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Science research is one thing the private sector does poorly, and it's something NASA does a lot of. Yes, but... NASA does very little space science compared t

by uvdiv 15y ago

Science research is one thing the private sector does poorly, and it's something NASA does a lot of. Yes, but... NASA does very little space science compared to non-scientific human space travel. Their budget for launching humans into space (Apollo, STS, ISS, Constellation) -- for shits and giggles, basically -- is orders of magnitude greater than their budget for actual science. Icy Moons, James Webb, LISA -- real science, real discovery -- tends to get budget-axed to make more room for politically-savvy STS, ISS, Flags on Mars. Icy Moons -- first substantial progress in space probes in decades, long-delayed trial of nuclear electric propulsion -- not important enough. (Wikipedia says it was cancelled because of "shift in priorities" towards manned missions.) Order-of-magnitude greater I_sp than chemical rockets. Massive (1.5 tons payload), high-powered (200 kWe available) science juggernaut -- exploring Jupiter's moons, one by one. New frontiers in experiment capability: scanning mysterious moons with high-powered radars, spectrometers. Total budget less than the cost of cleaning up astronaut shit on ISS. James Webb -- Hubble's successor is killed. Hubble has no successor! This is a national shame. A hundred times more powerful, the greatest space telescope of all time, so perceptive it has to be positioned in sun-earth L2 to get away from earthshine. LISA -- undiscovered gravity radiation? Resolving relativistic emissions of distant black holes, making new tests of Einsteinean general relativity? Sounds like nerd stuff, who cares. In theory, it is nice that we have a government agency funding pure exploration of the cosmos (any funding, at all). In practice, NASA is a case study of how badly putting science funding in the hands of a political bureaucracy can go wrong. Very few Americans, sadly, actually understand or care about the comparatively bland-looking experiments which are science, which advance human understanding, compared to TV-friendly astronaut acrobatics tripe. So science gets marginalized; the political nature of NASA favors useless shit. I say euthanize NASA, it has no life left.

mturmon 15y ago
I appreciate that you know some details about some space missions, but unfortunately your understanding of advances in science instruments, measurements, and research at NASA is utterly wrong. Just completely wrong. In fact, for the most part, science missions at NASA are now, and have been, guided by reports of the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Science. They produce "Decadal Surveys" which basically are ranked lists of mission proposals. There's one for Earth Science, in particular, that has been very closely tracked by NASA mission proposals (see http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/ http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/). Every potential mission team scrutinizes this list and tries to position their work to be responsive to these science goals. For the list of mission concepts, see http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11820&page=81#p200131de9960081001 http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11820&page=8... The menu of missions is rather amazing in its scope, novelty, and potential to advance the understanding of Earth systems like pollution, aerosols, solid earth hazards, land use, vegetation, weather, etc.
- uvdiv 15y ago
  I'm sure I'm ignorant about NASA research, but I don't understand your criticism. NASA projects are very much directed by politicians: i.e. the James Webb cancellation was caused by Congress, not NAS policy. "US lawmakers vote to kill Hubble successor" http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gLvaDP1TmYcCWXpml9ZEnLzE1K8w?docId=CNG.15e6fb7b6a41f06eb05223cc51ca0fe9.4d1 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gLvaDP1Tm... I don't argue that NASA doesn't do useful science, but that their useful science is crowded out by big-budget, 12-figure manned space missions, and that its political nature (it is a government agency) is the reason for this.
  - mturmon 15y ago
    I respect your inquiring tone. What I'm trying to say is that you're focusing on a couple of high-profile examples, and the politics don't have the all-encompassing effect that you think they do. (I love politics, and I'm very interested in the interplay between missions and politics, but your estimate of the interaction is way, way overblown.) There are some "poster children" for the influence of politics in NASA. JWST is one, Hubble was another, so is/was the manned program (Constellation and its predecessors), and also some elements of the Mars program. It's appropriate that politics influence some of this. It's citizens who fund this work, and their representatives, for better and worse, vote on funding. The portions of NASA that are most visible externally (same as the list in the previous paragraph) are the most subject to politics. [[ Note on JWST: it was not cancelled, as you seem to think. The House voted against it. But all its support is in the Senate (Sen. Barbara M.'s district includes GSFC and STScI, which run JWST) and there's no way it will be cancelled. NASA watchers know this. But JWST is being sent a message, because it is way over-budget. And that is the politician's business. ]] The political process described above is very distasteful to nerds. But that's not all there is, and my references to the Earth program above were intended to illustrate that. That roadmap I linked to has about 12-20 missions planned out to 2020 that will have a huge impact, and there's very little political influence there. It's nerd's wet dream, a bunch of scientists at the National Academies contemplating what measurements will best advance the efficacy of various earth system models. Modeling accuracy does not interest the citizenry, except when they want to know a hurricane's path or the amount of seismic deformation of an earthquake or what the water levels in reservoirs will be next year or what forests are healthy or ... So the question comes down to proportion. I don't know the most recent figures, but various "science" stuff is certainly more than 1/3, probably almost 1/2, of the NASA budget. One can argue about the boundary cases.

