NYT: At NASA, Science Sharply Shifts Course (to exploration)

[DeepModem Mom]

At NASA, Science Sharply Shifts Course
By DENNIS OVERBYE

Published: April 27, 2004


After President Bush's order that NASA redirect its energies toward human exploration of the Moon and Mars, the space agency has drastically shifted its scientific priorities, delaying missions and cutting the projected budgets of programs that it does not perceive as related to the exploration.

Much attention has been focused on the decision to let the Hubble Space Telescope die by canceling the shuttle mission to maintain it. But in the meantime, whole fields of science have been demoted to asterisks on NASA budget projections over the next few years, leading many scientists to fear for the future of science in space....

***

About $1.2 billion of $4.5 billion previously projected to be spent over the next four years has been cut from a program to understand how the Sun and Earth interact. The importance of that line of study was underscored last summer, when a series of solar explosions threw out giant blobs of radiation and particles capable of disrupting radio communications and, perhaps, endangering astronauts.

And despite President Bush's promise to seek answers to the questions about global warming, about $1 billion has been removed from the projected earth science budget over the next four years, delaying by two years the launching of a satellite that will measure worldwide precipitation....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/27/science/space/27NASA.html

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Stealth de-funding

I'm starting to think that Bush's "re-tasking" of NASA was just a stealth way to de-fund earth science missions without pissing off the pro-space people. What better way to accomplish both goals than to announce a grand, but un-funded, mandate to establish a base on the Moon and launch an exploratory mission to Mars?

All of the cuts are being made in programs that might improve environmental science. Even the solar activity project is environmentally related, since it has become clear that the sun's activity interacts with the weather to a degree we haven't previously suspected.

There are times that I think that had Bush even suspected that the grounding of all civilian air traffic for a week after 9/11/2001 (except for the House of Saud) would provide a windfall of meteorological and environmental data, that order would never have been give.

--bkl

[DeepModem Mom]

2. I assumed exploration just meant more $$$ for Bush contributors,

but you could be right. From the article: "While many scientists say human spaceflight needs a grand goal like Mars, few say the money allocated so far will be enough to pay for it." So if Mars is said to be prioritized, but not sufficiently funded, then the lowered priority given to programs related to environmental science is accomplished -- while appearing to keep the U.S. in the space business.

[bobthedrummer]

3. Yet DoD uses NASA bigtime-and mercenaries too

Remember, the number one prioity of RNC is support for SDI Reagan's Star Wars technology.

We already have some real problems right here on Earth thanks to the RW Republican NAZIS and their American cousins, don't you think?

But here is an article by Dr. Nick Begich on this Star Wars stuff (so that the general outline of how PNAC requires this kind of space empire can be better appreciated imho).
http://www.adacomp.net/~mcherney/starwars.html

And here is the original HR2977/The Space Preservation Act of 2001.
The language references to "exotic weapons" were completely gone in the revision HR3616/The Space Preservation Act of 2002.
http://www.raven1.net/govptron.htm

Don't forget, George W. Bush is also known as The War President:grr:

[bobthedrummer]

4. Did you know that NASA got it's start from evil occultist Jack Parsons

and the Peenemunde Operation PAPERCLIP Nazis, including von Braun and Bell Aviation VP Dornberger?