the f
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1. They won't collect as much money as they say they will, because taxes generally hurt economic growth and/or cause people to hide money and
[citation needed]
Note: any reference to the Soviet Union or other communist countries is a red (hah!) herring and will be disregarded, because there is an enormous difference between raising income taxes by a few percent -- especially when, as now, they're at historically low levels -- and the government taking total control of the economy.
2. even if they got as much money as they expect, it won't help because congress always raises spending even more than the amount they get in new taxes. Always. Every single time. It's a historical fact. Let me repeat it again: every time they raise taxes, they raise spending even more, so they still will have deficit spending and won't have enough for the telescope.
Prove it. Seriously. You've made an extraordinary claim, give some extraordinary proof. Show historical data for every tax increase in history which indicates that de
Yeah (Score:1)
I would totally donate $100 for the JWST if I could. Losing $100 would make me feel less sad than seeing this project cancelled. Put my name on some donor web page or something, like the Blender open movie credits my name is in.
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Contact info for Senator Mikulski (Score:3)
http://mikulski.senate.gov/contact/ [senate.gov]
BTW, she's also got a crabcake recipe on her site. That scores points in my book...
-S
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http://mikulski.senate.gov/contact/ [senate.gov]
BTW, she's also got a crabcake recipe on her site. That scores points in my book...
-S
It should score points! If it's in the hand of "Babs" Mikulski, it's a done deal. She is a major supporter of NASA and utterly relentless. The Webb telescope will launch if she has anything to say about it.
Why do politicians even look to NASA for cuts? (Score:1)
What should be looked into is lowering defense. Ever since the atomic stalemate between US and Russia, no one is going to invade a nuclear armed country because there is threat of nuclear retaliation. I'd think we could even get by with just a little better than shoestring budget on defense in the current world.
You have two roads to take: "
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As I understand it, JWST is ten years behind schedule and billions over budget. It's clearly a strong candidate for cancellation unless they can show that it will actually get finished and launched within the current predicted budget.
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How cowardly does Washington have to be that they need to spend more money on the military than every other country in the world combined to "defend" themselves?
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IIRC, my back-of-the-envelope calculations a year or so ago were that cutting the defense budget in half basically solved US revenue problems, and still left us with a better military than the next ten combined.
It's more complicated than that since you have to compensate for the economic impact of reduced defense spending, but a gradual combination of cuts and redirection to more productive things (e.g. infrastructure, education and job training, alternative energy investments, etc.) would get us into a muc
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If you chart the US budget deficit for the last 30+ years and put it up next to the military spending you get a fairly good correspondence most years. Many years the US would run a surplus without the military sucking the blood out of the budget.
How cowardly does Washington have to be that they need to spend more money on the military than every other country in the world combined to "defend" themselves?
Its ok, the USA can just borrow some more money from China to fund its war machine.
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Historically, 100% of the uses of nuclear weapons have been to meet a conventional threat.
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While I am a fan of finishing this, ..... (Score:3)
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You are putting words into my mouth. I said 'cost plus'. That is ALL I SAID. You are the one trying to make it fix vs. % on the minor amount
The problem with cost plus is that companies have zero incentives to cut costs and leads to costs overruns instead. The companies simply run up the costs, of which costs have built in profits.
IIRC, reagan put NASA and DOD on cost plus. That lead to costs overrun and timelines that extended 2-3x what was planned. Finally under clinton, the DOD was allow
Dear Senator Mikulski (Score:2)
Please allow me to have 7 minutes of your time.
The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcBV-cXVWFw [youtube.com]
Thank You.
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And I used to wonder why science doesn't get any respect. With people like that speaking for it, it's a wonder there isn't a bounty on scientists.
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Interesting pictures, interesting ideas but I don't think it is worth $8.5B+. The clip talked about how big numbers are difficult to comprehend; $8.5B+ is a huge number. I would prefer that money be spent on things that will make life better here on earth. Sorry but finding the origins of the universe does not pass that test.
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A one off payment of 8.5Billion also known as less than 4 days spending on defence ....most of which are less careful about where the contracts go ...
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Without defence one's science would soon belong to someone else.
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The point is that the entire Hubble budget was less than what is wasted (i.e. not correctly spent) on defence...
Defence is (basically) good but perhaps there are more economies to be made in the much, much larger and less well scrutinised defence budget than the over scrutinised space budget ..?
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What's one little $8.5B+ science project striving to actually provide reliable data, when compared to even yearly waste at the typically most prominent and expensive buildings accompanying human settlements?
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So let me get this straight; because we throw money away on religion we should throw money away on science. Have you ever heard the "two wrongs don't make a right"?
NPR donation model... (Score:2)
Someone enlighten me if I'm clueless here, but here's my thought:
Why not have a section when people do their taxes to donate to specific programs directly. I know you can donate to the IRS in general, but I never heard of them making high-level programs available for specific citizen-targeted donations. Another possibility is to have a portion of individual citizen's taxes be customized by them so they can control somewhat where their tax money goes (this could only work as a small percentage).
This would pr
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Why do you hate America?
Welcome to America (Score:2)
will it hurt if it is 20 years from now (Score:2)
I'm just as exited about finding these answers as anyone, but what are the real ramifications and are we actually creating new technology or just struggling to use existing to solve a complicated problem.
I lost my mother to cancer a few years ago now. So yes this is a bit emotional, but I rather this 5 billion go to cancer research. This will have real ramifications.
If you look at say the Apollo program it was pretty obvious that solving the problem ( going to moon ) would solve many problems that would spr
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If JWST is cancelled, the next decade of Astrophysics research in the USA is dead in the water. Over. Finito.
How's that possible when JWST isn't supposed to launch until at least 2018?
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Because all of the other planning in Astrophysics (in particular, the recent Decadal Survey) has been based on the presumption that JWST would be occurring. This includes decisions about what other missions to support; what preparatory science to fund; who to hire into faculty positions; etc.
Cancellation of JWST would be as much of a blow to Astrophysics as the cancellation of the SSC was to US Particle Physics (think: CERN).
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There is already a prodigious amount of money going to cancer research, because marginally effective chemotherapy drugs can be sold for quite large sums of money and truly-effective chemotherapy drugs could be sold for ludicrous sums of money; it's not clear that there's that much marginal gain to be had from another five billion.
The US stopped funding the SSC, and the result was that the scientists went to Europe to work on the LHC there. If they stop funding space observatories, I will rejoice happily as
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I'm sorry about your mother, truly, but I'm not sure $5B for "cancer research" would really have much of an impact--that's an old line of thinking and we know better now. Twenty years ago people used to talk about finding a "cure for cancer," but you never hear that seriously anymore. A lot of money has been spent on general cancer research; what we learned from that was that cancer isn't just one thing. There are a huge variety of cancers, with different causes, mechanisms, and consequently, treatments.
shame! (Score:1)