What Will The NASA Budget Look Like? Just Follow The Money
New NASA budget eats the seed corn of its Journey to Mars, Ars Technica
“In other words, Mikulski gets a nice Earth-observing project for her backyard, wholly unrelated to human spaceflight, and agrees to whatever budget increases for SLS that the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee over space, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), wants. Shelby looks out for SLS because it is managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.”
Alabama Political Donations Go National, earlier post (2010)
“Hmmm – have a look at this map. After Maryland, ($475,650) the next largest contributor to Mikulski’s campaign in 2010 (so far) is Alabama. ($78,610). This places Huntsville as the 4th ranking metropolitan area after Baltimore, Washington, and New York – and ahead of Chicago.”
Keith’s note: In 2014 she got $68,010 from Huntsville – again, right after Baltimore, Washington, and New York. Coincidence?
Keith’s update: Internet advertising is run by algorithms that work off of consumer behavior and website content. Some of the ads you see respond to your own browsing habits and the cookies left in your browser. Others respond to words that appear on a web page. I have seen some strange things pop up over the years but the irony of this juxtaposition of a complaint about congressional favoritism and a paid political ad congratulating Sen. Shelby for not doing what he actually does every day (corporate welfare) is rather ironic. And then when I posted this screen grab (below) and went back to view NASAWatch the ad appeared yet again (second screen grab).
Lots of pork. But, keeping Landsat alive is a much better use of scarce dollars than the Mars boondoggle.
However to get a modest budget for Earth Observation Mikulski has to support a much larger budget for SLS. The problem is that members of Congress no longer represent voters. They represent dollars.
I hadn’t appreciated that subtlety. I just saw something for science and assumed it was good. I would like to see the manned space program and its boosters-to-nowhere canned until they can show some value for the gigadollars they’ve consumed to date.
But, it looks like the choice is science + booster boondoggle or no science at all. And that’s sad.
I can’t help but point out the acronym MAST, for the main archive and repository for HST and other space telescope data. It originally stood for “Multi-mission Archive for Space Telescopes.” In 2012, they renamed it “Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes.” Someone apparently knows who signs the checks.
ROTFL
Rich_Palermo We should just hope that the Restore-L mission has some utility. It should worry us that they barely have enough money to buy a rocket plus all of the robotic servicer, etc. This will have to be a “proto-flight” mission where the prototype is the flight item.
We do not know what condition any LandSat is in, they could get there and find problems. It sounds like LandSat-7 is just a destination for planning purposes, they might go to another satellite.
Am I a negative skeptic or have we all seen this before? From what I know there just seems to be lot of leaps of faith to make this mission successful. And this might NOT be the first time that NASA has budgeted assuming success.
No negative skeptics allowed here. No sirreee.
I believe the condition of the subsystems and instruments on board Landsat 7 are very well characterized indeed. Why do you believe otherwise? If Restore-L actually could extend mission lifetime to help insure Landsat data continuity, that would be A Good Thing for earth science and by extension, many human activities. If it’s just a technology demonstration that ends up doing little or nothing for that continuity, then pfffft.
sunman42 Maybe it is decades of working in the space biz that have made me skeptical. Solar Max, Intelsat 603, Hubble Space Telescope, so many times the managers felt we had thought of everything. In many businesses – surprises happen.
We compare NASA of today with the NASA of the 60s a lot. We know the budget was greater, but did the NASA of the 60s have to support the myriad number of project unrelated to the moon mission that it supports now while trying to support a Mars mission (i.e. has the ratio changed)?
Yes.
Actually, does.anyone know how well-funded aeronautics was in the 1960s? Did they retain more-or-less NACA level funding? And how does that compare to their current funding within NASA?
With the initiation of the Moon Race the interest in aeronautics clearly declined. The crown jewel of NACA was the X-15, our first reusable manned spacecraft, but it was cancelled and much of the corporate knowledge lost. Aeronautics maintained a few major projects through the 60’s such as the XV-5, which led ultimately to the OV-22 of today, and had some inputs into the Space Shuttle design, but seemed to lose its relevance to commercial aviation. However in the last year or so the budget has improved and some new and interesting aero projects have finally appeared, with apparently some better integration with the FAA, new air traffic and navigation systems, drones, human factors, etc.
