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NASA Gives Up on LISA

blogs.discovermagazine.com

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Re: NASA Gives Up on LISA

#41

Post by iwwr »

robryan wrote: post #24
prawn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want immediate results. Investing in something that won't necessarily bring results for years or decades (or centuries in the case of space exploration) is rarely going to be popular. At least here in Australia, a common comment on something like this is that we shouldn't spend money on this sort of thing when there are people starving and dying in the third world. Then the typical comments on, say an article…

I wish Australia would spend some more money on space based projects, imagine if the US decided not to make any major investment into space, the planet as a whole would be getting nowhere on space based research projects.

Real sustainable expenditure on space projects can only be from the private sector. What governments do are generally boondoggles, which sometimes show pretty results.

The space shuttle, for instance, persisted not for the scientific or technical advances, but that it sent money to lots of political constituencies, which alone made it viable. The Hubble, while giving us spectacular images, was still horribly overpriced and NASA ended up paying for it twice over (once to send it up and twice to send the shuttle after it).

There wasn't a lot of opposition to the shuttle and the ISS from within NASA (for 'eating up the budget') because they were aware that budget only existed because of these high-value items. They might have liked to have the money for other things, perhaps, but political money doesn't work that way.

Re: NASA Gives Up on LISA

#42

Post by OstiaAntica »

gammarator wrote: post #19
d2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canceling the JWST will be a catastrophe for NASA.

Unfortunately, with JWST sitting out there as its own line-item in the NASA budget (as opposed to rolled in with the rest of Astrophysics), there's concern in the community that it will be a tempting target for a Congress anxious to cut anything that moves.

To be fair to the cutters in Congress, running a government that borrows 40 cents of every dollar it spends is going to lead to a catastrophe.

Re: NASA Gives Up on LISA

#43

Post by OstiaAntica »

gammarator wrote: post #19
d2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canceling the JWST will be a catastrophe for NASA.

Unfortunately, with JWST sitting out there as its own line-item in the NASA budget (as opposed to rolled in with the rest of Astrophysics), there's concern in the community that it will be a tempting target for a Congress anxious to cut anything that moves.

To be fair to the cutters in Congress, running a government that borrows 40 cents of every dollar it spends is going to lead to a catastrophe.

Re: NASA Gives Up on LISA

#44

Post by harshpotatoes »

juiceandjuice wrote: post #2

This has been feared for a while in that community. There's quite a bit of animosity towards the JWST for soaking up NASA's budget in recent history, and JWST is trying to do some serious damage control because they're too far along and too big to fail. I saw John Mather (Nobel prize winner) give a talk recently that was basically "Look how far we are, and we're sorry for soaking up the budget."

Yes, this is true. But unfortunately, if LISA were allowed to be completed, LISA would be in the same situation soaking up all of the budget. LISA was expected to cost more than a billion dollars. As is true for any project of that size, there would be overages.

Re: NASA Gives Up on LISA

#45

Post by harshpotatoes »

wladimir wrote: post #17
ars wrote: post #3

That's too bad. Gravity waves are one of the last unknowns in science that we also know how to study. (Most other unknowns we don't know how to study.) I've always wondered, we have rich foundations doing all kinds of good - do any of them try to step in and fill budgets of this sort?

To me (as an outsider) it looks as if the USA, en masse, doesn't believe in science anymore. So many interesting research projects have been stopped lately, education is being crippled, and other avenues of education and research are being killed for religious reasons. We owe so much to science in our daily lives, why are (common) people so reluctant to see that? Or is the issue deeper. Do people hate the current, fa…

You're thinking about this too pessimistically. In this situation canceling LISA was unfortunately the appropriate response. 1) James Webb is currently costing 12 times the expected construction costs.

2)The astronomy community unfortunately can't pay for LISA, JWST, and all of the other smaller projects at the same time. The other solution, as opposed to keeping lisa, would be to cancel the small stuff. But, I think it is more appropriate to go after this large cost item first before the smaller items.

