So NASA is being cut to nothing
Except that it isn't. The proposed NASA budget is essentially flat-funded from prior years, if I remember correctly. NASA's just whining because it wants MOAR TOYZ, which Congress doesn't want to give them, in part because NASA doesn't share priorities with several influential segments of Congress.
The most recent House budget, for example, explicitly told them to drop the asteroid-hunt and use the money to go to Mars instead.
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I think all federal budgeting from year to year should start with a zero percent increase. I get so sick of "My budget has been cut 20%!" really meaning "My budget only increased by 4% when it should have increased by 5%."
Either that, or I get to write an automatic 5% increase into my salary every year.
I think all federal budgeting from year to year should start with a zero percent increase. I get so sick of "My budget has been cut 20%!" really meaning "My budget only increased by 4% when it should have increased by 5%."
Either that, or I get to write an automatic 5% increase into my salary every year.
Well, you may not get to, but your boss certainly writes such a thing into your salary when he's doing his long term projections.
Public sector or private sector, money is planned to be spent long before it actually even becomes available. Unless you're managing a hot dog truck, you need to be able to do long-term budget planning. That new wing of the hospital may need to have the foundations laid two years before it opens, and the planning permission and permits may take another year.
And so if we're planning on putting six cardiologists into that wing, you bet that somewhere in some computer is a line saying that six cardiologists will cost $250,000 each today and therefore $300,000 three years from now.
In the case of the Mars mission -- or for that matter, the asteroid hunt -- the planning needs to start even longer, which means they need to be able to plan their budgets out, not for five years, but for twenty.
Unless you're suggesting that the government should also magically stop inflation from happening,.....
Because lawyers know how to do science better than scientists do, dammit!
Scientists know how to do the science. They rarely know which science to do. Which science to do is a public policy question, not a scientific one.
If I had to pick the single most useless, ineffective, catastrophic government program (outside of certain ongoing entitlement programs) in the entire history of this nation, I'd probably pick the Space Shuttle.
NASA rarely does the right "science." When they do it is almost always their lower budget, longer term, very specific programs like the Mars Rovers. When they do big projects they are almost always bad science as well as bad public policy.
And this is coming from a guy whose original life ambition was to be a NASA astronaut.