Interstellar Pioneers Facing Termination 581
marcel-jan.nl writes "There are plans to terminate the interstellar missions Voyager 1 and 2 and the solar mission Ulysses in October to save money. The Voyagers alone need $4.2 million a year for daily operation and data analysis. Scientist say this cut is "an extremely foolish thing to do": the Voyagers are approaching the edge of the Solar System and Ulysses is observing the Sun coming to the end of a 22-year magnetic cycle."
*sigh* Figures. (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, I think this is an area where scientists tend to underestimate the value of manned space travel. You'll notice that as long as manned space travel exists, it generates excitement in the general population. And as it advances, young people dream of one day visiting the stars themselves. Remove manned space travel, and the funding to ALL space ventures will be cut. Joe Smith really has no idea of the significance of the Voyager program. To him it's just a piece of junk that the Klingons will blast out of space in a few centuries. But give him dreams of visiting the moon, Mars, or other interesting places, and he'll happily support funding for all forms of space travel.
Re:*sigh* Figures. (Score:5, Funny)
The Voyager program is the one that rebuilds itself as a giant starship, renames itself V-ger and blazes a path of destruction on its way to destroy Earth, right?
Re:*sigh* Figures. (Score:3, Funny)
expect the unexpected (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:expect the unexpected (Score:4, Informative)
One proposed explanation is here [newtonphysics.on.ca]. I have no idea what the consensus opinion is.
BTW, it was Pioneer, not Voyager, that revealed the phenomenon.
Re:*sigh* Figures. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:*sigh* Figures. (Score:3, Funny)
You might be confusing it with a Vorgon constructor ship... It is yellow in color and kind of hard to miss and confuse with anything else...
Re:*sigh* Figures. (Score:3, Funny)
sea and deep sea research??? (Score:3, Insightful)
70% of the earth' surface are oceans.
It's easier to send men to the moon and back, and have them do some space walk than to dive 4000m deep and do the same.
Sub surface research is not "sexy" enough and you don't have this cool simulation videos what 42 million dollars spent might look like if nobody get confused by inches and centimeters...
Re:*sigh* Figures. (Score:3, Interesting)
Guess what? The Voyagers (and SIM, and TPF, and LISA, and Con-X, and JIMO, and Hubble) are all taking budget cuts even as I type this in order to pay for your manned space travel to the moon and Mars.
Congress allocates $16B to NASA and Bush says "Go to the Moon and Mars and pay for the
Some residual data perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Some residual data perhaps -- space warps? (Score:3, Funny)
Think of those 'rubber sheet' diagrams -- showing the distortion of space by gravity as a nice smooth event.
Now those four probes are out where they ought to be getting close to 'flat' space far from the sun -- and they're finding what could be wrinkles.
There's your 'space warp' -- if you can show there's any such thing.
No, better cut the funds FAST. It's not in the Bible, so we don't want to risk discovering it.
There is still the GRAVITY mystery ! (Score:3, Interesting)
No contact at all with Pioneer since 2003 (Score:4, Informative)
That BBC News article was written way back in 2001. In 2002 NASA stopped receiving recognisable telemetry data and in February 2003 there was no signal at all from the spacecraft (there was only a very weak signal in the January 2003 session).
See the Pioneer 10 home page [nasa.gov] for the details.
Chris
Re:No contact at all with Pioneer since 2003 (Score:3, Interesting)
So, even if the Voyagers are not an active mission that doesn't mean we won't ever hear from them again.
I bet when set up a massive array telescope at a LaGrange point we'll use them for calibration.
Re:*sigh* Figures Bush is against science (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why Bush was pushing for a Mars mission, right?
No, the problem is that he got very little enthusiasm out of the public when he presented the concept. As a result, he assembled a "team" to take care of it and went on to more pressing matters. If you want someone to blame, talk to:
1. Congress, who not only fails to fund NASA, but regularly cuts their bugdet while forcing them to outsource to ever-more-exp
Re:*sigh* Figures Bush is against science (Score:5, Insightful)
The administration has been anti-science since the beginning and shows no signs of letting up.
That's why Bush was pushing for a Mars mission, right?
EXACTLY!!!
Remeber, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Cheap talk about a Mars mission that will never happen is cover to cut practical science today.
This is exactly the same as the cheap talk about a "hydrogen economy" which has been used to prevent progress on fuel economy today.