3)You're forgetting that science isn't just composed of these huge projects, there are still tons of smaller projects that have money poured into them. Radio astronomy still receives money and builds nice telescopes (I think the MWA is the most recent). And let's not forget that for Gravitational Waves, LIGO is still being upgraded to LIGO advanced and is expected to directly observe some gravitational waves. Since its arms are much shorter than LISA's, it studies different frequency waves. LISA is expected to study waves from merging black holes while LIGO studies those from merging neutron stars and supernovas.

Like others have said, this is just a low point in the fluctuations of a large budget. It's not the first time we've had to cancel expensive projects, and cool science can still be done.

Re: NASA Gives Up on LISA

#46

Post by lutorm »

ars wrote: post #26
wladimir wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me (as an outsider) it looks as if the USA, en masse, doesn't believe in science anymore. So many interesting research projects have been stopped lately, education is being crippled, and other avenues of education and research are being killed for religious reasons. We owe so much to science in our daily lives, why are (common) people so reluctant to see that? Or is the issue deeper. Do people hate the current, fa…

It's only temporary. During boom times America funded a lot of science and other worthwhile things. Right now there is a massive pullback, but when the economy recovers things will restart. Take a longer view.

The problem with this idea is that when things are defunded, people leave the field and do other things. And they don't come back. It's not like science is a spigot you can just turn on when you want and then turn off again.

Look at the situation with nuclear energy, over the past two decades noone in their right mind (without tenure) would have gone into nuclear energy research. The result is that now, when people are once again talking about the need for new reactors and whatnot, the field is a pale shadow of what it was 30 years ago.

This is why long-term efforts like research can't be subject to the year-by-year fluctuations. "Disinvesting in the University of California is like eating our seed corn," is what the UC researchers said about the cuts to the UC budget, which applies equally well anywhere else.

Re: NASA Gives Up on LISA

#47

Post by anon_for_this_1 »

wladimir wrote: post #39
paganel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me (as an outsider) it looks as if the USA, en masse, doesn't believe in science anymore. I'm also an outsider, but I think this is really a money problem. The same thing happened in the USSR in the late '80s, suddenly there was no money for science anymore, it didn't matter that the Soviet scientists had helped produce great things.

Is that true, though? Is the USA really running out of money? I simply don't believe it. The USA is still the biggest economy of the world, which makes this a resource allocation issue instead of a resource issue.

The USA is a huge economy, but debt can't just be swept under the rug forever -- interest payments are huge and getting bigger. Everyone is starting to realize we can't keep borrowing forever -- we're nearing the end of that way of living.

Re: NASA Gives Up on LISA

#48

Post by prawn »

ars wrote: post #25
prawn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want immediate results. Investing in something that won't necessarily bring results for years or decades (or centuries in the case of space exploration) is rarely going to be popular. At least here in Australia, a common comment on something like this is that we shouldn't spend money on this sort of thing when there are people starving and dying in the third world. Then the typical comments on, say an article…

> I'd love to see military budgets (as one example) plowed into aggressive space research and exploration Interesting example - because they are. The military is responsible for a lot more research than is immediately obvious. All you have to do is come up with some plausible military use (offense or defense), and you have a chance for funding. I've seen projects with just the barest hit of possibly being militarily…

I'm talking about the 'fighting' part of the budget more than anything else. How much money and effort around the world is spent on destructive or defensive behavior rather than constructive or exploratory action?

Re: NASA Gives Up on LISA

#49

Post by mturmon »

robryan wrote: post #23
mturmon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More on the JWST overrun: http://www.spacenews.com/civil/101112-jwst-cost-imperils-pri...

Given the amount spent a launch failure would be pretty catastrophic for the JWST.

A launch failure is always catastrophic for the onboard instrument ;-)

Re: NASA Gives Up on LISA

#50

Post by ars »

prawn wrote: post #48
ars wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd love to see military budgets (as one example) plowed into aggressive space research and exploration Interesting example - because they are. The military is responsible for a lot more research than is immediately obvious. All you have to do is come up with some plausible military use (offense or defense), and you have a chance for funding. I've seen projects with just the barest hit of possibly being militarily…

I'm talking about the 'fighting' part of the budget more than anything else. How much money and effort around the world is spent on destructive or defensive behavior rather than constructive or exploratory action?

Very little. Most of the military budget goes to research of one kind or another. The rest goes to pay salaries for all the military employees.
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