US Astronomy Facing Severe Budget Cuts and Facility Closures

Nancy_A writes "The U.S. astronomy budget is facing unprecedented cuts, including the potential closure of several facilities. A new report by the National Science Foundation's Division of Astronomical Sciences says available funding for ground-based astronomy could undershoot projected budgets by as much as 50%. The report recommends the closure – called 'divestment' in the new document — of iconic facilities such as the Very Long Baseline Array and the Green Bank Radio Telescope, as well as shutting down four different telescopes at the Kitt Peak Observatory by 2017."

Re:Hey NASA, idea:

[geekoid]

Typical. You have no clue how much something takes to do, so naturally you assume your share is tooo much.

Here is a clue: Tax dollars aren't yours. Ever. They are all ours, societies. DO you really want New York, Detroit and Dallas and California to be the effective determination for all tax money?

Re:But we can have ..

[Anonymous Coward]

You think we rode to the moon on civilian hardware? Those were repurposed ICBMs made to blow up cities. The SALT treaties put an end to them.

MOST of the cool stuff NASA did in the 60's was on military hardware or tests for the air force (using air force hardware).

You seem shocked as if this is a new thing. The same people who build the NASA hardware (what they do build) are the same ones who build the military hardware. NASA has always been getting other agencies leftovers... Pretty much the shuttle is the only BIG project that they did all by themselves.

Re:But we can have ..

[bwintx]

Pretty much the shuttle is the only BIG project that they did all by themselves.

Um, Saturn 5?

Re:Hey NASA, idea:

[ackthpt]

even when we are at complete peace.

We must be bombing a dozen foreign countries on regular basis (now with drones). We are hardly "at peace". Oh, and we are in "War on Terror" which is projected to end approximately never.

Congress needs to man up and demand that the Administration has to get damn permission and issue official war declaration in order to bomb anyone. And de-fund any and all money that goes toward "unofficial" offensive military action.

Before 2001 we were at peace, with the only event since 1991 (Desert Storm) being a few cruise missles lobbed into Serbia to bring them to heel. Yet our military spending, despite cuts and closures, still ranked high while the Pentagon found all manner of toys in its version of the Sears & Roebucks Catalog that it just couldn't live without. Even when we're not at war, we're preparing for total war.

Re:Just wondering

[hde226868]

No, this has nothing to do with JWST being over budget. The review concerns the astronomy funding through the National Science Foundation, whose budget is independent of NASA's funding. NASA funds all of space based astronomy (including data analysis), while NSF funds ground based astronomy. NSF mainly funds the national optical astronomy observatory on Kitt Peak in Arizona and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, VA, with facilities in West Virginia and in New Mexico (plus some other states). In addition, NSF funds data analysis/theory grants. Overall, NSF's budget is much smaller than NASA's, but then, ground based hardware is much cheaper than space based. To put things in perspective: for about 50% of all university astronomers, NSF facilities are the only way to get optical observing time (the remainder of astronomers have access via privately funded telescopes, such as the Keck). The closures of the instruments proposed in the report to NSF essentially mean the US giving up its current leadership in large areas of radio astronomy, and significantly reducing access to medium sized facilities for optical astronomers, if the (realistic) flat budget for the astronomy program is realized.

Re:But we can have ..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's kind of silly to say that Saturn V "stemmed from the designs," given that they didn't use the same engines, the engines were of completely different thrust classes, they didn't even use the same propellants (Kerolox for the 1st stage and LH2/LOx for the 2nd and 3rd stages), and certainly the tankage and other structures used on the Saturn V weren't based on anything related to the V-2 and Jupiter rockets at least as far as I know. One could maybe make a case that the Saturn I/Ib was "Jupiter/Redstone derived" given that the S1 stage used a cluster of Jupiter and Redstone tanks and used engines derived from those used on Jupiter, but this case could not be made for Saturn V because it used none of that. So yes, Wikipedia is quite wrong, Saturn V was not derived from V2 or Jupiter and if you discount the S-IVB stage (developed as a second stage for the Saturn IB, but originally intended for Saturn V), no major components from Saturn V flew on Saturn I or any other rocket. It was a clean sheet design.

Try here if you want to know more about Saturn's history: http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4206/sp4206.htm