Re:*sigh* Figures Bush is against science (Score:4, Interesting)
That's why Bush was pushing for a Mars mission, right?
Yep. Bush will go for silly not-gonna-happen-and-no-point-if-it-did stuff rather than science any day.
NASA's internal beauracracy
Just as a data point, NASA is asking for $77 million next year just to fund changes to their financial reporting systems. Ie the noise in the flapping around the edges of the work of the people who couldn't find $4mil for Voyager would fund it for nearly 10 years.
Re:*sigh* Figures Bush is against science (Score:3, Interesting)
He's shooting for the stars, I agree... but that's the point!
It's the right idea. Any research into manned space travel should be the top priority of the PLANET. We have forever to observe the solar system. If we don't get self-sufficient colonies off of this rock, humanity itself could be extinguished when the next big disaster strikes.
Re:*sigh* Figures Bush is against science (Score:3, Informative)
Since when was making physics work a matter of money? There has never been a Fusion plant that produces more power than it uses. Not a single watt, not a single Joule. While scientists have ideas on getting around this, Fusion is perpetually "20 years away". I don't see that changing until we're already in space. Why? Because then you can build fusion plants that don't need so much dest
Re:*sigh* Figures Bush is against science (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:*sigh* Figures Bush is against science (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense. Both Republicans and Democrats have been responsible for the various issues that NASA faces. In fact, the reason why we have the ISS instead of Space Station Freedom is because Clinton (and his Democrat controlled congress of the time) cut funding.
The issue is that congress critters are looking out for number 1, and that means shunting money wherever it will get them re-elected. Giving money to NASA doesn't get a representative re-elected unless NASA outsources to a large corporation in their constituancy. If we want space travel, we need an independent Space Agency, and we need the general public to make space travel a re-election issue.
Re:*sigh* Figures Bush is against science (Score:3, Interesting)
IANAL but the way I understand it is a privated citizen or corporation can donate money to a government project and a portion of that donation is either a tax credit or a tax deduction. When this is done properly that money is ear-marked for that project's budget and can't be used for anything else. So if it's deductable, and your at the 17% bracket, your congress-critter just got 17% of your donation removed f
Re:*sigh* Figures Bush is against science (Score:5, Insightful)
More nonsense. Did Bush call up O'Keefe and tell him to scrub the shuttle mission for Hubble? Nope. That was O'Keefe's call. Did the president call up O'Keefe and tell him to stop flying the shuttle? Nope, that was O'Keefe's call. The president actually asked what he could do to get manned flight back on track.
Now Voyager is facing cancellation from a desk jockey inside NASA and you think the president had something to do with this, how? The program is facing cancellation because some beaurocrats are worried about losing their jobs. The shuttle incident made things look very bad for NASA, and the inquery board's findings of "too much management" made them look worse. Managers inside NASA are trying to look like the "fiscally responsble" ones so that it's not their head on the chopping block.
Stop trying to make everything into a Democrat vs. Republican argument. It has no bearing on reality and only makes people here look stupid.
Re:*sigh* Figures Bush is against science (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:*sigh* Figures Bush is against science (Score:5, Insightful)
There will always be those who cling to the absurd notion that humanity will spread to the other bodies in our solar system. There will also be those who denounce spending a penny on "frivolous" ventures like space probes as long as Just One Child Goes Hungry here on Earth. I'm a fan of spending money wisely. We could be littering the entire solar system with probes if we'd stop spending people up to film themselves drinking spheres of Tang or working hard raising spiders in microgravity in the experiment submitted by Mrs. Wachowski's third-grade class in Salina, KS. Bang for buck.
Sadly, the current administration policy is to strip the entire space program of money to pay for the absurd Moon-Mars Initiative. Fortunately, the current administration has only 3 years, 10 months, and 10 days remaining. If we're lucky NASA will survive that period with no significant losses beyond Hubble (which is a doozy of a loss).
Re:*sigh* Figures Bush is against science (Score:5, Insightful)
You people make no sense. The last president to do ANYTHING about improving the space program was Reagan. He spent money trying to undo the boneheaded space choices made by every president and congress after Kennedy. Once Reagan was gone, the status quo was again reasserted. I don't see ANY evidence that ANY valid choice in president would improve the space program.
