Bush NASA Space Budget. OUCH cries the multitudes.

http://snipurl.com/n848
http://news.google.com/ Results about 552 for Bush NASA Space Budget.

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/0...orld/90559.htm
Scientists: Bush's space program not using money well

Scientists Criticize NASA Plan to Cut Research Funds -- Space.com

Astronauts blast science budget cuts -- CNN

Scientists object to Bush's moon-Mars missions -- San Jose Mercury News

NASA's Budget Blunder -- TIME

Bush cuts carry consequences for science, experts say -- USA Today

Shuttle missions killing science, space exploration -- Houston
Chronicle, United States

Space Hawks Chase Death Rays -- Wired News

The High Cost of Boots on the Moon -- Universe Today

Congress urges NASA to keep up with China -- OCRegister, CA
[KEEP UP WITH CHINA???!?!? It's come down to
the US trying to KEEP UP WITH CHINA?!?!]


==============================
Budgets Imperil Environmental Satellites

Excerps follow...
March 5, 2006, 11:25AM
Budgets Imperil Environmental Satellites


- Budget cuts and poor management may be jeopardizing the future of
our eyes in orbit _ America's fleet of environmental satellites, vital
tools for forecasting hurricanes, protecting water supplies and
predicting global warming.

"The system of environmental satellites is at risk of collapse," said
Richard A. Anthes, president of the University Corporation for
Atmospheric Research. "Every year that goes by without the system being
addressed is a problem."

.... "We may be losing something here, something that is good for all of
us," said Francisco P.J. Valero, an atmospheric scientist at the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

.... Meanwhile, the list of delayed, downsized and canceled satellites
is a long one:

_NASA's Earth Observing System was conceived in the 1980s as a 15-year
program that would collect comprehensive data about the planet's
oceans, atmosphere and land surface. It was originally intended to send
three generations of spacecraft into orbit at five-year intervals, but
budget shortfalls limited the project to only one round of launches.

_Landsat, a series of satellites that have provided detailed images of
the ground surface for more than 30 years, is in danger of experiencing
a gap in service. Landsat 7, launched in April 1999, is scheduled to be
replaced by a next-generation satellite in 2011. But if the existing
satellite fails before that date and NASA has not developed a
contingency plan, scientists, land managers and others who depend on
Landsat images could be out of luck.

_The launch of a satellite designed to measure rainfall over the entire
Earth, the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, has been pushed
back to 2012. But the satellite it is designed to replace, the Tropical
Rainfall Measuring Mission, can't possibly last that long. That means
there will be a period of several years when scientists have no access
to the accurate global precipitation measurements that help them
improve hurricane forecasts and predict the severity of droughts and
flooding.

_In December, scientists working on the Hydros mission received a
letter canceling their program. They were developing a satellite that
would measure soil moisture and differentiate between frozen and
unfrozen ground, an increasingly important distinction since melting of
the Arctic permafrost has accelerated over the past several decades.
The satellite also would have improved drought and flood forecasting.

_Last month Scripps' Valero was notified that the Deep Space Climate
Observatory, a project he has led for more than seven years, would be
canceled. The spacecraft has already been built, but NASA is reluctant
to spend the $60 million to $100 million it would cost to launch and
operate it.

"It would be a tremendous return in science on the dollar," Valero
said.

The observatory would have provided valuable information about how
clouds, snow cover, airborne dust and other phenomena affect the
balance between the amount of sunlight Earth absorbs and the amount of
heat energy it emits. And because it would have hovered between Earth
and the sun at a distance of roughly a million miles, it would have
been able to observe the entire sunlit surface of the planet
constantly. Such observations could greatly enhance scientists'
understanding how much the planet has warmed in recent years and help
them predict how much warmer it will get in the future.

_A new generation of weather satellites being developed jointly by
NASA, the Department of Defense and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration has gone so far over budget that federal law
requires a review of whether it is worth continuing. Even if the
program does survive, the first spacecraft in the National
Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System can't be
launched until at least 2010, and probably 2012.

The current generation of polar-orbiting weather satellites is critical
to weather forecasting because it offers a complete picture of the
planet every six-hours. That detailed coverage is especially important
for developing four- to seven-day forecasts, because it gives
meteorologists the ability to track weather systems as they evolve in
both time and space.

Weather forecasts could be compromised if the launch of the final
satellite from the previous generation of polar orbiters, scheduled for
late 2007, fails. The chances of a satellite failing on launch are
typically about 10 percent.

Bush NASA Space Budget. OUCH cries the multitudes.



"OUCH" cries those feeding at the trough, as if

they owned the trough and it was there for

THEIR benefit.

Jim Oberg wrote:
Bush NASA Space Budget. OUCH cries the multitudes.



"OUCH" cries those feeding at the trough, as if

they owned the trough and it was there for

THEIR benefit.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying the taxpayers own
the trough and therefore have a right to feed at the trough and benefit
from their taxes? Is that what you meant? Or did you have something
else in mind. Please clarify.

Anybody can scream when his rice-bowl is threatened,
and as the philosopher said, there is no passion on earth
to match the passion of a public functionary for his function.

Public funding is for public benefit, or should be (of course
it often isn't) -- not for private benefit. But i'm an old
reactionary, i guess... sigh



"H2-PV NOW" wrote in message
oups.com...

