Hello, write me back if you get a chance.

Should we invest more in science? Yes! And Obama has said he would. Whoo-hoo!

But let’s stop and think for a moment along more practical lines. Assuming we have X available for non-medical science funding, it’s pretty crazy that something like 0.35X is spent largely on ballistics research. Is the aerospace industry really deserving of billions more than, say, climatology, microbiology, and quantum physics combined?

Forcing out Mike Griffen was the worst thing that could happen to NASA right now he was finally moving a Agency best known in the modern time for mixing up miles and kilometers to something that would send people to the Moon and Mars. Now look at NASA as Phil says its rudderless with a Inter Administrator who has no power to do anything. I know a lot of Scientific say that just ditch manned flight and give the money to the researcher(a wholly selfish view mine you) but as Robert Zibberman says with the the Man flight it getter harder and harder justify that research. I know Obama pledged more money is going to be spent on science which is good up to 3% of budge but with the debts we are creating when it come times to pay down those debts you can bet those promises will forgotten in the interest of cutting budgets. Because at the end of the day Science doesn’t will elections it sounds good in a speech but a few thousand scientist votes aren’t going to effect much of anything.

That is why you manned flight something for people to see even if they don’t care about it when you say NASA they see the Shuttle or Orin if you try to explain what Casinni is doing in orbit of Saturn to the average person on the street in Boston or New York they are looking to give you a odd look. Since chance are strong these people can’t even find Mexico on a map.

NASA is in a hard place but if they don’t find a way to expend the shuttle(which they are already start to lay people off for) they will be in a even harder place in 4 to 5 years. Because by that point all these points about how much the military cost will just be silly because Social Security and Medicare will be out of money and be looking for any funding they gable up to keep going. The important thing now is to get congress to force Obama to extend the shuttle he isn’t going to do it on this own, hell I don’t expect him to even appoint a new Administrator before 2010 at this point.

Buzz makes some good points, though I wonder if we should focus more on the ISS or set our goals higher.

You could do it in small steps. The current NASA rejected the idea though, by circumventing the original idea of ISS as the middle station to the Moon. Not sure if it is a good idea to retrace that.

But Aldrin’s idea of how to use ISS to invite international cooperation and sharing of costs is sound. Before discussing the level of the US budget one have to ask why that should be a constraint.

The other opportunity is to use a motivational goal. NEOs are dangerous, yet they offer the only second realistic opportunity for mankind to avoid an environmental danger. (The first was the PFC threat to the ozone layer. AGW is another opportunity but it is not realistic to predict that it will be avoided.) An international cooperative program to find, explore, and test avoidance techniques could be such a motivation, much as Jones proposes but more focused.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-33

Senator Mikulski is in a fight right now to get somebody in charge of NASA that is an actual scientist. Maryland is home to the Hubble and there are a lot of us that want to see science reign the day at NASA. She’s probably going to lose to that twit Nelson and Obama’s desire to carry out the George Bush space plan but damn I admire her gumption.

So OK BA you have the Time web-blog award, a huge audience, and a persuasive voice. Right now, this is one of those times when you can advocate for something that can make a difference. Wanna try to take a leap and take a side? The BA minions are waiting and your “What I think NASA should do” article would be read by thousands. What would you do if you were made the NASA administrator? It’s not like you haven’t thought about this every day of your life or anything . And yes, if you are administrator you can deem that you should be launched to space (I know I would). So tell us your thoughts.