If you want science done at NASA, it needs to be a re-election issue for congress critters. The president has some say, but at the end of the day it's congress who holds the keys to the purse. Making them see the light would be far more effective than complaining about the effectivness of the president's attempts to encourage the space program.
Re:*sigh* Figures Bush is against science (Score:3, Interesting)
"The conquest of space is worth the risk of life....Our God-giv
Re:Shortsighted? (Score:3, Insightful)
The scientific instrumentation and experiments are pre-determined h
You are no doubt correct (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good point (Score:3, Insightful)
Heck... Seti@Home is able to convince thousands of people to donate their CPU cycles for pretty useless stuff (IMHO)... If what they need is data analysi
Re:*sigh* Figures. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm afraid that I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I don't think that emotional attachment is my issue. When I read the story, I weighed carefully the results of the data that Voyager is collecting against the cost of operating the probe. The results that I got back is that Voyager is a tremendously cost effective program for the science it is achieving. As a resu
Re:*sigh* Figures. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:*sigh* Figures. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. If your question is, does everyone here work with/at NASA and know all the facts, then no.
Does anybody have any idea what sort of science payload the Voyagers are carrying?
10 instruments supporting imaging, radio, magnetic, and spectral analysis. Some of the instruments have been deactivated to save power. Not great, but still the only thing we have that's 13 light hours out.
How long should we support these missions which have such diminished value? That money can do a lot of good in the space science community. I know the mission I'm working on (also a deep space bird) could use that money for some extra QA and the like.
If you can give me a probe that will overtake Voyager in 10 years, carry a more sophisticated science package, and be at least as durable and cost effective, then I say kill the Voyager program. If you are just hoping to get a bit more funding for a program that won't do anything near the same thing, then I say leave Voyager in operation.
Re:*sigh* Figures. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, that is not a given. It is only your (or Bush's) ideological opinion. There is arguably significant evidence that State funding of basic research has been a factor in the advancement of science and the success of developed countries.
DANGER (Score:5, Funny)
Poor management. (Score:5, Insightful)
But we can't afford to spend a measly $4 million to maintain three projects that are still returning useful, interesting data, and haven't disappeared behind Mars or killed anyone?
I guess they have PHBs at NASA too! Maybe it's just about PR...making things look good to the average guy on the street, who thinks going to Mars is way cooler.
(I have to admit, the headline "Interstellar Pioneers Facing Termination" made me wonder the Aliens had finally taked over ISS...)
Re:Poor management. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Joe Average...at least the Joe Averages we have here in Michigan...think "gee, we spend billions on NASA, can't I just pay less taxes then see it go to some stupid robot on Mars?" (Just repeating what I hear around here, I do NOT agree with it, so don't yell at me).
The Joe Averages vision is very narrow, they only see the factory/office/dungeon they work at everyday, and the bar where they get together with their buddies to complain about government waste and they see the space program as a huge waste.
This is why we see great projects like Hubble getting scraped because of a pencil pusher being pushed by an administrator who's being pushed by a Senator who's being pushed by a few Joe Averages that may or may not vote for him next term.
Nevermind the great advancements in science due to all these programs.
Re:Poor management. (Score:3, Funny)
"Sheeyit yeah! It's not like I'm made of money, for God's sake! I really need that extra cash to pay for the important things. Like my credit card bills for my Hummer's gas, my 72" plasma screen TV with 700 channel cable TV plus 350 satellite dish subscriptions, my titanium alloy kitchen appliances (32 cubic foot refrigerator, dual dishwashers, counter-based ice maker, iced frappaccino maker, pa
Re:Poor management. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is especially true in a democracy, where special interests wield huge clout. Each of those special interests knows how to spend *your* money better than you do, in ways that benefit them.
I'm as big a fan of space exploration as anyone, but I'm not willing to fund it by threatening peopl
Re:Poor management. (Score:5, Insightful)
The best I can figure is that the United States has been having some economic problems, and in the past, the best answer for a bad economy has been to start a war, fuel the military/industrial complex, and so Joe Sixpack believes that we will all end up with jobs again.
However, we've shipped most of our industrial complex outside the US since the last time we tried this, so it's doubtful that the same rules apply. Could be the answer, could be we are just digging our graves faster.
But like Luke said "I've got a bad feeling about this"
"That's no small Arab country, that's a space station!!"
