NASA’s budget is never secure, despite being relatively cheap (it has the smallest budget of all government agencies) and returning more inspiration per buck than any other piece of the government, I’d wager. Still, it does seem to shoulder a large share of the budgetary axe.
This year is worse than most. The last Congress left without finishing the fiscal year 2007 budget, so the new Congress had to pass what’s called a "continuing resolution", a stop-gap measure to allow the government to run temporarily until the budget is finalized. To put it bluntly, these suck. When I was at Goddard Space Flight Center, even though I was a contractor and not a civil servant, when this happened we all feared we’d have to stop work and not get paid for a while. Continuing resolutions are not good for morale, even if they are better than shutting everything down until a budget is agreed upon.
But this year, it’s even bleaker: Congress told agencies that they can keep going, but they have to use their FY 06 budget. That may not sound so bad, but what it translates to is that any project expecting more money in the FY 07 budget isn’t going to get it. This leaves the administrations scrambling to reallocate funds to feed starving projects.
NASA falls under that category. According to Aviation Now, NASA faces a $500 million shortfall! NASA Administrator Mike Griffin will be forced to cut some funding to programs in order to keep others afloat.
Uh-oh.
Let’s just say that NASA’s record on budget cuts has not always been so hot for science (oh, OK, I’ll say it more clearly, like I did here and here and here, but most especially, here, where we see how badly science was already doing in the 2007 budget before this current new crisis). So this is looking grim indeed. What really makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up is this line from the article:
“We will find what we believe are the lowest priority half-billion dollars in content, and we’ll extract it, across the agency,” [Griffin] says, stressing that does not mean programs at the core of the redirected U.S. space program as defined by President Bush almost three years ago…
“The ideal candidate is a fairly new, lower priority effort where not a lot of money has already been invested, and by stopping it now you can react and not have to spend future money that you know you’re not going to get,” he says.
It’s not surprising that he will try to keep as much money as he can in the Exploration program, nor do I blame him: that’s the up-and-coming thing, and cutting money there could really devastate it later. But unmanned science missions are already in really bad shape, and astrobiology, to pick a very sharp example, is facing extinction. There have been some bright moments: Dawn reinstated, SOFIA back on track… but then again there is NuSTAR.
While there may be more money coming in the future, it looks to me that NASA will have to make some extremely difficult decisions very soon.
A few days ago at the AAS meeting I sat at different exhibit booths extolling the great science done by various high-energy NASA missions. I also sat at a couple of booths for missions which still lie some time in the future; astronomical observatories where the technology needed is still a few years away. These missions have already felt the sharp edge of budget cuts in the past. I wonder how "low priority" they will be rated in the coming months? Maybe they’ll survive this round… but somehow, from somewhere, NASA has to find $500 million. That’s going to hurt somebody. I wouldn’t want Griffin’s job if I could keep that money for myself.
Hat tip to Space Politics for the article alert.
January 12th, 2007 at 12:03 am
How much could they save by abandoning the ISS? Whatever the answer, such savings would be made without losing ANY science OR any exploration/getting-the-public-excited-about-space whatsoever!
Sounds like a simple enough decision to me.
January 12th, 2007 at 12:43 am
$500 million is a lot of money. You can fight a whole 0.2% of a war per annum with that dough.
January 12th, 2007 at 1:47 am
You could always approach The Gates Foundation, it recently received Warren Buffet’s multi-billion dollar fortune to add to Bill’s and could easily spare a mere $500M. But looking at the foundation’s goals, it looks like Bill is just ensuring that there are more people around to buy Microsoft software well into the future. Or am I just being ultra cynical?
January 12th, 2007 at 3:15 am
These idiots cannot imagine a life beyond their 4 years in office.
Yes, people like Bill Gates and Paul Allen may have to pick up the slack – but it’s rather sad that private industry should have to. Because we know – if any ‘major’ discovery is made – the US government will happily step in, and take credit (and domain rights) for any breakthrough.
