NASA Priorities Out of Whack?

amerinese writes "Just last week, we saw a story on NASA reconsidering the fate of the DAWN mission, another reminder of the space agency's budget woes. Gregg Easterbrook over at Slate.com argues not only is the budget a little short, but NASA's priorities are all wrong. From the article: 'For at least a decade, it's been clear that the space shuttle program is a clunker. Nonetheless, NASA's funding remains heavy on the shuttle and the space station, while usually slighting science. This year's proposed budget for fiscal 2007 takes the cosmic cake.' Is NASA just not thinking creatively enough?"

Re:I mostly agree

[terrymr]

FYI the moon is not tidally locked and your telescope would only be usable about 1/3 -1/2 of the time, this is the same reason why you'd need 3 beaming stations for lunar based solar power.

huh ? If you mean the same side of the moon isn't always turned toward the earth then i think you're wrong on that point.

Re:Budget woes?

[CheshireCatCO]

Wow. You clearly have no idea of the realities of the situation, yet you feel free to make wild claims about what you think can be done with NASA's money.

Let's see... $13 billion... of which most goes to the manned-missions right off. So that's ISS and the shuttles getting the bulk of the money. Research for aerospace stuff gets another reasonably heafty share. In fact, when you get down to it, the solar system exploration budget is around $2 billion, total. That goes to fund research, build new missions, and support existing missions.

In reality, missions are very expensive and mass-producing parts doesn't fix that. Every single mission has to be launched, which is a huge fraction of the total expense right there. Fuel isn't going to get a lot cheaper through the wonders of mass-production. Neither is the man-power needed to plan the details of each mission and to work out and check things like the trajectories. (I'm periphrially involved with selecting an extended tour on a mission right now. It's complicated to say the least.) And modular components only work if the modules are sufficiently useful to a broad number of missions. This is generally not the case, as it turns out. Every mission has specific goals and requirements that almost always demand a new suite of designs. (Check out the latest Mars missions; the new objectives have caused their instruments to be VERY carefully and specifically designed.)

And to put $13 billion into perspective: that's a few percent of what the war in Iraq has costed so far and around 1% of what it will ultimately cost us. In fact, that's the price of about 7 stealth bombers. Which were easier to mass-produce than interplanetary missions, incidentally.

Your intuition for the money here is dead wrong. I'm not saying NASA is above reproach; it very much so is not. (I can spend days ranting about how much they waste time and money.) But if you want to help solve the problem, you'll have to understand the situation first.

Re:Congress controls their budget

[Anonymous Coward]

gr8

  Here is the first part of the experiment you suggested. It turns out that the appropriations committee that handles Nasa's budget has experience some serious changes this year and as such we may see so new "spending" habits with future budgets, who knows. However, the individuals that currently sit on the appropriations committee responsible for NASA as of March 2006 is as follows:

Link to committee membership source
http://www.planetary.org/news/2005/0323_US_Congres s_Reorganizes_Committees_to.html [planetary.org]

Link to Nasa Budget
http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/AN_Budget_04_deta il.html [nasa.gov]

Nasa Appropriation Committees

Senate Committee on Appropriations
Full Committee:
Thad Cochran (R-MS) Chair,
Robert Byrd (D-WV) Ranking

Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science:
  Richard Shelby (R-AL) Chair,
  Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) Ranking

House Appropriations Committee
Full Committee:
Jerry Lewis (R-CA) Chair,
David Obey (D-WI) Ranking

Subcommittee on Science, State, Justice, and Commerce, and Related Agencies:
Frank Wolf (R-VA),
Alan Mollohan (D-WV) Ranking

Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
Full Committee:
Ted Stevens (R-AK) Chair,
  Inouye (D-HI) Ranking
Subcommittee on Science and Space:
Kay Bailey-Hutchison (R-TX), Chair
Bill Nelson (D-FL) Ranking