Re:Poor management. (Score:5, Informative)
> to convert from metric to imperial? Thats several
> million dollars down the drain. Did anyone get
> fired?
You need to understand that it was NOT NASA WHO FU^&%ED UP. The mistake was made at Lockheed-Martin, not NASA. Lockheed was contracted to provide functioning, tested hardware and software to NASA, and it failed. You can bet that someone DID get fired.
That being said, I agree with the need to cut beaureaucractic waste and administrative overhead at NASA...but it won't happen. The best we can hope for, realistically, is for better leadership at the top. I say let's put an astronomer or an astronaut in charge.
And regarding your point about SpaceShip One: yes, it was an amazing feat. Yes, they did a great job, and will continue to do great things, as will many of the other private sector ventures. But let's remember that what they did was successfully place a person into a BALLISTIC path in space, for a couple minutes, WELL BELOW low earth orbit, FORTY+ YEARS AFTER it was done by governments. Personally, I'm saving my really enthusiastic clapping for when they put someone up there...and KEEP them up there.
*sigh* (Score:5, Interesting)
4.2 million? (Score:5, Funny)
Can't Stop (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Preemptive Correction (Score:3, Funny)
Question... (Score:5, Insightful)
If not, then what is NASA planning to study after everything shuts down? I mean the shuttles arent flying, Hubble's about to be scrapped...
Hey here's an idea, let's fake another landing on another solar system body!
Big Money Savings! (Score:5, Insightful)
$166M a Day In Iraq Vs. $4.2M A Year For Voyagers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$166M a Day In Iraq Vs. $4.2M A Year For Voyage (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:$166M a Day In Iraq Vs. $4.2M A Year For Voyage (Score:5, Insightful)
Half of our budget goes to Medicare and Social Security. How much of that money do you think is wasted due to government bureacracy?
Now, how much of the budget goes to the (albeit stupid) programs you mentioned?
Yet no spending cuts* can make it through Congress, because both sides are weighed down by lobbyists who will paint any cuts* in the most drastic light possible to sway public opinion. Everyone wants to cut spending, but not on THEIR projects, which means nothing gets cut.
* Note: 'cuts' are a misnomer. No spending is ever actually cut by Congress. When they use this word, what they really mean is they are just SLOWING the GROWTH in spending on a particular program. Most programs have built in "raises" each year in spending. That way, Congress can say, "Instead of giving your program 2% more money this year, we're only giving it 1% more -- we're cutting spending!"
Re:$166M a Day In Iraq Vs. $4.2M A Year For Voyage (Score:5, Interesting)
(speaking of faith based initiatives, abstinence only education, and "my granpappy-ain't-no-monkey" stickers for textbooks from the grand parent post)
Bush has said that last year the government distributed$2 billion in grants to faith based organizations [yahoo.com] for social welfare purposes. His budget for the upcoming year includes $206 million for abstinence education [forbes.com], an increase of $39 million over last year! And the monkey stickers, that's a state issue; but you can be sure that some states have spent quite a lot of money on stickers that suggest creationism and evolution stand on the same level of scientific footing.
The point is that while its true that the government spends most of its money on Medicare and Social Security, Bush is also blowing ALOT of money on socially conservative programs. The $39 million increase in abstinence education this year would have been more than enough to keep these clearly worthwhile science programs going at NASA had it received those dollars instead. But no, we're going to spend it on programs that have a clear history of producing and disseminating false, misleading, and distorted information about reproductive health. There's your Bush science right there, people.
Leave Iraq 39 minutes Early (Score:5, Funny)
Perfect Source of funding (Score:5, Insightful)
V'Ger (Score:5, Funny)
If only we had kept monitoring the transmissions from the Voyager spacecraft, we'd be able to tell when it starts its homicidal rampage.
Oort cloud (Score:3, Interesting)
Or is the instrumentation on Voyager just inadequate for finding that little matter in that much volume?
Re:Oort cloud (Score:3, Informative)
What everyone is hoping is that it will try and find some of the boundaries between our solar system (well our sun really) and the rest of this galaxy.
Ciao
Taming wild shrimp is far more important (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that pointing out frivolous spending is the easy way to attack spending cuts for what one considers important, but this is just goofy.
Re:Taming wild shrimp is far more important (Score:3, Funny)
You just don't understand the economics here....$1 million bucks is a small investment considering how much money the government will get back from the sales of all of the "Shrimp Gone Wild" videos.
