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Good? NASA plays a very important role in climate science by providing and researching satellites and instrumentation for monitoring earth's climate.
by saboot 10y ago
Good? NASA plays a very important role in climate science by providing and researching satellites and instrumentation for monitoring earth's climate.
- nonbel 10y agoI may have edited after your response. Good, because mission creep. Just look what it did to the FDA: http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/07/briefing/2007-4329b_02_01_FDA%20Report%20on%20Science%20and%20Technology.pdf http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/07/briefing/2007-4329b_0...
- saboot 10y agoI don't care about the FDA. NASA plays a very important role, one which they have great expertise at, in instrumentation for measuring earth's climate from outer space. It's irresponsible to disregard all of that for a vague notion of "mission creep".
- nonbel 10y agoIt really is not vague at all. You give people more responsibility with less time/funding and everything goes to shit. I recommend reading that report to see how it works.
- saboot 10y agoYes, it is vague. NASA's research is invaluable and cannot be done in a different agency. It is in agreement with NASA's research directive. It does not prevent any other area NASA engages with including space exploration. You are imposing your own standards on NASA and concluding they are mishandling funds because of it. The objection isn't that mission creep exists in places, but that it is wholly inappropriate as an argument for eliminating NASA from conducting climate research.
- jakewins 10y agoWhat agency do you suggest would be more appropriate to build space platforms to monitor surface temperatures, ice sheet extent &c of planets? To me it seems like planetary-level data gathering and exploration is exactly what NASAs mission is. Running analysis platforms on the closest available planet seems like an eminently reasonable way to iterate on system design.
- soneil 10y agoHonestly, NOAA. It’s basically their raison d’etra. They can outsource platforms to boeing and launches to whoever, just as easily as NASA can. I hate to sound like I’m agreeing with Trump on .. pretty much anything. But if we can hand NOAA’s tasks to NOAA, the airforce’s tasks to the airforce, commercialize “routine” orbital access - and free NASA up for actual exploration .. I don’t think I’d be opposed to that. Just as long as we’re actually enabling them (and funding them) to do so, and not actually downsizing any of the above.