"A political showdown is looming this summer and fall over NASA's fiscal year 2025 budget request, which contains $866 million in new funding. Some $136 million of the proposed boost is earmarked to start President George W. Bush's new space exploration proposals. Neither house of Congress has acted on the plan yet, and though work has started on a bill to authorize both multi-year funding and a rationale for space exploration, most Hill staffers involved in the issue expect the authorization legislation to be left behind in the congressional rush to adjourn for the fall campaign."
+ Read Article (UPI)
Posted by jburk at May 25, 2024 11:48 PM | TrackBackThe budget as a whole is insufficient to get what is need for this space vision let alone to give it a jump start.
The extra 186 million will not buy very much from the design side for the needs that are required. That is the equivalent of buying a Delta IV rocket, an Atlas V with no probes for either and little of anything else.
This money will not go very far towards jump starting Nasa.
Must read: Town minutes meeting held at JPL: authored by attendee Kevin Parkin
"From memory (expect lots of errors):
Estimated average audience age - 55 years
Estimated audience size - 250
Aprox. % of JPLers - 80%
Estimated people there my age (27) or younger - 10 (including the camera man, myself, and Derek Shannon (see earlier comment))
Sen. Brownback gave a 5 min intro to set the stage for the town hall meeting, making it clear that he was highly interested in innovative suggestions for how to structure the legislative architecture of the exploration initiative. Rep. Rohrabacher said a few words and was congratulated by JPL President Charles Elachi on having triplets this month. Also in attendance was Buzz Aldrin and Gen. Pete Worden.
- The first audience speaker spoke eloquently and extolled the virtues of prizes and industry collaboration. Sen. Brownback asked people who did/didn't support prizes to raise their hands. Sen. Brownback asked the audience speaker how much the prize award should be. This seems to be a point of particular interest, since Sen. Brownback asked precisely the same question of Elon Musk at the launcher hearing a couple of weeks ago. Back then, Elon Musk said something like it should be 10% of the amount the government would otherwise spend on developing that capability. This time, the answer was "as much as possible" to which there was laughter and Sen. Brownback rephrased the question, how little can we spend on prizes? Nothing as good as Elon's answer was put forward.
- The gentleman sitting on my left believed that the focus of NASA should not be on exploring Mars but rather on studying the dynamics of Earth, global warming, etc. Knowing of Rep. Rohrabachers views on this subject I watched the expression on his face as this was said. Rep. Rohrabacher patiently waited and then said that he couldn't disagree more with said gentleman. So began a period of booing and a sequence of rebuttals from various members of the audience throughout the remainder of the evening.
- Someone else suggested that looking at computer images was just as good as listening to an astronaut give a first-person account of their experiences of exploration/other planets. Most people in the room disagreed in a reserved way.
- One lady declared that we should spend billions of dollars on space, so that unbelievers in Jesus could all be sent to the moon. This was arguably the highlight of the meeting, and I briefly imagined churches passing around collection plates for money to send me to the moon, and then happily recalled the episode of South Park where the church sent missionaries to convert aliens on the planet Marklar and so held a TV funding drive for a spaceship, photon torpedoes etc.
- One elderly lady spoke at length, beginning by mentioning her two congressional science medals, moving on to discredit herself by saying something like the settlement of the moon would be impossible because the lack of magnetic field on the moon, and therefore the radiation would kill everyone. She finished up by saying that NASA wouldn't spend $100K to maintain the only laser capable of ranging the moon (to the accuracy of ~1 cm) and that she had spent the last 20 years of her life fighting for that small slice of funding. Sen. Brownback listened with a concerned expression.
- Sen. Brownback at some point took a show of hands who thought we would be on the moon in 30 years, then 20 years. Very few thought 20 years.
- One gentleman referred to the human exploration program as not generating any useful science (except on how humans degrade in space) and referred to the space station as a useless tin can. He was against the exploration initiative because science had so far been much better conducted by robotic craft than humans (*).
- One gentleman in front of me said that these JPL scientists understandably viewed the exploration initiative as a purely scientific endeavor, when in fact there were other less tangible motivations too, such as exploration itself. He did not mention reversing the decline of the science base or the military justifications, but nevertheless he was about the only person who had taken on board the essence of this new initiative. He is the NASA employee I would keep.
- Sen. Brownback asked how people might feel if someone else were to colonize the moon and then there was some discussion of international cooperation, particularly with Russia. Sen. Brownback seemed unaware of the pitfalls of international collaboration in making projects _very_ expensive, but did make a good point that ISS would be in a very bad position right now if we had not partnered with Russia.
- Sen. Brownback wrapped up by again thanking JPL for their excellent success with the Mars Rovers, which makes his job of justifying space expenditure on Capitol Hill much easier. Rep. Rohrabacher had earlier expressed the same sentiment, and my own view these expressions were absolutely sincere. Retired congressman Robert Walker said a similar thing to NSS Exec Director George Whitesides at the Aldridge Commission hearing in New York. He basically said that legislators realize the value of space exploration but that without the public continually asking questions about space exploration and a general impression of broad-based popular support, that it was very easy to vote money to veteran's affairs rather than NASA (they compete in the same budget category). Shortly thereafter the Space Exploration Alliance was announced, of which NSS is a member.
(*) On a personal note, this was the viewpoint I had expected from JPL and which I feel is small-minded linear thinking. If we are still conducting robotic science and human operations the same way we do now in 10-15 years, once the exploration initiative gets going, then I may as well go into the finance sector right now and forget my dreams --because they will never happen with the status quo."
Posted by Kevin Parkin at May 26, 2024 04:59 AM
Posted by: Harold LaValley at May 26, 2024 05:00 AM