In response to Trump budget, NASA ending separate technology plan
Source: ARS Technica
Even though Congress has yet to formally consider President Trump’s new budget for NASA, the space agency is already moving swiftly to implement some of its core principles. Among those is a White House desire to end a separate program within the agency focused on the development of advanced new spaceflight technologies intended to keep NASA at the cutting edge.
With an annual budget that has varied between $500 million and $1 billion, the Space Technology Mission Directorate was created in 2010 to develop the kinds of technology NASA needed to explore deeper into space, such as advanced propulsion and power systems, in-space manufacturing, and new means of landing on far-off worlds. If humans really were to really expand beyond low-Earth orbit, research and development of these new technologies was deemed critical.
The President’s fiscal year 2019 budget for the space agency seeks to realign the space technology program by folding it into NASA’s “Exploration” program, which is managing development of deep space hardware Congress has directed the space agency to build—the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, and ground systems at Kennedy Space Center.
Some former space technology officials have begun sounding the alarm about these changes, being made without oversight from Congress. “Disastrous news!” tweeted Mason Peck on Thursday morning. He served as the space agency’s chief technologist earlier this decade. “NASA is already dismantling STMD even though the President's budget is only a month old. Don't give up. We need Space Technology if we want NASA to have a bold future. I hope Congress will reject this gutting of NASA's technology investments.”
Read more: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/in-response-to-trump-budget-nasa-ending-separate-technology-plan/
= new reply since forum marked as read
they have decided to scrap NASA's Astronomy Budget
Trump's budget would kill NASA's WFIRST telescope. Astronomers say that would be a mistake...............
A NASA space telescope that would probe distant planets and explore some of the biggest mysteries of the cosmos is on the chopping block in President Trump's 2019 budget proposal released Monday.
The request would zero out funding for NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, or WFIRST, a repurposed spy satellite donated by the Department of Defense. The move sent shock waves through the scientific community.
"It would be extraordinarily disappointing to see it canceled when a lot of work has gone into it already," Bruce Macintosh, a Stanford University astrophysicist with the mission, said in an interview.
With a planned launch in the mid-2020s, WFIRST would survey distant galaxies looking for the effects of dark matter, that mysterious stuff that can't be seen or touched but outnumbers normal matter by roughly 5 to 1. The telescope would study Type Ia supernovas to track dark energy, that strange repulsive force that is causing the universe to expand faster and faster. The observatory could even use its instruments to explore the planets around other stars.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-nasa-wfirst-cut-20180212-story.html
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Please note this jerk went around and was touting jobs..................this is a job killer................he's an idiot.............he really is an idiot............................
November 2018 cannot get here fast enough