Comments on: Fiscal Year 2007

By: skeptic

skeptic — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 17:23:28 +0000

Note that it is all from borrowed money; this is unsustainable.

By: adam

adam — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 11:46:01 +0000

I was talking to some astronomers yesterday who are more in touch with issues of funding than am I, and they were of the opinion that the Manned Mission to Mars was already on the skids. Which is good news for most astronomers, I’d say.

By: JoAnne

JoAnne — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 06:46:19 +0000

NASA, of course, has to pay for the all important mission to Mars. Real science takes a second seat in this respect, according to our Science President.

By: JoAnne

JoAnne — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 06:43:38 +0000

Nicholas: Synchroton radiation (i.e., photon radiation/bremstrahlung) occurs at a very large rate as accelerators increase in center of mass energy. This radiation occurs much more often in circular colliders than in linear ones. It also occurs at a lower energy for electron beams (elementary particles) than for protons (composite particles). For electrons, we have reached the break even point with circular colliders - where the amount of energy we pump in is equal to the amount that is radiated away. And that is why the next electron collider must be linear - the synchrotron radiation is much less and we can acheive our collision energy much more efficiently.

By: Chris W.

Chris W. — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 04:03:26 +0000

Meanwhile, the effort to gut Medicare, federal student loan programs, housing assistance, etc, continues. At some point the focus on federal funding for science starts to look a bit like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 00:00:59 +0000

While DOE and NSF are looking good, NASA looks to be killing off science right and left. Steinn has been digging into it.

By: spyder

spyder — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 23:45:27 +0000

All of this comes with the usual caveat: this is a budget proposal and will be tweaked and earmarked to death by House and Senate members lobbyied to the extremes in the so “not” reformed system of privilege and power. A $60 million dollar line item now, becomes pooled with someone else’s not so pet project to be earmarked dollars to be used by Ted Stevens. To keep these values and assignations requires diligent continued lobbying on all our parts, from now until the Budget is passed before the October 2006 deadline.

By: D. Rad

D. Rad — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 23:16:16 +0000

How is NASA going? (And how is the within-NASA breakdown?) I’ve heard funds were being diverted from astro to Mars.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 22:41:17 +0000

Why are they looking into a linear collider? I was under the impression (in fact I believe I did a problem on it in my special relativity class) that circular accelerators are much more efficient given the multiple loops you can send particles through…

Cheers,

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 21:30:23 +0000

On page 338 of Volume 4 of the DOE budget you will find the $60 million listed. It is an 800-some page pdf document, so do not click if you are on dialup.