Tag: debt

The dying NASA astrophysics program

11:25 am

The dying NASA astrophysics program.

With support from President Barack Obama, the agency’s Earth science budget is at an all-time high. Over the next four months, the planetary science division is due to launch three major missions: to the Moon, to Mars and to Jupiter. And the heliophysics division plans to send a probe plunging into the blistering atmosphere of the Sun, closer than ever before. But because the overall NASA science budget is relatively flat, something had to give. Since 2008, astrophysics funding has plunged relative to other NASA science and relative to physics and astronomy funding at other agencies.

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The U.S. and the rising Russian space program

12:48 pm

The Russians yesterday successfully launched their first space telescope since the fall of the Soviet Union. Here is a Google translation of a Russian article describing Spektr-R’s research goals:

[Spektr-R is] designed to study galaxies and quasars in the radio, the study of black holes and neutron stars in the Milky Way, as well as the regions immediately adjacent to the massive black holes. In addition, using the observatory, scientists expect to receive information about pulsars and the interstellar plasma. It is planned that the “Spektr-R” will work in orbit for at least 5 years.

Though this particular space telescope is probably not going to rewrite the science of astrophysics, its launch is historically significant. It indicates that Russia has just about recovered from the seventy-plus years of bankrupt communist rule that ended in 1990.
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“Re-election is the farthest thing from my mind.”

12:44 am

We need more elected officials like this:

“Re-election is the farthest thing from my mind,” said Representative Tom Reed, a freshman Republican from upstate New York. “Like many of my colleagues in the freshman class, I came down here to get our fiscal house in order and take care of the threat to national security that we see in the federal debt. We came here not to have long careers. We came here to do something. We don’t care about re-election.”

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Being tone deaf is not a good way to fund a government space program

11:59 am

Yesterday the House appropriations committee’s released budget numbers that included no additional funds for commercial space, limiting the subsidies to $312 million, the same number as last year and significantly less than the $850 million requested by the Obama administration.

This is what I have thought might happen since last year. The tone deaf manner in which the Obama administration has implemented the private space subsidies is leaving all funding for NASA vulnerable.
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NASA stalls, Texas lawmakers fume

10:12 pm

The law is such an inconvenient thing: In a bipartisan effort, Texas lawmakers roast NASA administrator Charles Bolden for not meeting mandated Congressional deadlines for Congress’s personally designed rocket, the program-formerly-called-Constellation.

The heavy-lift rocket and capsule that Congress insists NASA build is a complete waste of money and nothing more than pork. It will never get built, mainly because Congress has given NASA less money and less time to build it than they did for Constellation under the Bush administration. Unfortunately, the reason they continue to require NASA to build it is to provide pork to their districts.

In a perfect world this funding would be cut now, especially considering the state of the federal debt.
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House spending panel cuts John Holdren’s science office budget by 55%

7:18 pm

The House spending panel today proposed cutting the budget of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) office, run by John Holdren, by 55%.

“OSTP has chosen to disregard a strong and unambiguous legislative prohibition on bilateral engagement with China or Chinese-owned companies,” says language accompanying the 2012 bill, to be voted on tomorrow by the full appropriations committee. “OSTP’s behavior demonstrates a lack of respect for the policy and oversight roles of the Congress.”

I think the Obama administration is about to discover that ignoring the law as passed by Congress can have bad consequences.

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Public debt and the peril of Obamacare

11:51 am

Public debt and the peril of Obamacare.

Countries with universal healthcare fall into two camps:

1. Totalitarian regimes like Cuba and North Korea, and authoritarian Third World countries in the Middle East and Africa.

2. Western nations that free-ride off of American military spending and its provision of international security, but nonetheless run unsustainable budgets with immense debts trying to pay for their social welfare states. [emphasis mine]

In other words, we had better repeal this monstrosity or we face economic collapse, probably preceded by a dictatorship.

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House Budget Bill Would Leave it to NASA To Apportion Bulks of Cuts

9:49 pm

The House bill that brings NASA’s budget back to 2008 levels essentially leaves it to NASA to figure out what to cut.

If true, what this means is that NASA itself will have to choose what it considers important. The one problem is that according to this article Congress is still requiring NASA to spend $3 billion on the program-formerly-called-Constellation. which gives the agency less flexibility in doling out the cash.

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House proposes to drop NASA’s budget to 2008 levels, eliminate Webb Telescope

4:25 pm

The House today proposed cutting NASA’s budget back to 2008 levels while eliminating all funds for the James Webb Space Telescope.

As much as I’d hate to see the Webb telescope die, it has cost far more than planned, is way behind schedule, and carries a gigantic risk of failure. However, if I had a choice, I’d rather they cut the $1.95 billion for Congress’s homemade heavy-lift rocket, the program-formerly-called-Constellation. There is a much better chance that Webb will get completed, launched, and work, than there is for this improvised and impossibly costly Congressionally conceived rocket.

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