Another Scientific Cut-Back for NASA—What Now?
My first article written about NASA’s twin rovers was about the little rover Spirit and its struggle during its winter on Mars. A simple piece, immediately both rovers became almost humanistic for me instead of cold pieces of robotic machinery doing what was told.
Over the past two years of blog writing, the rovers have surpassed for me what was expected of them. In my childhood and early adult years, I prided myself on not being “left brained” but chose art work and illustration, poetry, and psychology as my fields. But as I matured, I have realized a balance of both is needed to be knowledgeable and aware what is going on around me. And the twin rovers opened that door for me. But now, one may soon be put to sleep because of another governmental budget cut…..I sadly repeat, another budget cut for NASA.
A four-million dollar “planned budget cut” to the space agency has caused NASA some confusion about what it is going to do. Budget cut from exactly where? Let us look at the budget cut response in May 20, 2006, by Frank Gaglioti in his article ” Cuts to NASA budget gut space research” where he quoted NASA as saying they were effectively capping science spending from 2007 to 2011. The main reason for this was for President Bush’s recent plan to establish a permanent settlement on the moon, to further prepare for a manned mission to Mars. Okay. Well. What is being sacrificed for the moon projects are fundamental scientific questions about the solar system and the universe. Hmmm….
This overall science budget, according to Gaglioti and several others, is to focus on projects with more of a commercial payoff or to strengthen the military. This plan will cost the United States about $5.9 billion dollars, and is aimed at bolstering our corporate interests at the expense of their rivals. Presidential science adviser John Marburger bluntly declared: “The point is, we’re prioritizing.” Curator at the Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Glenn MacPherson, responded: “There has been no consultation with the science community. The science cuts hurt everyone in this room.” The Space.com website commented on the meeting that “the fury… was not kept within US borders. Scientists from Europe also cautioned that the NASA budget is damaging international cooperation.” Meanwhile, Europe, China and Russia are ever-so slowly moving ahead—similar to the tortoise and the hare scenario.
Decades of old-established programs are being reduced to dust, causing a massive setback, if not total annihilation, to scientific research regarding physics and cosmology. Teams of scientists, engineers and technicians are being reduced as we speak, with 300 scientists possibly being laid off if one or both rovers are to go down, due to the recent governmental $4 million dollar cut-back.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Public Relations, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
