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Asked whether anyone at NASA was popping champagne, the agency’s head of science, John Grunsfeld, answered, “We never pop champagne here; our budgets

by sakai 14y ago

Asked whether anyone at NASA was popping champagne, the agency’s head of science, John Grunsfeld, answered, “We never pop champagne here; our budgets are too tight.” Austerity notwithstanding, that's really a sad sign of the times (and state of science funding in the US).

jerf 14y ago
There's no austerity. I don't even know where you'd get the idea there's some sort of austerity in the US. NASA's problems lie elsewhere, mostly in the form of having a boss (Congress) who demands that they spend their money in mind-bogglingly inefficient ways, and then adds further inefficiencies by continuously jerking them around. Giving them more money won't solve this problem.
- gizmo 14y ago
  Yep, austerity. See decrease in govt expenditures over time (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/the-secret-of-our-non-success/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/the-secret-of-ou...). Also, NASA isn't mind-bogglingly inefficient. Citation needed, I guess. Besides, their budget is a puny 0.5% of the federal budget, compared to 1% back in 1990. The return on science spending is, as far as I know, typically pretty good in the US. The NASA budget outline can be found here: http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html. And the complete 2012 budget report: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/516675main_NASAFY12_Budget_Estimates-508.pdf http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/516675main_NASAFY12_Budget_Estimates... It all looks pretty reasonable to me.
  - adventureful 14y ago
    Total government spending in the US doubled from 1998 to 2011. While the US economy only increased by 1/3, and population only increased by roughly 15%. Why would you need twice the government spending for 15% more people? We had 270 million people in 1998, and now have 312x million. Total government expenditures (local + state + federal) in the US came to over $7 trillion in 2011 (counting the deficit spending). Out of an economy that is close to $16 trillion. Under absolutely no scenario is that austerity, it's the greatest spending binge in world history. To put it another way, our government system spends more than the combined economies of Germany + France + Britain are worth. If that's austerity, then the 1990s were hyper austerity by comparison. Somehow we managed to have a government that was more functional then than the one we have now.
    - gizmo 14y ago
      You misunderstand. Austerity is not about the absolute expenditures of government, it's about the change in (real) expenditures of the government over time.
      - anonymoushn 14y ago
        That change is positive, if you include the transfer payments that Krugman has excluded.
      - CWuestefeld 14y ago
        Well, that's how Krugman would like to justify it. But, on the other hand, when it comes to politics, Krugman is a complete ass. (and I think I can say that in a completely objective manner) There is no reasonable definition of austerity that can be satisfied in these conditions. The US (and various European govt's that Krugman has been blathering about) were already spending a lot of money. For the most part (a few very limited examples exist), their spending has kept pace with, and generally even exceeded, inflation. When the government is taking at least as much of the country's pie as it always had, and generally even a growing share, it is simply absurd to call that austerity.
  - jerf 14y ago
    Your own links show NASA at a fairly flat budget level, not in austerity with cuts. I neither trust nor agree with Krugman's definition of austerity, nor do I see how to square his definition with budgets like [1] that show growth almost across the board. As for NASA's inefficiency, an efficient department would not be able to purchase private space services from SpaceX for a fraction of what they can do themselves. (As for the argument that SpaceX can and did just build on NASA's work... so can NASA. They ought to be able to do even better than a third party building on their stuff, no?) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budg...
    - gizmo 14y ago
      1. NASA's budget has been cut every year since 1998, as a fraction of the federal budget, although their budget in dollars has increased[1]. 2. Krugman doesn't count some expenditures, such as social security, unemployment benefits and a number of other items. He argues on his blog why this paints a more accurate picture. (Search for "Austerity") 3. SpaceX is an exceptional startup and NASA has been in business since the 60s. A typical web startup can outpace IBM and Microsoft too. It's better to compare NASA's inefficiency with other big research labs. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
      - _delirium 14y ago
