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NASA is killing every project it can to not lose the James Webb. Casulties so far are a Mars rover and a Jupiter orbiter, as well as no new missions planned for
by iwwr 14y ago
NASA is killing every project it can to not lose the James Webb. Casulties so far are a Mars rover and a Jupiter orbiter, as well as no new missions planned for the next decade.
The question is, what happened to the Shuttle portion of the budged. You'd think they have more money for robotic spacecraft after that.
- hexagonal 14y agoNASA's paying for Falcon 9 development by proxy. And the Antares launch system, and the shuttle-derived SLS.
- adventureful 14y agoGood question, looking up the budget, they allocated about $3 billion in 2009 for the Shuttle program (17% of their budget). Mind boggling to think they spent $200 billion on that program over its life. Scientific breakthrough doesn't function by sheer dollar command, but it's hard not to think about what could have been done with that money instead ($20 billion for a cheaper SpaceX style launch system, $180 billion redirected toward research, invention, X Prize awards, telescopes, satellites, rovers, etc).