by uvdiv 15y ago

mturmon 15y ago

I appreciate that you know some details about some space missions, but unfortunately your understanding of advances in science instruments, measurements, and research at NASA is utterly wrong. Just completely wrong. In fact, for the most part, science missions at NASA are now, and have been, guided by reports of the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Science. They produce "Decadal Surveys" which basically are ranked lists of mission proposals. There's one for Earth Science, in particular, that has been very closely tracked by NASA mission proposals (see http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/ http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/). Every potential mission team scrutinizes this list and tries to position their work to be responsive to these science goals. For the list of mission concepts, see http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11820&page=81#p200131de9960081001 http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11820&page=8... The menu of missions is rather amazing in its scope, novelty, and potential to advance the understanding of Earth systems like pollution, aerosols, solid earth hazards, land use, vegetation, weather, etc.

uvdiv 15y ago
I'm sure I'm ignorant about NASA research, but I don't understand your criticism. NASA projects are very much directed by politicians: i.e. the James Webb cancellation was caused by Congress, not NAS policy. "US lawmakers vote to kill Hubble successor" http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gLvaDP1TmYcCWXpml9ZEnLzE1K8w?docId=CNG.15e6fb7b6a41f06eb05223cc51ca0fe9.4d1 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gLvaDP1Tm... I don't argue that NASA doesn't do useful science, but that their useful science is crowded out by big-budget, 12-figure manned space missions, and that its political nature (it is a government agency) is the reason for this.
- mturmon 15y ago
  I respect your inquiring tone. What I'm trying to say is that you're focusing on a couple of high-profile examples, and the politics don't have the all-encompassing effect that you think they do. (I love politics, and I'm very interested in the interplay between missions and politics, but your estimate of the interaction is way, way overblown.) There are some "poster children" for the influence of politics in NASA. JWST is one, Hubble was another, so is/was the manned program (Constellation and its predecessors), and also some elements of the Mars program. It's appropriate that politics influence some of this. It's citizens who fund this work, and their representatives, for better and worse, vote on funding. The portions of NASA that are most visible externally (same as the list in the previous paragraph) are the most subject to politics. [[ Note on JWST: it was not cancelled, as you seem to think. The House voted against it. But all its support is in the Senate (Sen. Barbara M.'s district includes GSFC and STScI, which run JWST) and there's no way it will be cancelled. NASA watchers know this. But JWST is being sent a message, because it is way over-budget. And that is the politician's business. ]] The political process described above is very distasteful to nerds. But that's not all there is, and my references to the Earth program above were intended to illustrate that. That roadmap I linked to has about 12-20 missions planned out to 2020 that will have a huge impact, and there's very little political influence there. It's nerd's wet dream, a bunch of scientists at the National Academies contemplating what measurements will best advance the efficacy of various earth system models. Modeling accuracy does not interest the citizenry, except when they want to know a hurricane's path or the amount of seismic deformation of an earthquake or what the water levels in reservoirs will be next year or what forests are healthy or ... So the question comes down to proportion. I don't know the most recent figures, but various "science" stuff is certainly more than 1/3, probably almost 1/2, of the NASA budget. One can argue about the boundary cases.