(Holding head in hands)
Teri
January 12th, 2007 at 3:28 am
Does this mean the Hubble servicing mission is scrubbed ?
January 12th, 2007 at 4:21 am
“$500 million is a lot of money. You can fight a whole 0.2% of a war per annum with that dough.”
I don’t know what the breakdown is, but you can probably pay some social security fraud to illegal aliens with that $500 million too. How about a bridge in Alaska to nowhere? How about the billions to New Orleans which is as far as I know is STILL under sea level and WILL flood again. And the list of throwing money down various rat-holes could go on and on and on….
Private enterprise may well be part of the answer.
January 12th, 2007 at 5:49 am
Rrrrrrrr!
News like this really irks me. Probably as much as it does you, Phil.
I’m too angry for rational thought now, so I’ll leave it at that.
You know, NASA could ask Bill Gates for a loan.
January 12th, 2007 at 6:00 am
I only have a few minutes to comment before I have to get ready for work – so I’ll waste them by saying I can’t comment from work anymore! Apparently some blacklist database has decided that CINRAM Manufacturing, a major manufacturer of CDs and DVDs, is also a spam generator. In order to get off the blacklist, I have to swear up and down that I have verified that every computer using our corporate IP address is clean and virus-free. Well, I can’t do that. So I guess CINRAM will stay blacklisted, and I’ll stay blocked.
MISPLACED COMMENT: That’s not Jesus on that concrete wall in Canada. It’s a prop manager from the old Frankenstein movie, holding a four-tined hay fork in one hand, a torch in the other, and wearing (for some reason) a Roman Centurion’s helmet.
January 12th, 2007 at 6:32 am
Scrap the ISS!
January 12th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Phil,
You mean like robbing SIM to pay for SOFIA? (which happened, but according to Steve E., some of the money was restored)
It was grim wandering around those halls wondering which missions would succeed.
You KNOW that Griffin doesn’t think that outreach and education is a high priority (or at least as high a priority as other things that continue to get funded but shouldn’t… )
January 12th, 2007 at 9:56 am
I read an article today that said that NASA is going to formally start using the metric system, instead of converting between metric and imperial.
No more will the speed of light be 5×10^8 furlongs per fortnight!
January 12th, 2007 at 10:17 am
It’s really sad to see a great nation struggling in its death throes. Without major expenditures on R and D(especially the R) the USA will end up a minor player on the world stage. Oh well, I guess we can just do the Roman thing and invade anyone who has what we want. Hey, it’s a lot easier to steal new tech. than build it ourselves and we have so much practise convincing the American public to kick butt on petty dictators it should be easy to convince them we need to invade China or India because they have the “stuff” we want,,,
Gary 7
January 12th, 2007 at 10:20 am
The answer to NASAs’ woes is to follow Bob Parks’ advice, can manned space missions.
But of course, Dr. Park doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
January 12th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Actually, I disagree strongly with Bob’s position on manned spaceflight. I think it’s important, and there is a good place for it. The thing is, it can’t exist at the cost of unmanned flight. So what we need is more money. And we really don’t need a whole lot more to fund both.
January 12th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Democrats are stifling science…
A while back I got into a little to-do with a Bad Astronomer who got political. He fully felt, along with a lot of academic science folks, that Republicans were bad on science. He noted a couple of reasons why….
January 12th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
I read that the rock & roll band The Rolling Stones made almost $500,000,000 touring and playing concerts in the years 2005 and 2006.
They had an old song with lyrics: “Hey Hey You You Get Off Of My Cloud”
NASA needs to get busy by finding a large paying audience soon.
January 13th, 2007 at 3:56 am
“The ideal candidate is a fairly new, lower priority effort where not a lot of money has already been invested”
Like sending people to the moon?
April 25th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
[...] ignored since I didn’t publish it as a for-profit venture in the form of a paperback. Well, imagine my surprise, or lack thereof, when I read this today on the Bad Astronomer’s blo…: But this year, it’s even bleaker: Congress told agencies that they can keep going, but they have [...]