They were doing a ton of robotic missions, but the budget allocation was different – a much higher fraction of overall NASA spending was on the Moon Shot.
So, about what we expect. The SLS goes on, Planetary Science gets a major cut which will hopefully be made up in reconciliation of the bills, etc, etc.
I tell myself that I’d be okay if SLS goes nowhere, as long as it anchors NASA’s funding so it can do good robotic exploration. But it still feels disappointing.
Shocked! From Casablanca – https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Remember all that crap she pulled on us at SS Freedom? This is not new behavior on her part.
The problem is not a particular senator, it is too much money in politics. “legislators can spend as much as two-thirds of their time in office fundraising for their reelection” from http://fortune.com/2016/04/…
Good point (although I think GSFC has done well with JWST and other tech-heavy programs vectored into Maryland.)
I think I was thrown by the title of the article: “New NASA budget eats the seed corn of its Journey to Mars”
My opinion, the nonexistent Journey to Mars is flushing billions into the Gulf of Mexico that could have been used to truly explore the solar system robotically and beyond, telescopically.
I agree. It is the Journey to Mars itself that has eaten the seed corn of the Journey to Mars.
We keep hearing the same thing about Nelson, who also seems to be supporting SLS even though SpaceX and Blue do more for Florida. My friends at Langley and Glenn (the technology centers ) are not doing well.
Is it illegal to contribute?………………….NO
Did you somehow accidentally stumble in here from some police blotter blog? Who exactly do you think is here alleging CRIMES?
Well, technically, I think “misdemeanor” is Latin for “bad appearance” or something similar. I’d say the numbers on campaign donations make certain Senators look bad. Unfortunately, that isn’t legally actionable.
I seem to remember Keith saying something about no elections politics in here that wasn’t directly relevant to the topic of the post.
Well, I believe he said _presidential_ election politics. Also, campaign contributions aren’t tied to a specific election (the winner can carry unspent donations over and use.them for.the next election.) Finally, campaign contributions _are_ the topic of the original story, so that’s relevant by definition.
My post relates to “real world” not utopia
So, crystal-ball this idea — how do you all see the next budget going, since the budget we are discussing will be the last one Mikulski has any say on (retiring)?
I suspect that JHU/APL’s apparent desire to become JPL-East will be a bit more difficult to achieve.
An interesting auto-ad that appeared while viewing this thread,
Same here. Probably just another hilarious result of google’s system for assigning content-relevant advertising, with the satisfying side effect in this case that Shelby is now helping to fund his own excoriation.
That’s too funny. I am going to post this on the main page.
This is what it should look like http://images.spaceref.com/…
This made me laugh harder than anything I have ever seen on here, Thanks Keith
Keith,
How much, if any, control do you have over the ads which I see when I visit this site? I just got one above the NASAWatch banner saying, “Thank you, Sen. Shelby, for standing against corporate welfare.” I’m guessing that’s either not your idea or deliberately ironic.
Many of these ads are based on your own browsing history. Others are based on words that appear on NASAWatch. I block ads that sneak though like adult games but otherwise, that is how Internet adversing works.
Oh, sure, block the good stuff but let Shelby through? 🙂
I’m going to assert that (1) Sen. Mikulski has sent lots of $ to Goddard, STScI, and APL and (2) has also overseen decent NASA budgets, however much we may want to argue with the distribution of money and priorities. I’ll also assert the Sen. Shelby has overseen the diversion of an enormous amount of money to MSFC for a rocket for which no one has any concrete plans. Can anyone say that those two assertions amount to anything other than politics as usual: taking the taxpayers’ money to give to other taxpayers?
Scratching my head, thinking you can’t be right.
But you are. Lots of commenters have seen the light, but that’s it.
But it’s not just space. In my own view reporting, such as it is, jumped the shark over Gary Hart and since has contributed nothing unless it is either self-serving or breathlessly reported or both.
Coverage of yet another presidential campaign is devoid of serious candidate questioning or assessment, other than reporting the horse race, and reporting on the reporting on the horse race.
So if you think you’ll get serious coverage of our little space world you are wasting your time.
When the Shelby ads appeared, at first I thought it was some sick joke of keiths… grins… but I do realize ads go where they are targeted. The ad by shelby though ..he should get brass balls award for approving that message.