NASA veteran warns Hubble faces death by a hundred cuts "I would say I'm cautiously optimistic, but that probably overstates how I'm feeling." Dr John Grunsfeld, former astronaut, NASA chief scientist, and retired associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, was talking to The Register in the wake of the proposed cuts to NASA's budget and, in particular, the …
Putin really getting money's worth for his investment in him I guess.
And China is liking that they'll be dominating science a decade from now since we've decided to save the < %1 of the budget that goes towards science from NASA etc. and science related stuff like grants so that Trump can pay for ICE to become the world's largest police force and imprison a bunch of people without charges in privately owned for-profit prisons on the taxpayer's dime.
Higher deficits, less public good, that's our pedo in chief in a nutshell!
The change in budget passed won’t make Jack-shit difference.
They will just sack the relevant personnel, hobble the programmes and as a consequence underspend on budget (or transfer it to Artemis overspend).
SCOTUS is (majority) ignoring precedent and allowing holds in sacking staff across the government that be ignored whilst legal action pending. Normal would be to keep the status quo.
When many of the staff sacked win their cases, there will be nothing to return to… so Trump Administration aims achieved, despite legal blocks and case wins
Take a look at CFPB or USAid as examples, and the disablement of the guardrail of the Merit Systems Protection Board.
While you're not wrong about carcinogenic presidents, it's more complex than that. Trump is not the problem. Trump is just another symptom (albeit a prominent one) of America's rapidly accelerating slide downhill. NASA (which is arguably one of the last things America can be honestly proud of) is just one of the victims, along with all other scientific efforts.
This is nothing new, and as a result the US are already being overtaken left, right and center in many fields of science and engineering, from AI to space exploration (e.g. Hayabusa, Chang'e, and Chinese plans for a manned mission that are a lot more viable than what the US is currently fooling itself with) to engineering (BYD vs. Tesla comes to mind) and this will only continue to get worse.
The cancer is not limited to Trump. It has metastasized and spread to the point where even the symptoms can no longer be managed. For decades half or more of all Americans have been convinced that a regression into the Middle Ages is a good thing, and what we see today is just a continuation of that trend.
I wonder if that's really a bad thing though. When the USSR collapsed and the US was the one superpower in the world that's clearly not good for the rest of the world, and I think the issues you bring up show while it may have been seen as good in the US it probably wasn't good for the US after all. A sense of "American exceptionalism" that we can do no wrong leads to a lot of bad decisions, and the lack of a real enemy (one you are worried will drop a bomb on your head, not merely one that will sell you cheaper consumer products) erodes public support for science and research.
So I don't think it is a bad thing if China catches up and passes the US. That might be exactly what we need to wake us up. But it may not - because people aren't afraid of China the way many were afraid of the USSR. Because no one believes they are going to attack the US. All they do is sell us cheaper stuff, and for most people that's seen as a good thing. The only people who don't like it are those whose jobs are affected by it, but most of that "hurt" has already occurred. They are probably more worried about AI hurting their personal financial circumstances than they are worried about China.
That's why no one really cares if China lands on the Moon again before the US does, or makes it to Mars first. Hell I really care about science and I have a hard time caring if China does those things first. It is still a benefit to science overall if China pushes it forward, even if it is stagnates in the US in the face of stupid budget cutting decisions (while we waste money on idiotic missile "shields" we don't need and spend hundreds of billions on ICE to turn them into the SS)
Are as different as Chalk and Cheese.
How many times has Marjorie Taylor Green said 'I don't believe in Science'.
Trump and the rest of his cabal in DC are rabid climate change deniers.
Then their attack on education is right there for everyone to see.
Only God, Guns and Trump are allowed in their warped minds.
Elon the not so almighty is about to get a rude awakening when the budgets for everything SpaceX and Starlink want to do are decimated.
USA, land of the Dumb (by design)
Well half of them just want to line their pockets and the other half are a bunch of wingnuts who want destroy science, as it might prove the Earth isn’t flat or that climate change is happening, or not be in line with their personal favourite religious dogma, so unfortunately NASA is screwed. Decades of amazing fundamental science in the hands of the worst government the US has probably ever put into office. It’s depressing!
The first A stands for Aeronautics.
It's not just rockets in a hard vacuum.
Unfortunately, once you start measuring surface sea temperatures and air temperatures and composition at different heights you may upset vested interests down on the ground.
No more balloons, Jumbo Jets and low altitude rockets for you!
"If you look at the Hubble budget," [Dr. John Grunsfeld] says, "it's currently $93.3 million."
I love science, I think NASA is painfully under-funded and under-staffed, and I think the Hubble itself is/was worth every penny spent on it (including this.)
That said, I am very curious as to what they are spending that $93 million a year on.
Seems like rather a lot, so I assume I am missing some crucial information.
"That said, I am very curious as to what they are spending that $93 million a year on.
Seems like rather a lot, so I assume I am missing some crucial information."
I expect the top people in the program are making more than minimum wage, considerably more. There's also a bunch of "total cost accounting" which means they are 'renting' dish time to communicate with the telescope, renting the building for the operations center (at full whack), lots of compliance costs and contingency planning so they'll know what to do if LGM's raid it for parts. Plus 10% here and there to make sure Congress will continue to vote to fund it.
It IS an awful lot, for budgeting purposes a FTE (full time employee) is 250,000/year, divide that into 93 million and you get 372 full time employees to operate the telescope. You decide if thats a lot of people or not. Funding institutions that use the data, grad students that work with and interpret the data, etc is just not in the cards anymore for this 1-reaction wheel telescope. We can still use it but if people want the data to work with its time they pay their own salaries instead of NASA paying them.
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