Stop whining that NASA didn’t get much money, and ask yourself what is missing from NASA that caused this result. Hint: notice what part of NASA did get money.

NASA has always been funded to some extent based on the priorities of the Administration in power. Earth science funding increased dramatically under Clinton/Gore. Human spaceflight & Exploration went up with the new Vision under Bush 43.

You can complain that NASA deserves money because it doesn’t have enough. Or you can reinvent NASA so it gets money.

It’s called democracy, folks. Deal with it.

And have we forgotten about those Zeta Reticulans? They still pose an imminent threat of invasion! Them and their allies, the Zeta Articulans! Those ZAs are even worse!
Hmmmm. If they did infiltrate, we might be able to find them by looking for their acronym being used. Can anyone think of any ZA group at NASA??? That just could be Zeta Articulans infiltrating NASA to fend off our Space Station Automatic Mass Shooter (AMS) defense weapon.

off

Once again, the object of NASA is to further aeronautics and space, not to maximize the size of its budget. Each agency supports a certain culture that supports the unique aspects of its mission. This is true of the armed services also.

By mixing incompatible missions, you just get a dog’s breakfast type coping agency that gives the appearance of doing everything while achieving nothing. Energy and the environment deserve better.

Al is right, and this has been apparent for quite a while. Here’s a Space Politics post from last April that shows where space for space’s sake ranks in some polls:

http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/04/18/another-reminder-of-the-importance-or-lack-thereof-of-space/

From one of the polls:

“If you had to choose from the following categories, what do you believe should be the highest priority, in terms of investing money and resources, in order to achieve a meaningful technological advancement in the next 10 years?

Fuel efficiency and alternative fuels 37%
Medical 30%
Environment 14%
Security and defense 10%
Transportation 3%
Space exploration 3%
Telecommunications and media 2%
Don’t know/not sure 1%”

So, 81% went for energy, health/medicine, and environment, and 3% went for space.

In the House version of the stimulus package, what do we see a lot of? Energy, health/medicine, environment, and a scattering of the others – but not much space. Of the NASA funding, a huge chunk is going toward Earth monitoring satellites and fuel-efficient planes – more energy and environment with a space hue. There’s not a lot of space for space’s sake.

This is why some of us have been pushing for NASA to redirect more of its efforts towards directly or at least indirectly solving national problems in a commercial-space friendly way. Voters tend to want tax money (when it isn’t going to money-shuffling like Social Security) to go to things like energy, health/medicine, environment, security and defense, transportation, education, and the economy – i.e. solving what they see as national problems. They don’t see space for its own sake as a national problem.

The VSE was supposed to be directed at national problems like security, the national economy, and science (which might translate indirectly to recognized problems like environment and energy), but NASA seems to have chosen a path to implement the center of the VSE that has nothing to do with these goals – and certainly it isn’t obvious to most voters or Congresspeople how NASA’s implementation of the VSE is to those sorts of goals.

I’d suggest that if NASA can’t orient itself more towards those types of “solving national problems” efforts, and make demonstratable progress toward helping to solve those national problems, it will continue to suffer in the budget process. However, there’s no reason why NASA couldn’t pick one or more of those goals and make solid contributions there, while at the same time contributing to what most of us here recognize as crucial space goals such as expanding commercial space, deploying useful space infrastructure, and lowering space access costs. I threw out some ideas along those lines here:

spaceprizes.blogspot.com/2008/08/and-now-for-something-completely.html

I agree and disagree.

As I read all of this, House Democrats have been frustrated with Clinton and both George Bush’s over spending priorities. Now that Obama is there, they have a green light to spend our money on their conscience. NASA doesn’t rate.

Where I disagree is your implication that things like the Ares I and IV, ISS, Mars, etc aren’t that important to the House. Well, the House is rewriting American domestic policy, they could change what NASA is doing and put the money to make it happen. Its simple, the House and Obama evidently couldn’t care two hoots and a hollar over the idea of NASA.

All money would be well spent on what one might call workforce development, though in somewhat different career stages.

But as you say, one can easily conclude that NASA is not particularly important to the House as a route for economic stimulus, at least in what it does right now.