Massive cuts of NASA budget

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http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/02/13/white-house-asks-for-brutal-planetary-nasa-budget-cuts/
Why?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ojd13kZlCA[/youtube]

Yeah.

The government is broke. That's why.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

In the heyday of the Apollo project NASA's budget was 4% of the federal budget? Today? Just 0.5%.

I hope everyone gets used to the giant epic, patriotic communist artwork that is destined to cover the surface of the moon

Its because "terrorist" are scary or Blackwaters greedy, you can decide.

Wonderful, first went the Constellation Program and now this?

If it's really because of debt, then why don't they don't they make cuts from things where more money is spent like from the military budget? NASA's budget is so small that cutting funds to it hardly frees up anything that can be used to repay the debt.

Defense budget is not the largest chunk of the US federal budget: defense spending is about 20%. Majority of that money is spent on soldier's salaries... not weapons.

Wanna know what the largest chunk of the federal budget is? Entitlements: medicare, medicaid, social security, wellfare. Whooping 56%!

45% of US families receive government support.

I have a solution for ya: get a job, drop the vices, and reduce discretionary spending. Don't eat junk food, don't drink, don't smoke, work out regularly, and maybe they'll be able to support themselves and won't need a handfull of expensive pills every single day.

A lot of issues would go away overnight if only people changed their habits.

While it seems suicidal as a nation to cut money from NASA, there are some things to consider:

The top 25% of India outnumbers the population of America. China may reveal even higher numbers considering 90% of them are said to be related to Temujin who was himself a genius.

China and India both have more honor honor roll kids than we have kids.

We are poorly positioned in this country in terms of education to compete with developing countries whose education has reached parity with our own and now exceeds us. We are 25/30 in terms of education among developed nations and #1 in terms of confidence... a disparity that pretty much ensures that we will fail. It is necessary to shed some of one's confidence, and confidence in America in times like these, otherwise we won't look for solutions and won't do what we really need to do in order to save this country. There are ways and I have ideas that will preserve our nation's wealth and greatness and will keep America as one of the nations with the best cared for people on the planet.

America from this day forward will be a follower nation in global development. We are no longer the leader. We think we are because we are confident and the rest of the world knows there is still equity in the US to make money from. We are still one of the largest markets, consumerism and our military is all that are left of our leadership. This won't improve in our country until our dollar reaches parity with other developing currencies such as that of China. This means the GBP and Euro will inevitably have to come to parity as well. China and India will lead us into space when we start the first sustainable colonies wherever they may be unless they fail due to pressures from corruption or bad decision making which may be possible given that history is apparently not often taught or known among their population.

NASA will likely become part of the European Space Agency or team up with other agencies from newly developed nations and we will share our strength of human talent. There will very likely be a slow down in our space economy for the time being.

Supercomputing and AI will bring us an increased capacity for development, but the necessity of people will remain to create capacity within AI, at least for a time.

Some might say that IQ isn't everything and they are right. Freedom and open culture is attractive, it allows people to think and neurodiversity (read: existence of many minds) to reign , but again it isn't everything and has its weaknesses. Where we are free to be ignorant and let passion and emotion, rather than logic inspire us to make decisions or accept solutions that interfere with freedoms, we shoot ourselves and our countrymen in the foot. That is perhaps why there is a hole in the state of Florida (Lake Okeechobee). Decisions must first be thought through logically, sources of information must be reviewed and purged of inadequate or incomplete conclusions, and when all that is done, then and only then can we emotionalize the information and creatively build that knowledge into our culture. Gone must be the times of scare tactics in science and politics and it must give way to fundamentals and rational thought. This will of course require a rating system for the reliability of information where at the bottom you have opinions and at the top you have facts.

So there are some changes that need to be made and everyone needs to learn them.

I gave up on NASA after the Challenger murders.

So did I. I finally realized what an incompetent corrupt organization NASA had become. What a disappointment! The management is no better than a bunch of Soviet apparachicks.

ruveyn

I totally misread the second word in the title of this thread

NASA seem to be more interested in the suppression of information than the proliferation of it. If there's something they have found that they don't want you to see, it just won't be shown or will appear as a badly photoshoped smudge on an image. No matter where you look now there seems to be a conspiracy, mind you they are interesting to think about.

