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Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

latimes.com

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Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#411

Post by refurb »

toomanyrichies wrote: post #390
refurb wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not see the video? It wasn't civil, it looked like a couple of long-lost best friends catching up. Obama had made his comments about "wannabe dictator" only a week or so earlier. Actions speak louder than words.

I don't care if they're slapping each other's backs and high-fiving! Trump is currently the most powerful person in the world, and has a long and storied history of using that power to harm those who slight him or bruise his fragile ego in any way. Obama knows this; he's been on the receiving of Trump's petty vindictiveness too many times to count. And he could just as easily be placating Trump so that he doesn't iss…

Or, Obama knows it’s all politics and mudslinging, where the truth is irrelevant?

And in reality he’s happy to have Trump as a friend and isn’t really worried about a dictatorship?

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#412

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

vlod wrote: post #188

The All-In-Podcast recently interviewed (1-1) Jared Isaacman (NASA admin nominee) about the bloat. Worth watching the whole interview ~1 hour. [0] Jared Isaacman: What went wrong at NASA | The All-In Interview https://youtu.be/6YdOjoaQTOQ?si=FUeL8mJ6LwHwO_B4&t=1275

The Trump administration is proposing cutting more than half of NASA's scientific research. Calling NASA science "bloat" is absurd.

If the proposed budget cuts go through, NASA's scientific research will be eviscerated. Nearly every planned telescope will be canceled. Most grants for students, postdocs and professors - the people analyzing the data from NASA's missions - will be cut.

We're talking the end of astrophysics and planetary science in the United States. It will just cease to exist.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#413

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

IceHegel wrote: post #162

NASA has become the DMV for space. It's not the NASA of Wernher von Braun anymore. That's what we should be going for.

NASA's scientific research is incredible. Almost everyone here is narrowly focusing on NASA's manned missions, but the scientific side of NASA is doing amazingly.

The James Webb Space Telescope has performed beyond expectations, and is making fundamental discoveries about the history of the Universe and the properties of planets outside our Solar System. NASA has had a string of highly successful scientific missions.

Yet the Trump administration is proposing to completely gut NASA's science funding. If these cuts go through, there basically will be no new NASA scientific missions. It's game over for astrophysics and planetary science in the US.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#414

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

juancampa wrote: post #332

This quote about New Horizons is puzzling > The New Horizons spacecraft [...] reached Pluto in 2016 and is currently exploring other distant features of the system [...]. Keeping it running today by receiving its transmitted data and making sure it remains on course costs about $14.7 million a year, or less than 2% of its total price tag. Does anyone know why this would be so expensive? A slice of Deep Space Network…

How is that an outrageous figure?

You need people for mission operations, to calibrate the data, and to do science with the data. You need access to the Deep Space Network. Beyond that, there is outreach.

This can easily come to several million dollars a year. It's a tiny fraction of what we pay on completely meaningless stuff. More is spent on the average US Congressional race every two years, and there are 435 of those. Surely we can spend this much to keep one of humanity's most distant spacecraft working.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#415

Post by juancampa »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #414
juancampa wrote: post #332

This quote about New Horizons is puzzling > The New Horizons spacecraft [...] reached Pluto in 2016 and is currently exploring other distant features of the system [...]. Keeping it running today by receiving its transmitted data and making sure it remains on course costs about $14.7 million a year, or less than 2% of its total price tag. Does anyone know why this would be so expensive? A slice of Deep Space Network…

How is that an outrageous figure? You need people for mission operations, to calibrate the data, and to do science with the data. You need access to the Deep Space Network. Beyond that, there is outreach. This can easily come to several million dollars a year. It's a tiny fraction of what we pay on completely meaningless stuff. More is spent on the average US Congressional race every two years, and there are 435 of t…

Right, but that budget is enough to pay 60+ $200k salaries. I'd imagine that New Horizons is mostly coasting and there isn't a lot of new data for long periods of time.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#416

Post by rockemsockem »

bumby wrote: post #348
rockemsockem wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, reviews, where important design concerns can be raised. IDK what specific design concerns you're referring to, but just because an issue is raised doesn't mean it's a real issue. Again, you don't want two different organizations trying to design one thing.