Jim Oberg wrote:
Bush NASA Space Budget. OUCH cries the multitudes.



"OUCH" cries those feeding at the trough, as if

they owned the trough and it was there for

THEIR benefit.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying the taxpayers own
the trough and therefore have a right to feed at the trough and benefit
from their taxes? Is that what you meant? Or did you have something
else in mind. Please clarify.

Jim Oberg wrote:
Anybody can scream when his rice-bowl is threatened,
and as the philosopher said, there is no passion on earth
to match the passion of a public functionary for his function.

Public funding is for public benefit, or should be (of course
it often isn't) -- not for private benefit. But i'm an old
reactionary, i guess... sigh

That would be generous, you are a dumb American fascist.

Yes, as if the American public wasn't drunk and dumb enough,
Jim Oberg proposes that we dumb the NASCAR dummies down even
further, by spending hundreds of billions of dollars to go
back to the moon using obsolete technology, at the expense
of going to Vesta and Ceres with DAWN, which is a nearly
completed set of mission hardware, with only a further cost
of roughly 17 million dollars (plus launch), which will cost
a further 10 million dollars to just to terminate.

There we have it folks, Jim Oberg, Michael Griffin and good
old George W. Bush! These guys are doing a heck of a job!

Heck of a propaganda job there Jim!

Americans on steroids!

http://cosmic.lifeform.org

"Thomas Lee Elifritz" wrote
Yes, as if the American public wasn't drunk and dumb enough,
Jim Oberg proposes that we dumb the NASCAR dummies down even
further, by spending hundreds of billions of dollars to go
back to the moon using obsolete technology, at the expense
of going to Vesta and Ceres with DAWN, which is a nearly
completed set of mission hardware, with only a further cost
of roughly 17 million dollars (plus launch), which will cost
a further 10 million dollars to just to terminate.

Bush's plan for NASA is no different that the Republican plan enacted
against all other government programs. Establish lofty goals, underfund the
program until it fails, and then use that failure to cut all funding for the
program.

It's patently obvious.

snidely wrote:
Scott Nudds wrote:
"Thomas Lee Elifritz" wrote
Jim Oberg proposes
[...]
Bush's plan for NASA is
[...]

You missed that Tommy is accusing Jim Oberg of being a pusher of GWB's
plan. Tommy is very creative.

With an administration this incompetent, representing a voting populace
this dumbed down, apathetic and ignorant, some creativity is in order.

http://cosmic.lifeform.org

You know all of the funding is being redirected to shore up the unsafe
wasteful shuttle.

look at dawn, and others which will cost little more to fly.

cut for shuttle

Bob Haller wrote:
You know all of the funding is being redirected to shore up the unsafe
wasteful shuttle.

Oh ... Bull****. It's being wasted on an entirely new system (ESAS) that
will cost tens of billions to develop and cost in excess of a billion
dollars a launch. Not flying the shuttle is what is killing us, we
should be flying the hell out of it before we retire it, and use it to
develop a credible reusable SSTO replacement. The problem is that we
have an administration, US and NASA, based upon unfounded fear, fear of
nearly non existent terrorists, fear of crashing a space shuttle, fear
truth and honesty and science. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

look at dawn, and others which will cost little more to fly.

I'm looking but I don't see it.

cut for shuttle

Oh Bull****, Cut VSE and ESAS, and fire Bush and Griffin.

What we need is rationality in government. We spend more money in one
month that we'd need to develop a credible space shuttle replacement,
and we could be, should be, shoulda been, flying the hell out of it
ever since it crashed. The Schtick and an expendable SSME is simply not
credible, it's INSANE! We have leaders that are INSANE! Do you get it?

You could get on an airline and crash, in fact crashing in an airline is
far more probable than your dying in a terrorist attack, which is just
about as probable as your dying in an asteroid strike. I don't see the
astronauts screaming in fear and running away from the space shuttle,
just as I am not screaming in fear of flying, as I am neither afraid
of terrorists hiding out in caves in Afghanistan or fighting in IRAQ.

I am not afraid of you George W. Bush and Michael Griffin!

Both of you are nothing but ignorant assholes.

http://cosmic.lifeform.org

On Tue, 7 Mar 2006 11:24:53 -0500, "Scott Nudds"
wrote:

Bush's plan for NASA is no different that the Republican plan enacted
against all other government programs. Establish lofty goals, underfund the
program until it fails, and then use that failure to cut all funding for the
program.

It's patently obvious.

Only, it seems, to those predisposed to hate any proposal coming from
a Republican... like, you know, 99% of the Democrats.

Its difficult to blame the current space budget crisis on Bush. He has
raised NASA's budget each year of his Presidency, afterall (his
predecessor cut the NASA budget all but two years of his.) NASA told
Bush it needed x dollars to return the Shuttle to flight. It turns out
NASA was wrong and acutally needed x + 50% to do the job (another in a
long line of incompetent NASA budgeting... see also "Dawn".) The
"lofty goals" haven't really come into play much yet, the vast
majority of the science funding diversion went to Shuttle Return to
Flight, not CEV/Moon/Mars.

Or are you saying Shuttle and Station are all Bush's fault, and the
previous six Presidents don't have any responsibility for this mess at
all?

Brian