        On #2, this is also including all levels of government, while the comment you're replying to links a Wikipedia article on the federal budget. The U.S. federal government budget has not been declining, but state and local budgets have been declining sharply, so you get pretty different results depending on what levels you look at.
      - CWuestefeld 14y ago
        NASA's budget has been cut every year since 1998, as a fraction of the federal budget The fact that the federal government's budget grows like a cancer does not mean that NASA's budget is austere, nor does it mean that NASA should get more. It's simply absurd to claim that your budget has been "cut" when it has actually been increased, even in real terms. Your argument sounds like the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Racketeer Rabbit", where they're counting the loot: "One for you; one for me. Two for you; one, two for me". Somebody else getting money does not mean that you're entitled to additional money. SpaceX is an exceptional startup and NASA has been in business since the 60s. A typical web startup can outpace IBM and Microsoft too. The online conclusion I can see to draw from this is that NASA should be wholly disbanded. We'll create a new one, since even a typical startup should be able to outpace the old-time behemoths.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- damoncali 14y ago
  You're half right. I worked for NASA on Hubble. I guarantee you we were not living high on the hog. Holiday inn for 6 weeks at a time, cheapest flights for travel, cheapest everything. They balked at a $12 meal once when It was within an hour or so of a flight home once. We had trouble buying $300 hard drives at times (to run $100k software on). My engineer's salary was modest at best. But yes, Congress makes all that "sacrifice" irrelevant due to the absurdity of their whims. Another project I workded on: Al Gore literally had a dream one night, resulting in a colossal clusterfuck called Triana - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triana_(satellite) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triana_(satellite). That's $100 million, wasted on a politician's fantasy of being able to see the whole sunlit side of the Earth. What would Musk have done with that money?
  - 3am 14y ago
    Even sadder, Triana costed only 1/3 of what is spent on the war in Afganistan each day. I would prefer to see people in NASA enjoying wide arrays of 15K drives, competitive salaries, and business class seats...
    - MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
      Perhaps we can even splurge on SSDs with that kind of money. Spinning disks are so obsolete when we're talking that much cash.
      - ars 14y ago
        Not when you are talking about storing Petabytes, which NASA does routinely.
  - joering2 14y ago
    "The satellite's original purpose was to provide a near-continuous view of the entire Earth and make that live image available via the Internet." Don't believe a word this scumbag is saying. Yeah, they would give you one per day 10x zoomed photo, while giving NSA/TSA/CIA 24/7 life-feed of what you and 3 other billion people living on this side of Earth are doing.
adventureful 14y ago
I like the part where austerity means your spending goes up substantially, and or stays similar. NASA budget: 1987: $7.5b | 1990: $12.4b | 1993: $14.3b | 2001: $14.1b | 2006: $15.1b | 2007: $15.8b | 2008: $17.3b | 2009: $17.7b | 2010: $18.7b | 2011: $18.4b They're doing just fine.
- zerohp 14y ago
  Correct it for inflation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA Also, consider the fact that congress allocates the money going to individual project, not just the agency as a whole. NASA is not doing just fine.
  - nessus42 14y ago
    Also, during the W administration much of the money for real science was redirected towards a manned mission to Mars. This caused terrible financial woes for the department I worked at at MIT for many years that does X-ray astronomy (The Center for Space Research). Quite a few people were laid off, including me, due to the CSR not being able to get the science funding from NASA it always had been able to get previously.
    - astrodust 14y ago
      It's a classic anti-science move of forcing them to commit to an impossible project and then later lay into them for not making any progress and cut funding even more severely.
  - adventureful 14y ago
    I saw the inflation calculation in the Wiki tables. You could even argue that inflation calculation is low, and that inflation has been far worse given the price of gold / oil / housing over the last 30 years. My point was: NASA is doing just fine. They're fortunate to still be getting that much money year in year out. It's a lot of money.
- robertpateii 14y ago
sakai 14y ago
Since many have commented on the term "austerity" (and that I implied that NASA is undergoing austerity measures), I should clarify that I only meant "the general political sentiment that austerity is a GOOD thing notwithstanding, it still sucks that NASA can't (culturally) buy a bottle of champagne when they complete a $1.5bn project". Apologies for popping the austerity genie out of the bottle.