How come (Score:5, Insightful)
$4.2 million dollars to analyse incoming data? You could employ 80 PhD astrophysicists for a year for that much. Surely there's not so much information coming back as to require that much computer time?
I'm not trolling, I'd just love to know.
Re:How come (Score:5, Funny)
If they were working in tents and using abacuses.
Re:How come (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How come (Score:5, Informative)
And you couldn't possibly support 80 PhD astrophysicists on that amount of money. You could support MAYBE 40 postdocs, early in their caeers. And no, they don't take home $100k per year
Re:How come (Score:5, Informative)
Folks, I need to make this very, very clear: Research science is no longer a priority at NASA. It's all going to the manned program. We're trying to refocus where we can, support the effort with good science, but the only way we're going to continue to expand our understanding of the space environment as a whole is if you--all of you--get on the phone and convince your congressfolk that pure research is worth funding through NASA. Otherwise things are going to come to a pretty serious halt and space scientists are going to start leaving the US.
Re:How come (Score:3, Informative)
When I saw the figure I thought 4.2 million is quite cheap.
You are assuming 80 astrophysicists would make $52k annually. This is a very naive assumption because it entirely ignores administrative overhead that must always be included with salaries.
A rough rule of thumb is that a person costs about 2x their salary, to pay for utilities, housekeeping, human resources, etc. So a $50k salarie
I can speak from personal experience (Score:5, Insightful)
How much will it cost to mail the pink slip? (Score:5, Funny)
Pennywise Pound Foolish (Score:4, Funny)
SD
Hmmm...where are those Enterprise fans, now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine that: buying science instead of fiction.
Re:Hmmm...where are those Enterprise fans, now? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Planetary Society [planetary.org] is probably one of the better places to send money for the advancement of space science. Charitable contributions to The Planetary Society are tax-deductible in the United States.
A donation of your time would also be very worthwhile. Tell your congress folk how you feel about Nasa's proposed plan. Also tell others you know(that don't read slashdot, e.g. parents) about Nasa's lame plan and suggest they drop a line to their congress folk.
Here's your chance, then (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just wondering if anyone will create a Voyager United fund, or if they'll just fold their arms and wait passively for others to solve the problem.
This is horrible... (Score:5, Interesting)
priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
we have trouble coughing up $4 mill a year when it comes to funding a scientific expedition which has the potential for giving us greater insight into our place in the universe
That's only par for the course, when the top officials in the US Government live in a "universe" that was made 6000 years ago, fossils and all, by an invisible superhero in outer space. They already know where we came from, and what our place is - that is, top dog - in all of creation.
Scientific exploration is ultimately pointless, when we already have all the answers we need in our little black book. Why would we waste millions of dollars trying to answer questions that were answered in Sunday School?
Heliopause (Score:5, Insightful)
I've read a fair amount of discussion of how they're approaching the heliopause (the point at which the solar winds begin to be overpowered by interstellar winds) and, as JPL will say, "The thickness of the heliosheath is uncertain and could be tens of AU thick taking several years to traverse."
Considering it'd take billions more dollars and waiting decades to get that piece of data from somewhere else, I'd call it a bargain. I'm sure I don't know the impact of that information, but if something as fundamental as how far our sun's influence really extends is unknown, it seems like it'd be at least somewhat important.
Open it up to hackers (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe they should just open source the sucker. Let the open source community run the science. Put the sucker on sourceforge and give us access to the transmitters everyone once in a while.
Just as it was about to get interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ex-insider's rant, from Voyager Mission Planning (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked for Charlie Kolhaase, Mission Planning Director, and Ed Stone, Chief Scientist.
So far as I'm concerned, NASA is telling me that I wasted my time (except for those nice screensavers of Miranda, which was a part of mission under my responsibility). Now they want to kill me, bury me, and desecrate my grave.
That's what this feels like, anyhow.
The interstellar part of the mision is extremely serious science, as others have said. We only have 4 interstellar probes right now, two Voyagers and two Pioneers.
Kill the still-working half of the fleet, and we're back to square one.
Who cares how the sun interacts with interstellar medium? Who cares if anomalous acceleration of the Voyagers tells us something about Dark Energy?
Let's go invade Iran, or shoot another Italian journalist, or detain a few hundred more people at Gitmo. Yeah, that's what our wonderful government wants to do with the money saved.
