{"id":3244,"date":"2011-12-01T13:30:46","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T18:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/?p=3244"},"modified":"2021-10-19T06:48:59","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T10:48:59","slug":"nasa-space-exploration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/nasa-space-exploration\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future of NASA: Is Space Exploration in Trouble?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The news coming out of NASA at the time of this writing is all about Curiosity, the new Mars rover that is scheduled for launch Saturday, November 26, from Cape Canaveral, Florida.\u00a0 Science and astronomy bloggers all over the internet are gushing about it, and SPACE.com is maintaining a particularly close watch.\u00a0 For some, this could be shocking news.\u00a0 Isn&#8217;t the United States in the midst of a massive financial downturn (or recession, whichever term is the most useful to pundits at the time) where NASA&#8217;s funding was cut?\u00a0 That meant no more launches.\u00a0 Why is a new rover being finished and sent off into space?<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Almost none of the mainstream astronomy sites or blogs will really tell much of that end of matters\u2014the issue being largely political and full of grumbling from disgruntled scientists.\u00a0 However, there are some astronomers stepping up and unabashedly keeping the public informed on what they see happening in this particular sector of American scientific (especially in the area of astronomy) development.\u00a0 Or lack thereof, as the case may be.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Champions for the Cause<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This past August, Neil Degrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium, was a guest on HBO&#8217;s <em>Real Time with Bill Maher<\/em>.\u00a0 The subject: Congress considering \u201cpulling the plug\u201d on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) slated to replace Hubble.\u00a0 Tyson&#8217;s argument is the strong voice of a scientist speaking out for, not only for people who already follow a similar profession, but those that will someday become scientists and engineers and those who live for expanding human knowledge and our place in the universe.\u00a0 An edited clip that features Tyson&#8217;s arguments can be found here:<\/p>\n<p><iframe width=\"640\" height=\"360\" data-src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tKdaRcptVz8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-load-mode=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tKdaRcptVz8\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tKdaRcptVz8<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The bare bones of the issue is thus: NASA&#8217;s budget has been cut, could potentially be cut further, and the people making the cuts, as evidenced by Tyson&#8217;s research, are predominantly lawyers, people whose jobs are to argue best rather than to treat cold, hard facts as cold, hard facts.\u00a0 Tyson is not the only disgruntled scientist who is taking a stand on the issue.<\/p>\n<p>Readers of Discover Magazine have become intimately familiar over the years with the hyper-intelligent and often humorous Bad Astronomy blog entries of Phil Plait, an astrophysicist whose accomplishments include work on the COBE satellite and the STIS on the Hubble Space Telescope.\u00a0 He is also well known amongst skeptics and sci-fi fans and addresses a broad range of related topics in his blog on a daily basis.\u00a0 For anyone who keeps up with Bad Astronomy regularly, Phil&#8217;s gripes about the politics he sees ruining science and learning for Americans of all ages can be very prevalent.\u00a0 He sandwiches these opinionated yet well-researched rants with posts of stunning photography from telescopes and satellites, concept images of the exoplanets recently discovered, informative talks of black holes and whatever else might threaten the earth&#8217;s very existence should the right conditions be met\u2014everything he can pull forth as ammunition in his continuing battle to prove that science (especially NASA) needs all the funding and support it can get.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Battle for the Stars<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That same issue Bill Maher addressed on <em>Real Time<\/em> made its appearance in Bad Astronomy on November 23 as having finally reached a congressional conclusion.\u00a0 The JWST project was saved, but Plait claims that the overall result of the budget issue is bad news for NASA.\u00a0 What exactly does this mean?\u00a0 As per the budget President Obama signed into reality (emphasis added):<\/p>\n<p><em>The agreement accommodates cost growth in the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) <\/em>by making commensurate reductions in other programs<em>, and institutes several new oversight measures for JWST\u2019s continuing development.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>If for nothing else than to show exactly how this <em>doesn&#8217;t <\/em>help NASA for either the fiscal 2012 year or beyond, Plait even draws out the numbers.\u00a0 NASA will get a grand total of $17.8 billion for the coming year.\u00a0 This is approximately \u201c$600M less than last year, and over $900M less than what President Obama wanted.\u201d\u00a0 There is nothing good there.\u00a0 It&#8217;s almost like the budget bill is saying, \u201c<em>Hey!\u00a0 At least we&#8217;re letting you build your telescope!\u201d <\/em>in a very non-apology sort of way.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Plait continues:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;I\u2019m glad that the project won\u2019t be canceled, but I\u2019m <\/em><em>very<\/em> concerned about the source of that money. I can do that math. All things being equal, a $150M increase with $530M dedicated to JWST means <strong>NASA<\/strong> will have to cut other programs to the tune of $380 million.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>NASA is now forced to sacrifice projects equally important to be able to continue to explore the stars, to expand human understanding of our universe, to dream of the future, as Tyson reminds us that we once did.\u00a0 The cutting of those other projects means further job loss in the scientific sector while&#8230;what?\u00a0 To date, there hasn&#8217;t been any report out of Washington to give much confidence that <em>anything<\/em> NASA stands for\u2014from education to exploration\u2014will see an equal budget to last year let alone an increase.\u00a0 We get a swanky new telescope, but reduced infrastructure to take the information gleaned from said telescope to properly and intellectually invest in our future as a <em>planet<\/em>.\u00a0 The effects of NASA&#8217;s research expand far out and beyond the confines of political borders.<\/p>\n<p>What NASA <em>does<\/em> have funding for this coming year is an investment into a new rocket system.\u00a0 Plait found this a trifle ironic as commercial space (private companies funded through NASA, such as Space X, for their own marketable projects) takes a hit as a consequence.\u00a0 This means that $1.8 billion gets to go into the Space Launch System, a program to develop an improved rocket system to lift more into orbit than the Shuttle ever could and making deep space travel even more possible.\u00a0 This implies emphasis on further human exploration of the moon, Mars, and near-Earth asteroids and was a thing feared lost with the cancellation of the Constellation rocket system.<\/p>\n<p>What does this mean for NASA overall in the future?\u00a0 Even Phil Plait doesn&#8217;t claim to know.\u00a0 The cuts are pennies on the dollar in the grand scope of the US budget (NASA makes up <em>less than 1%<\/em> of the overall expenditure), so such squabbles over it seem pointless to the majority of NASA\/science supporters.\u00a0 The budget for the program could be realistically doubled, and the rest of the federal programs would barely notice.\u00a0 However, there is no denying that NASA happens to have the unfortunate position of being in the middle of a primarily political struggle, and such a matter never has a guaranteed outcome regardless of the proven facts scientists can throw at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The news coming out of NASA at the time of this writing is all about Curiosity, the new Mars rover that is scheduled for launch Saturday, November 26, from Cape&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3444,2571,3443,3445,3442],"class_list":["post-3244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-random-stuff","tag-budget","tag-nasa","tag-phil-plait","tag-space-exploration","tag-telescope"],"views":89,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}