Early phases of Obama anti-NASA agenda

4 posts / 0 new

Fri, 2008-12-12 21:44

500_Apples

Some info here:
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2008/12/nasa-h...
And here (the time piece is very much worth-reading):
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1866045,00.html?cnn=yes

Some may recall that during the election campaign, Obama said he would finance his education plans by cutting funding to NASA (rofl).

Apparently, Obama has sent the ultra-unqualified Lori Garver (she has zero engineering experience) to head his space transition team, and she's going in with an attitude of looking for places to cut - keeping up with his election promise perhaps? She wants current launch rockets refitted to allow manned flights on those rockets, rather than designing a new shuttle. NASA boss Griffin sees this as unsafe and apparently demanded to see Obama himself.

Here are the comments I wrote as a response on the astronomy blog cosmic variance:

"Where do you guys think JFK's vision would have ended up if Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon had decided to cancel the previous guy's ideas, and focus on his pet projects?

Bill Clinton cancelled a lot of progress, and under him there was a lot of focus on JIMO, the Jupiter Icy Moons Observer, which would have been a great idea. It was to rely on high energy nuclear electricity, increasing scientific capacity. Under Bush II, great ideas like JIMO, and also TPF, SIM and Sofia have gone by the wayside, to focus on the ideas of appeal to his people, going back to the moon and mars, permanently.

Now Obama is going to cancel that progress, and start some new ideas from scratch, which might be very good ideas in and of themselves exactly like the Clinton and Bush II directions. And then they can accumulate some progress and consume $50 billion, and then be cancelled in 8 years by the next president whose team will pursue its own vision. Nothing will ever get done with these childish competitive attitudes.

The best bet would be for Obama to allow them to continue on their present path, and to give a marginal increase in funding to do other things."

Fri, 2008-12-12 22:27

Agent 204

Of course, some would say that there are more important things to spend money on, but as expensive as the space program sounds, it is tiny compared to what is spent on the military. Cut back on stupid overseas military adventures, and there'll be enough money for both better social programs and the space program.

You make a good point about successive administrations killing off perfectly good ideas in favour of other good ideas. If you're going to fund research, it's better to allow the researchers to do most of the planning; you're more likely to get long-term results that way.

Of course, there should still be some funds earmarked for specific purposes. For instance, I'd say that whatever else NASA does, they should be actively studying Earth-crossing objects at all times, and determining their orbits as far into the future as possible- not to mention ways of changing their orbits well in advance of any difficulties they could give us.

Fri, 2008-12-12 22:29

500_Apples

Agent 204 wrote:

Of course, some would say that there are more important things to spend money on, but as expensive as the space program sounds, it is tiny compared to what is spent on the military.

You make a good point about successive administrations killing off perfectly good ideas in favour of other good ideas. If you're going to fund research, it's better to allow the researchers to do most of the planning; you're more likely to get long-term results that way.

Of course, there should still be some funds earmarked for specific purposes. For instance, I'd say that whatever else NASA does, they should be actively studying Earth-crossing objects at all times, and determining their orbits as far into the future as possible- not to mention ways of changing their orbits well in advance of any difficulties they could give us.

That would actually be a very low cost priority.

I disagree with you about spending. NASA represents less than 1% of the US federal budget, and produces a lot of useful economic spinoffs. Additionally, the sciences, the sports and the arts should have some right to financing even in the absence of tangible economic spinoffs.

For comparison's sake, Canadian (Underfunded) Space Agency has a budget of ~365 million per year.

Fri, 2008-12-12 22:38

Agent 204

500_Apples wrote:
I disagree with you about spending. NASA represents less than 1% of the US federal budget, and produces a lot of useful economic spinoffs. Additionally, the sciences, the sports and the arts should have some right to financing even in the absence of tangible economic spinoffs.
For comparison's sake, Canadian (Underfunded) Space Agency has a budget of ~365 million per year.

Actually, I was trying to defuse the argument about cost (I was unclear in my first version, and you read it before I edited it). I'm in favour of the space program; I just knew someone would bring that up. Sorry if it appeared otherwise.