by sakai 14y ago

jerf 14y ago

There's no austerity. I don't even know where you'd get the idea there's some sort of austerity in the US. NASA's problems lie elsewhere, mostly in the form of having a boss (Congress) who demands that they spend their money in mind-bogglingly inefficient ways, and then adds further inefficiencies by continuously jerking them around. Giving them more money won't solve this problem.

gizmo 14y ago
Yep, austerity. See decrease in govt expenditures over time (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/the-secret-of-our-non-success/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/the-secret-of-ou...). Also, NASA isn't mind-bogglingly inefficient. Citation needed, I guess. Besides, their budget is a puny 0.5% of the federal budget, compared to 1% back in 1990. The return on science spending is, as far as I know, typically pretty good in the US. The NASA budget outline can be found here: http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html. And the complete 2012 budget report: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/516675main_NASAFY12_Budget_Estimates-508.pdf http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/516675main_NASAFY12_Budget_Estimates... It all looks pretty reasonable to me.
- adventureful 14y ago
  Total government spending in the US doubled from 1998 to 2011. While the US economy only increased by 1/3, and population only increased by roughly 15%. Why would you need twice the government spending for 15% more people? We had 270 million people in 1998, and now have 312x million. Total government expenditures (local + state + federal) in the US came to over $7 trillion in 2011 (counting the deficit spending). Out of an economy that is close to $16 trillion. Under absolutely no scenario is that austerity, it's the greatest spending binge in world history. To put it another way, our government system spends more than the combined economies of Germany + France + Britain are worth. If that's austerity, then the 1990s were hyper austerity by comparison. Somehow we managed to have a government that was more functional then than the one we have now.
  - gizmo 14y ago
    You misunderstand. Austerity is not about the absolute expenditures of government, it's about the change in (real) expenditures of the government over time.
    - anonymoushn 14y ago
      That change is positive, if you include the transfer payments that Krugman has excluded.
    - CWuestefeld 14y ago
      Well, that's how Krugman would like to justify it. But, on the other hand, when it comes to politics, Krugman is a complete ass. (and I think I can say that in a completely objective manner) There is no reasonable definition of austerity that can be satisfied in these conditions. The US (and various European govt's that Krugman has been blathering about) were already spending a lot of money. For the most part (a few very limited examples exist), their spending has kept pace with, and generally even exceeded, inflation. When the government is taking at least as much of the country's pie as it always had, and generally even a growing share, it is simply absurd to call that austerity.
- jerf 14y ago
  Your own links show NASA at a fairly flat budget level, not in austerity with cuts. I neither trust nor agree with Krugman's definition of austerity, nor do I see how to square his definition with budgets like [1] that show growth almost across the board. As for NASA's inefficiency, an efficient department would not be able to purchase private space services from SpaceX for a fraction of what they can do themselves. (As for the argument that SpaceX can and did just build on NASA's work... so can NASA. They ought to be able to do even better than a third party building on their stuff, no?) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budg...
  - gizmo 14y ago
    1. NASA's budget has been cut every year since 1998, as a fraction of the federal budget, although their budget in dollars has increased[1]. 2. Krugman doesn't count some expenditures, such as social security, unemployment benefits and a number of other items. He argues on his blog why this paints a more accurate picture. (Search for "Austerity") 3. SpaceX is an exceptional startup and NASA has been in business since the 60s. A typical web startup can outpace IBM and Microsoft too. It's better to compare NASA's inefficiency with other big research labs. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
    - _delirium 14y ago
      On #2, this is also including all levels of government, while the comment you're replying to links a Wikipedia article on the federal budget. The U.S. federal government budget has not been declining, but state and local budgets have been declining sharply, so you get pretty different results depending on what levels you look at.
    - CWuestefeld 14y ago
      NASA's budget has been cut every year since 1998, as a fraction of the federal budget The fact that the federal government's budget grows like a cancer does not mean that NASA's budget is austere, nor does it mean that NASA should get more. It's simply absurd to claim that your budget has been "cut" when it has actually been increased, even in real terms. Your argument sounds like the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Racketeer Rabbit", where they're counting the loot: "One for you; one for me. Two for you; one, two for me". Somebody else getting money does not mean that you're entitled to additional money. SpaceX is an exceptional startup and NASA has been in business since the 60s. A typical web startup can outpace IBM and Microsoft too. The online conclusion I can see to draw from this is that NASA should be wholly disbanded. We'll create a new one, since even a typical startup should be able to outpace the old-time behemoths.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
damoncali 14y ago
You're half right. I worked for NASA on Hubble. I guarantee you we were not living high on the hog. Holiday inn for 6 weeks at a time, cheapest flights for travel, cheapest everything. They balked at a $12 meal once when It was within an hour or so of a flight home once. We had trouble buying $300 hard drives at times (to run $100k software on). My engineer's salary was modest at best. But yes, Congress makes all that "sacrifice" irrelevant due to the absurdity of their whims. Another project I workded on: Al Gore literally had a dream one night, resulting in a colossal clusterfuck called Triana - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triana_(satellite) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triana_(satellite). That's $100 million, wasted on a politician's fantasy of being able to see the whole sunlit side of the Earth. What would Musk have done with that money?
- 3am 14y ago
  Even sadder, Triana costed only 1/3 of what is spent on the war in Afganistan each day. I would prefer to see people in NASA enjoying wide arrays of 15K drives, competitive salaries, and business class seats...
  - MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
    Perhaps we can even splurge on SSDs with that kind of money. Spinning disks are so obsolete when we're talking that much cash.
    - ars 14y ago
      Not when you are talking about storing Petabytes, which NASA does routinely.
- joering2 14y ago
  "The satellite's original purpose was to provide a near-continuous view of the entire Earth and make that live image available via the Internet." Don't believe a word this scumbag is saying. Yeah, they would give you one per day 10x zoomed photo, while giving NSA/TSA/CIA 24/7 life-feed of what you and 3 other billion people living on this side of Earth are doing.