You missed the part where NASA engineers were told to pipe down about concerns because it wasn’t their place to drive the design. There were numerous, the ones I’m familiar with involved touch screens in cockpits and the amount of reliability needed in safety critical hardware.

Everyone is wrong sometimes. Dragon seems to be pretty safe, so idk what else to measure that against?

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#417

Post by supplied_demand »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #391
supplied_demand wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The broken windows fallacy isn’t about government spending. The parable never mentions governments or taxes, you have added that piece. Voluntary economic transactions don’t have a positive ROI by virtue of being voluntary. People and companies engage in negative ROI activities all the time.

People and private companies that are reliant on voluntary transactions for their funding will go bankrupt and be forced to stop if they spend too much on negative ROI activities. Governments can just raise taxes/borrow more money and keep spending until the whole country implodes, unless voters stop them.

== if they spend too much on negative ROI activities==

This is the key, and it has nothing to do with being private or public. You have brought that bias into the discussion.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#418

Post by Ajedi32 »

supplied_demand wrote: post #417
Ajedi32 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People and private companies that are reliant on voluntary transactions for their funding will go bankrupt and be forced to stop if they spend too much on negative ROI activities. Governments can just raise taxes/borrow more money and keep spending until the whole country implodes, unless voters stop them.

== if they spend too much on negative ROI activities== This is the key, and it has nothing to do with being private or public. You have brought that bias into the discussion.

> it has nothing to do with being private or public

It has everything to do with being public or private. Private companies exist to generate a positive ROI; that's literally their whole purpose. Companies with high ROIs attract massive investment and expand, companies with low or negative ROIs cease to exist. It's a self-optimizing system.

Government programs have no concern for ROI and that's precisely the problem; they just siphon more resources out of the private sector and keep going regardless of whether there's any return or not.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#419

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

juancampa wrote: post #415
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that an outrageous figure? You need people for mission operations, to calibrate the data, and to do science with the data. You need access to the Deep Space Network. Beyond that, there is outreach. This can easily come to several million dollars a year. It's a tiny fraction of what we pay on completely meaningless stuff. More is spent on the average US Congressional race every two years, and there are 435 of t…

Right, but that budget is enough to pay 60+ $200k salaries. I'd imagine that New Horizons is mostly coasting and there isn't a lot of new data for long periods of time.

Looking at the mission website,[0] there are still a lot of people involved with the mission, spread across science, engineering, operations and management.

You would be surprised how much science can be done with an old mission like this, both with the data they already have on hand and with new data. It looks like they have several dozen scientists working on the project (not all necessarily full time).

In any case, putting this into perspective, I don't see how it could be a waste to spend $14.7 million / year to keep one of the most distant probes humanity has sent out into space working.

0. https://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/The-Team.php

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#420

Post by supplied_demand »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #418
supplied_demand wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

== if they spend too much on negative ROI activities== This is the key, and it has nothing to do with being private or public. You have brought that bias into the discussion.

> it has nothing to do with being private or public It has everything to do with being public or private. Private companies exist to generate a positive ROI; that's literally their whole purpose. Companies with high ROIs attract massive investment and expand, companies with low or negative ROIs cease to exist. It's a self-optimizing system. Government programs have no concern for ROI and that's precisely the problem;…

== Government programs have no concern for ROI and that's precisely the problem; they just siphon more resources out of the private sector and keep going regardless of whether there's any return or not.==

You have inserted your personal bias and declared it a fact. Many government programs have ended. Many programs have very specific concern for ROI. Government has an ROI timeline lasting generation-to-generation (see: moon landing, interstate, quantum investments), a company has a timeline lasting quarter-to-quarter (see: SEC filings).

Different entities can also measure ROI differently. To you ROI means positive net income and growth. It could mean patent or litigation protection for a large company.

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