It is more complicated than that. Healthy food is expensive..many poor cant afford to eat heathy...junk food is cheap. Alot of people who work still recieve goverment help. The REAL unemployment numbers are around 25 percent, the Obama administration flat out lied about any progress they have been making on the economy. While they say it is at 9 percent, that number excludes those who longer recieve unemployment benefits but have not found a job...the underemployed are even a greater number. With them cutting min. wage in some states like florida, those who could scrape by on tips, may not have that option anymore

As for medicare, Tricare which is government and military insurance requires that its disabled people have medicare as primary. I wish they did not do this...it makes finding a doctor for those who really need good quality care near impossible because of all the severe cuts to medicare,all they are left with is quacks who no-one but those on medicare will go to because they have no other choice. But it is just the way they do things, not only old people suffer when medicare is cut, so does the injured and sick from the military. Great way to show their support for those sacrificing their health and life for their country.

Not all health problems are a result of bad habits, I have a life threatening seizure disorder, without expensive medication, I die. It took a long time to find a seizure medicine that works for me...the one I am on is expensive, but it works
In no way is my seizure disorder a result of bad habits but actually caused by an infant formula that was recalled by the food and drug administration because of a lack of nutritional regulations for infant formula. That has changed since...in fact, that event sparked legislation which made stricter nutritional guidelines for infant formula, before that, there were more nutritional guidelines for dog food than infant formula which greatly shapes how the infant brain develops...in my case caused a life threatening seizure disorder which I have nearly died from more times than I can count on both hands. Each near fatal seizure causes more brain injury due to a lack of oxigen to my brain because I quit breathing and my heart stops beating, the only thing that can stop my seizures is an emergency injectable seizure medication.

SO what do you say to the mothers of kids with downs' syndrome...eat better, exersize, stop taking so much expensive medicine? What about those soilders that have serious medical problems due to combat related injuries...hurry up an die already, thanks for your service, we no longer need you.

I mean really?? The budget problems can be resolved by a reasonable tax plan, I pay more in taxes than many CEO's....I dont think that is reasonable. It can also be resolved by bringing back the jobs that were sent over seas. Most jobs for average americans now days are service industry jobs which just doesnt pay well enough for the average worker to live in a way that one can eat healthy, and make sure all their needs are met.

Jojo

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3677



Given what happened in places like Chile in the 1980's, the idea that too much is going to entitlements is more feeling than fact. Ask the upper classes in Latin America why there are so many poor, and they'll tell you it's because the poor are lazy. Ask them why their countries are such sh*tholes, and they'll say it's because the poor are lazy. The poor are pretty much the cause of everything that's wrong. The unfortunate rich, who have all the policy power, are the real victims. Or that's what they think. Unfortunately, they (the rich) are they are the ones who own the newspapers, radio & TV stations, and fund think tanks to provide all that media with a 24/7 stream of lies and distortions. When you have all that it means never having to admit (or accept) that your perceptions (and prescriptions) are wrong. So, "the problem is the poor are lazy," will always be the dominant message in society.

Economic times are though so everyone is being cut in someway. NASA is not an incompetent organization as a whole. It just doesn't have realistic ambitions. Everyone wants a manned space mission to mars. I think we should be building a base on the moon first. NASA doesn't have a vision, and they cannot justify their existence any longer.

Whoever is doing these cuts from NASA's budget are fools. Space exploration, over a long period of time, returns so much. But it takes time to cultivate these rewards.

If anyone thinks the private sector is going to pick up on space exploration then they are delusional. There is no long term benefit, and it is risky. A company, private or public, would rather get their money following a more proven methodology than invest in unknowns.

How do you explain the emergence of commercial air flights, long before we had high capacity sturdy airline planes?

ruveyn

As much of a science advocate I am, I actually think the money might be better spent on other things.

Like I always say though NASA may be very critical in the future. If we can travel to a distant planet, or travel through the time, the money will be worth it. But science for the sake of science is narcissistic endeavor.

Our landing on the moon was pretty hedonistic. I mean the whole purpose of that was to prove how superior technologically we were to the rest of the world. This isn't what science should be about. Science should be about helping humanity and if the best way to help humanity is to take some of the funding out of NASA and give it to other areas, then I am fine with that.

I'd like to see money taken out of nuclear weapon technology as well.

Science should be about helping people, not proving a point, or destroying the world.

If someone can prove to me that NASA is about helping the world then I may change my mind.

Again this is not an attack on science and all it is a shame. But I just don't see the evidence that NASA is helping the world more than it is hurting by spending trillions of dollars on fun scientific technology. I mean it's fun, it's cool, but where is it headed? Is the whole of humanity being taken into account? That is the question that needs to be asked.