Huh? I don’t remember what I wrote — and cannot seem to quickly find it — that generated this response. I fully agree with you that the Bush Administration’s refusal to accept the results of basic Quicken skills is far more likely to damage or destroy the VSE than any other likely event or issue.

— Donald

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France and Germany are in the process of electing new (hopefully brighter) leaders, and Blair will be going after the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which is every bit as stupid as the US system.

If the EU maintains the subsidies the US feels the need to as well, but there may be sufficient political pressure on both sides to scrap them at the same time… And the Bush administration did always say the best aid to the third world (who benefit from higher crop revenue) was via trade rather than corrupt government programs.

The former is an expensive luxury some in the DOD set their heart on but in today’s world is unnecessary. The later program is almost pure pork with very little to show for it, every sign of continuing ad infinitum, and little hope of returning anything worthy of the massive investment.

End of problem.

— Donald

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/14/AR2005091402654.html

Look at the final paragraph … nothing quite like wise stewardship and pay-as-you-go as seen by the current Administration.

Well, in that case I reverse my position. At this point in time, automated missions to Mars (especially if they are oriented toward the information we need to send humans) are far more important than “rehabilitating” the Space Shuttle.

I’d much rather see the money spent on the CEV, or even Cecil and Karen’s HLV.

— Donald

I too regard JPL’s work as a well-executed robotic precursor to a human Mars mission. Now that the Mars exploration baton is being handed to the human spaceflight folks, who are completely unprepared for a Mars mission, it vexes me to think that JPL is downsizing not to speed along those preparations, but to return the Space Shuttle to flight (again).

— Donald

But for other reasons, I agree that science should be a main measure of success of the JPL science missions. And I will even concede that the Mars landers are somewhat overblown. I do not think that it’s quite fair to use the discovery of life on Mars as the standard of success, because I don’t think that there ever was any. The probes have found a lot of unexpected geology, which tell us something about the history of the solar system, and they have revealed a bit more evidence that there isn’t life on Mars. That is at least a modest success.

Besides, even if the Mars probes aren’t quite Fundamental Science, capitalized, they are very popular science, as the TV ratings proved. That ought to count for something. NASA’s human spaceflight doesn’t even do well on TV any more, except for launch, landing, and LOCV.

The real strength of JPL, which Bush didn’t properly explain, is the great diversity of its missions, and other unmanned space missions. Any one of these missions may look a little limited, but if you take them as whole, they are answering questions all over the map.

Kevin: I do not agree that NASA will do more then send buggies to Mars by cutting JPL’s budget. I predict that it will do less.