House Committee on Science
Full Committee,
Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) Chair,
Bart Gordon (D-TN) Ranking

Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics:
Ken Calvert (R-CA), Chair -
Mark Udall (D-CO) Ranking

Nasa Budget:

See Link (PDF Warning)
http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/AN_Budget_04_deta il.html [nasa.gov]

Official NASA Mission Statement

[rabun_bike]

NASA Mission Statement

• To advance and communicate scientific knowledge and understanding of the earth, the solar system, and the universe.
• To advance human exploration, use, and development of space.
• To research, develop, verify, and transfer advanced aeronautics and space technologies.

http://naccenter.arc.nasa.gov/NASAMission.html [nasa.gov]

Re:Budget woes?

[SlayerDave]

$13 billion sounds like a lot, until you consider that the Pentagon has a FY 2005 budget of $401.7 billion, which is 30.9 times greater than the NASA budget (and doesn't include the cost of the Iraq war). I personally believe that NASA's budget should be tripled or quadrupled. They should also streamline management to get better work done more efficiently. Space science is one of the few branches of science that is so prohibitively expensive and technically challenging that a concerted national effort.

Creativity Requires Money To Act

[cmholm]

Combine NASA's budget with it's marching orders from the Administration and Congress, and you've got a situation that in-house creativity ain't gonna solve.

Between the ISS and Shuttle ops, 40% of the budget goes to Lock-Mart and Boeing just to keep the ISS' lights on. Then 25% for technologies to support the Moon/Mars plan.

The remaining 35% ($5.3 bil) for space science can only go so far. Got existing missions to support/complete. Plus, this Administration ain't too hot on Earth science missions. The data returned tends to include a lot of climatology data they don't want to hear about, so it's cheaper to not collect the data in the first place, rather than twist researchers' arms after the fact.

Re:I mostly agree

[Stephan Schulz]

FYI the moon is not tidally locked and your telescope would only be usable about 1/3 -1/2 of the time, this is the same reason why you'd need 3 beaming stations for lunar based solar power.

Of course the moon is tidally locked to the Earth. Earth is not (yet) locked to the moon. But the far side of the moon is named for a reason.

A telescope still would have to deal with the sun, though. At lunar night, there should be no problem at all (no significant scattering without a real atmosphere). During lunar day, the question is how close to the sun you can point the telescope and still get good images (and avoid damage to the optics and sensors in the worst case).

Re:from 2002, maybe.

[rabun_bike]

Nice find! Here are the goals of the 2006 NASA strategic Plan. I think it is very interesting only one has anything to do with our own planetary system. The overall theme appears to be space dominance and aerospace technology.

Strategic Goal 1: Fly the Shuttle as safely as possible until its retirement not later than 2010

Strategic Goal 2: Complete the International Space Station in a manner consistent with NASA's International Partner commitments and needs of human exploration.

Strategic Goal 3: Develop a balanced overall program of science, exploration, and aeronautics consistent with the redirection of the human spaceflight program to focus on exploration.

Sub-goal 3B: Understand the Sun and its effects on Earth and the solar system.

Sub-goal 3C: Advance scientfic knowledge of the origin and history of the solar system, the potential for life elsewhere, and the hazards and resources present as humans explore space.

Sub-goal 3D: Discover the origin, structure, evolution, and destiny of the universe, and search for Earth-like planets.

Sub-goal 3E: Advance knowledge in the fundamental disciiplines of aeronautics, and develop technologies for safer aircraft and higher capacity airspace systems.

Sub-goal 3F: Understand the effects of the space environment and human performance, and test new technologies and countermeasures for long-duration human space exploration.

Strategic Goal 4: Bring a new Crew Exploration Vehicle into service as soon as possible after Shuttle retirement.

Strategic Goal 5: Encourage the pursuit of appropriate partnerships with the emerging commercial space sector.

Strategic Goal 6: Establish a lunar return program having the maximum possible utility for later missions to Mars and other destinations.