The gentleman from the Voyager Navigation team with whom I worked most closely still at JPL (promoted to management) -- I won't mention his name to spare him retribution from above -- correctly described himself as "The other interstellar navigator, besides Sulu."
My credentials on the subject are at
http://www.magicdragon.com/ComputerFutures/Sp
Re:Ex-insider's rant, from Voyager Mission Plannin (Score:4, Insightful)
This news makes me very, very sad and I can feel your pain...
I was not born yet when the Pioneers/Voyagers were launched, but when I started to learn more and more about the world around me as a kid.. I became fascinated with space at a very young age.
I just cannot tell you how much both projects and their teams have inspired me throughout the years... and how much I wish I had been born earlier and been part of the whole those mission teams!
Those probes are IMHO still on the frontier of our knowledge and technological capabilities as humans.
Even though they're 'just' made with technologies from the 1960's and 1970's... I have an enormous amount of respect for the way those probes have been built, their ability and stability.. and their precision!.
IMHO, these missions are one of the 'wonders of the (tech.) world' and a beacon for what we should be doing as a race: explore the Universe!
(indeed, instead of all those pathetic wars on this planet)
Thank you and your collegues for everything!!
Edited: Stupid, shortsighted and foolish (Score:5, Insightful)
If they terminate funding and someone doesn't find a way to sneak commands to the spacecraft on the sly, contact will be lost, the Voyagers will go into their command reset "safe modes" and we may never regain contact with them.
This is shameful. They don't cost much to run but they give us valuable data on the Sun's influence and how it influences the interstellar medium. The data helps refine models on solar wind dynamics, wind influence and strength over distance, particle interactions with the interstellar medium and ultimate tell us where our neighborhood ends and interstellar space begins.
To the layman, yes, go for it. But these spacecraft are the only two vehicles this far out. It would take a decade or more to get a new spacecraft out there and if they cut funding to these, what makes you think they'll spend the billions of dollars and time needed to design a new spacecraft to explore the same region. Probably not in my lifetime.
I'm a big fan of the VIM. I stand in awe of the foresight and talent of the engineers who built the spacecraft and the fact they remain operational after decades in space. The communications needs aren't that much and it is incredible that these faint whispers can be heard from so far away.
Someone can't just pick up this mission from NASA. They would need a network similar to the DSN to communicate with the spacecraft and the technology is so old that it is improbable that someone else could learn how to communicate and interact with the spacecraft in time. Likely the only hardware and software on earth that can understand the Voyagers exists at NASA and if shutdown or disposed of, this knowledge would be lost forever.
If someone were to pay my living expenses, I would happily work to help keep the VIM running. There is grandeur in hearing the whispers of ourselves from so far away and we should listen until they can't talk to us anymore.
Cut some other program to help fund it. I can think of several.
Not to Worry (Score:3, Funny)
nasa should turn over the keys (Score:3, Insightful)
Scientists' point of view (Score:3, Informative)
For those of you who don't know who Park is or have not read the excellent Voodoo Science [amazon.com], he is the president of the American Physical Society.
Murphy(c)
Hardly surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
So we watch while they desperately try to scape up every amount, no matter how tiny, from worthy missions such as this in order to feed the Space Station and Shuttle programs.
When the post-Apollo era was first being studied NASA came back with a 1-2-3 punch, a space station to study deep-space and long-duration missions, a space shuttle to support cheap, timely and safe crew exchange, both in order to get ready for a mission to Mars. Nixon balked (rightfully) and told them to pick one. They picked the Shuttle, justifying it by saying the cheap access to space would let them go back to the station in the late-70s/early-80s. That turned out well.
What's sad about all of this is that the missions only support each other, neither, on it's own, would have ever made it to bent metal. They built the shuttle to make the station cheap, but when the shuttle turned out to be the most expensive launch system in history, they STILL kept to the original plan -- and now we have the most expensive launch system supplying the most expensive space station. And since the budgets go down (inflation adjusted) every year, NASA has to turn off every other project and feed every dollar into these useless projects.
Someone needs to stop the madness. No one will. What's the sound of freedom? "Oink!"
Right on! It's About Time to Kill the Moneywasters (Score:5, Insightful)
($4.2 million / 1.3 billion average shuttle flight cost.)
