Astronomy Portfolio Review Recommends Defunding US's Biggest Telescope 192
derekmead writes "Data from the enormous Green Bank Telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory has been used to test some of Einstein's theories, discover new molecules in space, and find evidence of the building blocks of life and of the origins of galaxies. With 6,600 hours of observation time a year, the GBT produces massive amounts of data on the makeup of space, and any researchers with reason to use the data are welcome to do so. The eleven-year-old GBT stands as one of the crowning achievements of American big science. But with the National Science Foundation strapped for cash like most other science-minded government agencies, the NRAO's funding is threatened. In August of this year, the Astronomy Portfolio Review, a committee appointed by the NSF, recommended that the GBT be defunded over the next five years. Researchers, along with locals and West Virginia congressmen, are fighting the decision, which puts the nearly $100 million telescope at risk. Unless they succeed, America's giant dish will go silent."
First its cuts to the legion (Score:3, Insightful)
First its cuts to fund the Platonic schools. Then its limits on what can be said at the agora (nothing bad can be said about senators or Caesar). Then its cuts to the Legion. You change their breakfast diet, then you go for lower quality swords and shields. Then you ask that they join the legion with their own sword and shield. In a few short years, you go from ruling the world, to losing Brittania, then Gaul, and finally fighting off the Hun, and ultimately watching Rome burn. But start off by being cheap with the scholars. That's right. We already know all there is to know. Oh, by the way, are those proposing cuts from Crete? They seem like Cretans.
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh please! Stop with this delusion. The money will end up in some banker's pocket, just like every other time a cutback is made.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Good. That's a lot of money to be used to feed and provide health care to people.
In your dream, everybody know they will put the money in they shitty army based on quantity instead of quality.
You're both being silly... children and their education are what matters if the future of America has any chance. This money will be rightfully used to re-write text books to include creationism as a valid science.
So how else do you do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this the way it should be working? Allocate X dollars to group. Group really needs X + Y dollars to do everything they want so they create a group to review all the projects and allocate the dollars. If you don't have enough funding, programs WILL be cut or scaled back. Save program A and program B is cut, which costs jobs around program B. Congrats though, program A's jobs are intact.
Prioritization sucks but if you don't have all the funding you need you have to make the call at some point. Having a (theoretically neutral) group review everything and make the call is better than having Congress make the decisions for you. And yeah, it would be much better for everyone if there was enough funding, that's the easy way out of this dilemma.
-- Ravensfire
Re:Silent? (Score:5, Insightful)
But we've got money to teach Creationism in schools
Teaching Creationism doesn't require any money...or evidence....or logic...or intelligence....or anything else. It's dirt cheap to teach, as it relies only upon what someone wants to believe at any given moment in time.
Real universal-level science, on the other hand, is very expensive. It requires the ability to make observations, the attention to detail and time necessary to evaluate and collate enormous amounts of data, the ability to accurately spot and eliminate flawed data, and a tremendous ability to arrive at logical conclusions based on said valid data. And it requires a LOT of money to build and maintain facilities needed to acquire such data.
To summarize:
Teaching Fantasy: Dirt Cheap.
Expanding Human Knowledge: Not Dirt Cheap.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, capitalism on the whole, has been pretty darn good for the world.
(Looks around)
Checks CO2 levels. ...
Checks water purity.
Checks air pollution levels.
Evaluates pesticides in food.
Looks at doctor's bill.
Yep, pretty good. If you define 'good' as maximal help for a limited class of human beings at the expense of large swaths of the population and the planet.
Re:Silent? (Score:4, Insightful)
the amount of actual science we do seem to keep falling.
From my perspective it seems the opposite. I'm a biologist, more powerful tools are coming out faster than I can keep up with them. When I started my PhD, the microscope we had was really nice. By the end, it was essentially obsolete. It was a laser scanning confocal, a spinning disc was installed next door that was much faster and a super-resolution microscope was on it's way. That was a few months ago.
There are potential budget cuts looming unless the tea party and republicans suddenly decide they'd rather cooperate with Obama and be rational. And that is annoying and stupid, but look at the funding for the national institute of health, which sponsors a lot of biology research. 1993-2009 [healthpolcom.com] and 2004 to 2012 [sfn.org]. It's up pretty significantly in the last decade.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
"fund the things I like and stick it to the other people" is exactly how we got to the present situation.
Re:Silent? (Score:3, Insightful)
No because they've only been trying to keep the fuckwit retards of the Teabag Party from shutting down our entire country for the last two years.
While I'm admittedly bothered by this, this is a direct result of caving to the "we're too BROOOOOKE" mythology of the retard right that can always find a hundred billion or two to start a fucking war, but has a full-blown hissyfit meltdown when someone tries to fund health insurance for poor kids.
In other words, you don't see any significant oppo from the Dems because they've been fighting a gridlocked, deliberately-sabotaged government for several years now.
But, trying to actually understand what is going on in your little world is probably too much effort, judging from the laziness of your thinking.