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purplecthulhu at 07:17pm on 04/11/2005
purplecthulhu at 07:17pm on 04/11/2005From Nature:
NASA administrator Mike Griffin has confirmed speculation that even more of its science projects
would be cut or delayed in an attempt to keep President Bush's 'vision for space' alive.
Not clear what extra is to be cut, but we've already lost the Jovian Moons explorer, and two planet finder missions. I'd guess that Earth Observation is going to be suffering soon, and observational astronomy is going to have to be hit. The likelihood of Hubble surviving is getting slimmer and slimmer.
This does mean that the door is open to ESA becoming the world's premier space science organisation, but will inevitably mean that less gets done, and there will be fewer opportunities over all.
NASA administrator Mike Griffin has confirmed speculation that even more of its science projects
would be cut or delayed in an attempt to keep President Bush's 'vision for space' alive.
Not clear what extra is to be cut, but we've already lost the Jovian Moons explorer, and two planet finder missions. I'd guess that Earth Observation is going to be suffering soon, and observational astronomy is going to have to be hit. The likelihood of Hubble surviving is getting slimmer and slimmer.
This does mean that the door is open to ESA becoming the world's premier space science organisation, but will inevitably mean that less gets done, and there will be fewer opportunities over all.
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Yes - we'd all do better with more money, I won't argue with that, but once again the 900lb gorilla that is NASA's manned programme is putting the more productive side of the agency (in scientific and, frankly, PR terms) out of business. JPL is firing people, for example, and there is massive pressure on science projects across the board - NSF as well as NASA.
I wouldn't mind so much if I thought that Bush's moon/mars plan had a chance of actually happening, but its unlikely to survive his administration, and massive damage will have been done to other programs by the time sanity returns. And all we'll have for it are some more paper projects and short term pork barrel funding for a few aerospace corporations.
The moon/mars programme should be funded by new money, as Apollo was, not by devastating the good things that are already happening. At least ESA's equivalent, Aurora, is going to be an 'additional programme, with its own funding separate from ESA's core science projects.