As I mentioned in a post yesterday, I love Microsoft because they "...will make the decision based on what is best for customers."
Let me add that I love NASA because they always base their budget priorities on how to get the most scientific knowledge for every dollar spent.
Oh, and they're immune to politics and mere PR crap.
Trek fans unite, again (Score:5, Insightful)
$4.2 million? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my two cents. (literally)
NASA should "sell" the mission... (Score:3, Interesting)
If they are really short of the $4m per year to fund this project, put the mission up for tender...
I am sure that there are other countries whose governments would love to have a deep-space mission
And for $4m per year, it's a bargain!
Contact your elected officials! (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.congress.org/ [congress.org]
Type in your zip code. Look at the list of your elected officials. Call them or send them a paper letter (even better if you include a donation in it). I did it, and you can too. Believe it or not, congresspeople actually listen to their constituents.
That said, I hope in the future more and more science-related projects get handled by private groups, like the Planetary Society's Cosmos 1 [planetary.org] launch of the first solar sail spacecraft next month. That way, instead of whining to congresscritters about using other people's money for projects we care about, we can just give the money ourselves. I'm sure the actual Voyager space program would be able to raise at least as much money as the Enterprise television show.
Opensource space research (Score:3, Insightful)
4.2million ? (Score:3, Insightful)
For shame, for shame (Score:3, Insightful)
When you look at the relative costs of BushCo's other priorities, the amount of money involved here is incredibly trivial. I admit that the RoI from this specific kind research is unknown, but it's exactly the kind of research that can only be funded by a government--someone has to have a long-term perspective. There might be an enormous breakthrough here, but no private organization could speculate on that and spend even a few million dollars per year. However, if you take a really long term perspective--the way government is supposed to--then whatever you learn, even if it is small, will eventually accumulate to a large value.
Religious fanatics aren't interested, of course. They already know *EVERYTHING*. Meanwhile, BushCo is glad to exploit their deliberate and intentional ignorance for political advantage and personal profit. Sad.
Note: Insightful has to start from the truth. I don't care how nicely you write and how well you package your lies. They is no such thing as an "insightful falsehood".
Budget Negotiation In Action (Score:3, Insightful)
With the exception of a few sacred cows, every office and program becomes expendable. If there aren't enough of the right people bitching and moaning to defend program X, then it's not important enough to fund. Sure, it's a pain in the ass to have to rejustify one's work each year or so, but it's not an unreasonable way to allocate resources within a huge organization such as the US Federal Government.
Unfortunately, humans don't organize well beyond a certain size, hence the collapse of the Soviet state, and NASA considering wiping a program when it's just about to start paying off in valuable science again.
Ulysses is a joint ESA/NASA mission (Score:3, Informative)
There are plans to terminate the interstellar missions Voyager 1 and 2 and the solar mission Ulysses in October to save money.
A minor point, by Ulysses isn't actually a NASA mission, it's operated jointly by ESA and NASA, and ESA actually built the spacecraft. I'm not sure the USA actually has any right to terminate it, although it almost certainly does rely on the DSN for some, if not all, communications, so this could be seriously curtailed.
At a minimum this would piss off ESA big times, and historically NASA/USA behaviour in regards to this mission hasn't exactly been brilliant. There were meant to be two spacecraft in the original mission, one built by ESA, the other by NASA, but the US one got scrapped and ESA got left with only half the mission.
NASA has remained involved, since it was launched with the Shuttle, and they provided the RTG, and the DSN, but sometimes it really seems like they are taking the mick. :(
Re:4 million? (Score:5, Insightful)
Outside the Box... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Budget Cutbacks (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow you must be really putting a lot of stock in his abilities to put his nose in every pie like that, so really what you're doing is saying how intelligent he is. He has to be if he can run everything!
Weeeeellll... (Score:4, Informative)
Thank you.
Re:Weeeeellll... (Score:3, Informative)
That AC was modded to -1 in a heartbeat.
http://www.knowledgeplex.org/news/36754.html [knowledgeplex.org]
From the link:
"WASHINGTON -- President Bush is threatening to veto a bill that funds veterans hospitals and public housing if Congress doesn't increase money allocated to the U.S. space program."
Re:Why $4.2 million? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now build the scientists a state-of-the-art lab filled with the latest equipment that's used exclusively for this project. Figure $3 million and you've spent