Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Science
Related: About this forumStarving the space program
http://theweek.com/articles/568003/starving-space-programStarving the space program
William Falk
July 24, 2015
Success has many fathers; so do successful space missions. NASA has been basking in widespread applause over the past week, after its New Horizons probe completed a 4.67 billionmile, 10-year journey to Pluto, revealing unexpected wonders in stunning detail. But New Horizons like so many other proposed space missions almost didn't happen.
During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Bush administration tried to defund the Pluto mission twice. Over many decades, Congress and various presidents have cut NASA's funding from 4.3 percent of the federal budget to 0.5 percent today, severely crimping the agency's ambitions and delaying mankind's explorations of the solar system by decades. I find this sad and small-minded. For $720 million, or the cost of about three F-35 fighter jets, NASA just sent a 12-foot spaceship hurtling to the edge of the solar system at 30,000 mph, swooping to within 7,800 miles of Pluto exactly as planned. Now New Horizons moves on to the Kuiper Belt, the birthplace of comets. What other government program produces such competence, such awe, such bang for the buck?
Our species is rightly called Homo sapiens: We are the creatures who seek to know. Our ancestors wondered what was beyond the horizon, so they wandered out of Africa and kept going until they covered the globe. Now human beings want to know how it feels to walk on Mars, if there's life in the oceans of Europa and Ganymede, and whether we have company in this unimaginably vast universe. NASA even wants to find out if a killer asteroid is headed this way. In a $3.9 trillion federal budget, surely we can find a few billion more for all that.
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
9 replies, 1142 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (25)
ReplyReply to this post
9 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Starving the space program (Original Post)
unhappycamper
Jul 2015
OP
God damn NASA is getting way to close to finding life elsewhere...then what? No religion? Say the Fundies.
Fred Sanders
Jul 2015
#3
bananas
(27,509 posts)1. I like the wording in that last paragraph. nt
daleanime
(17,796 posts)2. K&R.....
The 'D'efense budget should be cut in half, and NASA's at least doubled.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)3. God damn NASA is getting way to close to finding life elsewhere...then what? No religion? Say the Fundies.
7962
(11,841 posts)4. NASA needs funding!!!
newfie11
(8,159 posts)5. If we could get the MIC into supplying NASA
instead of war toys we might have a space program.
Not enough money for them!
MisterP
(23,730 posts)6. even the Saturn V was "throw-weight for peace" and the space cadets were always
the MIC's biggest voices since the 50s even when NASA wasn't Rocketdyne/Douglas/Boeing/NAA's biggest accounts: "our destiny is the stars" was as much composed and massaged as "I want my Maypo"
the ground shifted after Reagan: 1992-5's talk of the "peace dividend" (where ever did that go?) and a new shift in doctrine from bombers and ICBMs allowed mass aerospace-sector layoffs--round 40,000 "rightsized" IIRC, but without much of a drop in the MIC's budget
despite New Horizons actually being the last interplanetary mission slated for--what, nearly a decade?--the GOP's corporatists are still kicking around: they'll still demand more STEM degrees (and increase H1B limits), want the NSF to focus on "hard" sciences (since social is even more dangerous for them), and are okay with NASA programs past LEO (since the last thing they want is more satellites with their sensors turned downwards!)
the ground shifted after Reagan: 1992-5's talk of the "peace dividend" (where ever did that go?) and a new shift in doctrine from bombers and ICBMs allowed mass aerospace-sector layoffs--round 40,000 "rightsized" IIRC, but without much of a drop in the MIC's budget
despite New Horizons actually being the last interplanetary mission slated for--what, nearly a decade?--the GOP's corporatists are still kicking around: they'll still demand more STEM degrees (and increase H1B limits), want the NSF to focus on "hard" sciences (since social is even more dangerous for them), and are okay with NASA programs past LEO (since the last thing they want is more satellites with their sensors turned downwards!)
ThoughtCriminal
(14,049 posts)7. Wanders
Someday. But not until the anti-science party has been discarded.
AuntPatsy
(9,904 posts)8. Just trade the war chest that breeds hate to space which breeds awe and wonder for everyone
BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)9. Since the USA treats the scientists like shit, they should offer their services to other countries.