adventureful 14y ago

I like the part where austerity means your spending goes up substantially, and or stays similar. NASA budget: 1987: $7.5b | 1990: $12.4b | 1993: $14.3b | 2001: $14.1b | 2006: $15.1b | 2007: $15.8b | 2008: $17.3b | 2009: $17.7b | 2010: $18.7b | 2011: $18.4b They're doing just fine.

zerohp 14y ago
Correct it for inflation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA Also, consider the fact that congress allocates the money going to individual project, not just the agency as a whole. NASA is not doing just fine.
- nessus42 14y ago
  Also, during the W administration much of the money for real science was redirected towards a manned mission to Mars. This caused terrible financial woes for the department I worked at at MIT for many years that does X-ray astronomy (The Center for Space Research). Quite a few people were laid off, including me, due to the CSR not being able to get the science funding from NASA it always had been able to get previously.
  - astrodust 14y ago
    It's a classic anti-science move of forcing them to commit to an impossible project and then later lay into them for not making any progress and cut funding even more severely.
- adventureful 14y ago
  I saw the inflation calculation in the Wiki tables. You could even argue that inflation calculation is low, and that inflation has been far worse given the price of gold / oil / housing over the last 30 years. My point was: NASA is doing just fine. They're fortunate to still be getting that much money year in year out. It's a lot of money.
robertpateii 14y ago

sakai 14y ago

Since many have commented on the term "austerity" (and that I implied that NASA is undergoing austerity measures), I should clarify that I only meant "the general political sentiment that austerity is a GOOD thing notwithstanding, it still sucks that NASA can't (culturally) buy a bottle of champagne when they complete a $1.5bn project". Apologies for popping the austerity genie out of the bottle.