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Budget

JPL, Budget Cuts, and Jobs

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 4, 2012
Filed under , , , , ,

NASA budget might have less space for JPL’s planetary science, LA Times
“U.S. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) has pledged to fight the cuts, and he grilled NASA Administrator Charles Bolden about the budget request last week at a meeting of a congressional science subcommittee. Schiff was joined by several Republicans, including Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas), who said NASA’s planetary science program would not survive the proposed cut. “We’re making intriguing progress in identifying the building blocks of life in other places,” Schiff said in an interview. “To walk back from that and leave those questions unanswered means that we step back from potentially game-changing revelations about the origins of life in the universe, about our place in the cosmos. It’s hard to put a price tag on that.”
NASA budget might have less space for JPL’s planetary science, Pasadena Sun
“President Obama’s $17.7-billion budget request for NASA for the 2013 fiscal year includes a $300-million cut to planetary science, the very work JPL specializes in. That could mean a 20% reduction in NASA’s planetary science budget and, at JPL, job losses in the hundreds.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

17 responses to “JPL, Budget Cuts, and Jobs”

  1. Anonymous says:
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    Congress has placed various NASA operations into the role of starving prisoners fighting over the rats in their cell. Among all the responsible parties, none is so dysfunctional as Congress.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      Agreed.  And I have to smile at the same old tactics.  Schiff is going to argue for retaining jobs in his constituency, but the reason he gives is the science questions still unanswered.  Just once I’d like to hear one of these guys state his real reasons for doing something.

      Steve

  2. dogstar29 says:
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     Mr. Obama made clear long ago that Constellation (now rebranded SLS/Orion) should be dropped. This is a very expensive program that has no possible mission. This would have made it possible to fund several other programs. Powerful members of Congress have prevented that, so there is little the president can do except watch tax dollars go down a black hole.

  3. no one of consequence says:
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    SLS/Orion does have a mission.
    It’s called the Moon and beyond.

    No – its fund Huntsville, Promontory, West Palm Beach, Houston. Explore how much money/time can be consumed reinventing Apollo/Saturn from (mostly) scratch.

    That was how $9B+ was consumed before with CxP.

    Shouldn’t you worry about no one wanting to shell out even a buck to NASA to explore using a used firework? I certainly am.

    My concern continues to be that SLS/Orion is a futile funding exercise. Like many grand weapons systems before.

    I know what we got for that $9B & 5+ years. Less than what we got for any other HSF effort prior or existing.

    I don’t trust any of the current HSF programs,  especially SLS/Orion. Because it will always go “long” and overbudget. And I know these guys the best.

    So what’s your “plan B” otherwise? Naive trust? Russians? Chinese?

    If you’re serious about HSF, you’d better get serious about reality. No presidential candidate honestly is going to give you the Moon the way you think you want to get it.

    Newt’s your closest best – ask him about SLS. Romney’s got vague assurances about SLS that he’ll shake the “Etch-a-Sketch” and wash away on.

    Get real.

  4. Anonymous says:
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    The President can only suggest a budget. Congress, and especially the usually misguided House of Representatives has the power of the purse. They call it the Executive Branch because, under the Constitution, it is supposed to execute the will of Congress. Of late, that has been a rather foolish thing.

  5. Dr. Brian Chip Birge says:
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    JPL to lose maybe hundreds of robotic space jobs, to add to the thousands lost in manned space.  Even if the space community vehemently denies it, to the people holding the purse strings there is no real dichotomy between manned and unmanned space.

    • no one of consequence says:
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      there is no real dichotomy between manned and unmanned space.
      Couldn’t agree more.

      They actually are interdependent.  But because they compete for funding, this gets lost.

      Science and unmanned create the context for HSF. When you lose them, HSF exploration never comes back.

      • DTARS says:
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        Isn’t that why it should be very important for NASA and congress to design robot missions for “commercial hardware like dragon? red dragon etc??? very soon???

        • no one of consequence says:
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           Yes but it confuses people.

          Between you and me, the idea here is that we should field spacecraft as early as possible unmanned, then as we gain flight history we qualify them for HSF.

          But this isn’t the rubric we used before. Usually, we hand craft probes, because every ounce counts, out of parts use on prior missions to lower risk with accumulated flight history. No commingling between manned/unmanned because it seems irrelevant / costly / awkward.

          And on the HSF only side, the qualifications historically have been handled at the extreme cost of as if there’s a human on board anyways, so the fewest unmanned flights of HSF are made to minimize this.

          They don’t see the fluid movement between one and the other.

        • DTARS says:
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          No one of consequence

          Well that seems to me to be another of your points that should be taught to all.

          ROBOT MISSIONS using future human hardware TO QUALIFY HUMAN SPACE HARDWARE!!!

          just common sense and practical and cheaper

      • gogosian2061 says:
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        Should we note – perhaps optimistically – that OBAMA proposed budget was UNANIMOUSLY DEFEATED by Members of Congress from both major political parties?

        Perhaps this reflects a back-lash from the 73 “policy czars” appointed by Presidential executive orders – cavalierly intended to circumvent and subvert the will of laws signed after passage by Congress.

        • no one of consequence says:
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           Off topic nonsense. All presidents and Congresses play all sorts of games back and forth. I could lecture in a long, condescending comment waxing poetic about every single case until your eyes glazed over …

          The current POTUS / Congress is not much different. All you’re spouting is some kind of fervor to stir up the anthill, like has been done hundreds of times in the past. It may be fashionable to your crowd, and you may enjoy your fashion statement – good luck to you.

          But in the fullness of things that allow us as a people to arrive at a meaningful way of getting a modern, economically developed space fairing nation going forward … you are concentrating on noise not signal.

          I encourage you not to be distracted by noise. Choose instead to listen to the many competing sources of signal instead.

  6. Nassau Goi says:
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     Commercial only supporters?

    Plenty of people would support the agency to the same degree if it was just as efficient.

    If you want more money for the agency, what are you doing to to show it deserves it?

    NASA could use a small share of the few trillions that the Fed decided was in the best interest of financial entities instead, including those that are foreign.

    Where is your complaint about that? Because it should be on high the priority list if you understand the scope of the national budget and monetary system.

  7. markr01000 says:
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    Sad. JPL has produced 10 times the science per dollar over HSF.
    But NASA is stuck in a 50 year old space cowboy test pilot mentality.
    The golden age of HSF is over.

  8. nasa817 says:
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    What are you talking about?  NASA’s budget has never been bigger than it was the last two years.  SLS certainly does have a mission, funnel billions of dollars into the states of Orrin Hatch and Richard Shelby.

  9. gogosian2061 says:
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    Check NASA JPL ‘Press Release’ dated April 5, 2012 — THREE SPACE TELESCOPES just got an extension on their missions’ lives to pursue – “Exo- planetary program studies” and deep space systems in search of planets ‘potentially hospitable’ to life “as we know it”!  ** GREAT MOVE, NASA HQ!  Well done!  Cheers and assorted other accolades!