Tag: budget

NASA has now agreed to contribute equipment and researchers to a European dark energy mission.

9:17 am

The check is in the mail: NASA has now agreed to contribute equipment and researchers to a European dark energy mission.

And why should Europe have any expectation that NASA will follow through? Europe’s ExoMars project was screwed badly when NASA pulled out last year. Nor was that the first time the U.S. government reneged on a deal with Europe.

Considering the fragile nature of the U.S. federal budget, I wouldn’t depend on anything from NASA or any U.S. government agency for the foreseeable future. And this includes the various private space companies such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences that are using NASA subsidies to build their spaceships. Get those things built, and quickly! The government money could disappear very soon.

0 comments

An official of SpaceX announced today that the company plans on its first manned launch by 2015, and that the astronauts will be its employees, not NASA’s.

5:06 pm

The competition heats up: An official of SpaceX announced today that the company plans on its first manned launch by 2015, and that the astronauts will be its employees, not NASA’s.

Back when the shuttle program was still alive and NASA astronauts could have applied political pressure to keep it running, some said they should, if only to save their jobs. They did not, and instead toed the party line and supported the shuttle’s retirement even though no replacement was even close to being operational.

How’s that working out for you, guys, eh?

The truth is that there is no justification any longer for the astronaut corp at NASA. They have no vehicle, and any future space vehicle is going to be built and operated by others who will chose their own pilots.

13 comments

The future of the social security program is worse than you think.

9:27 am

The future of the social security program is worse than you think.

For the first time in more than a quarter-century, Social Security ran a deficit in 2010: It spent $49 billion dollars more in benefits than it received in revenues, and drew from its trust funds to cover the shortfall. Those funds — a $2.7 trillion buffer built in anticipation of retiring baby boomers — will be exhausted by 2033, the government currently projects.

And this is from the New York Times, of all places! Of course, as soon as any politician suggests instituting any of the reforms suggested in the article the Times will then start screaming bloody murder in protest. They are very good at appearing nuanced and thoughtful about the debt, until someone actually suggests doing something about it.

2 comments

The federal government has reached its debt limit today.

7:58 pm

The day of reckoning looms: The federal government has reached its debt limit today.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told Congress that the U.S. hit its statutory debt limit, necessitating emergency steps announced last week as a way to keep funding the government and avoid default. Geithner said he had issued a “debt issuance suspension period” for the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, effective today and to last until Feb. 28, 2013. The letter said the Treasury was taking similar action for the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund.

This is only a temporary solution that solves nothing. And the fake negotiations over the fake “fiscal cliff” are doing even less than nothing to deal with the debt situation. We are bankrupt and worse, we are continuing to refuse to face that reality.

1 comment

The federal government will hit the debt ceiling on December 31.

4:27 pm

The day of reckoning looms: The federal government will hit the debt ceiling on December 31.

The treasury will do things to stall the inevitable crash, but in the end, our elected leaders – backed by the voters — are doing nothing to solve this debt problem. (On this note, consider the absolute refusal of this Democrat to consider any spending cuts in negotiations with the Republicans.) The crash is coming.

1 comment

Sequestration and NASA

9:49 am

Here we go again. Yesterday an aerospace organization, Aerospace Industries Association, released a sixteen page report [pdf] claiming that NASA will lose 20,500 jobs and NOAA 2,500 if the federal government goes over the “fiscal cliff” and sequestration happens.

Immediately, a slew of news articles xeroxed this report to pound home this point, noting the job loses for the specific cities of each newspaper and how disaster awaits the country if sequestration is allowed to take place and we go over that blessed “fiscal cliff”:

The trouble is, this is all hogwash and bad journalism.
» Read more

0 comments

The GAO is concerned about the future budget and schedule of the James Webb Space Telescope.

10:07 pm

O goody: The GAO is concerned about the future budget and schedule of the James Webb Space Telescope.

This is very bad news if true for NASA’s astronomy program. Webb was originally budgeted at $1 billion and scheduled to launch in 2011. Its budget is now $8.8 billion and its launch is now set for October 2018. And until it launches there is little money to build any other space telescope.

1 comment

The real fiscal cliff

1:42 pm

The real fiscal cliff.

But no one … at this point seems to have grasped that [nothing will be solved] unless the avoidance of the fiscal cliff includes measures that radically cut the deficit and end the unspeakable fraud of 70 percent of the country’s $1 to $1.5 trillion federal deficit being covered by phony notes cyber-clicked into existence from the Treasury’s 100 percent subsidiary, the Federal Reserve. No test of psychological confidence will be passed by this charade, nor any test of Grade 3 arithmetic either. The administration swaddles itself in a few weeks of a record-breaking rise in economic-growth and tax-collection rates. But this is only three weeks, and applies to a built-in annual budget deficit of $1.5 trillion on top of an accumulated national debt that took 232 years to get to $10 trillion in 2008 and made it to $16 trillion this year. (And there are still 5 million fewer people working in the U.S. than there were four years ago.) [emphasis mine]

This fake political term, “The fiscal cliff”, is an unmitigated lie, created by politicians to disguise their failure to actually deal with the debt. They are using it to avoid even cutting spending levels back to 2008 numbers, a reduction in spending that would hardly be noticed in the bloated, overweight, and increasingly oppressive federal bureaucracy.

8 comments

The Pentagon has decided to buy its launch services from more than just Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

8:49 am

The competition heats up: The Pentagon has decided to buy its launch services from more than just Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Under the new plan, the Air Force can buy as many as 14 launches over the next five years from possible bidders such as Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, and Orbital Sciences Corp . The service may also buy as many as 36 launches from United Launch Alliance, the Lockheed-Boeing venture, with an option to purchase the other 14 launches if the competitors haven’t been certified to launch military and spy satellites that can cost up to $1 billion each.

Originally the military planned to purchase all of its launches from Boeing and Lockheed. Political pressure from SpaceX has now forced them to widen the competition, or at least, make noises that they are doing so. If you read the above paragraph closely the plan still favors the original two companies and is strongly stacked to hand all the launches over to them anyway.

Update: My pessimism above was premature. SpaceX has been awarded a contract for two launches under this new policy.

1 comment

“1,200 days and $5 trillion in new debt since Senate Democrats passed a budget.”

3:02 pm

“1,200 days and $5 trillion in new debt since Senate Democrats passed a budget.”

An annual budget is required by law. Harry Reid’s answer: “It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage.” And what do the American people do? They reward the Democrats, providing proof positive that we are in very bad shape and heading for disaster.

0 comments
1 … 24 25 26 27 28 … 64