In general though ear marks do waste money.

But it occurs to me that, in her mind, a funding line for WFIRST could be viewed as insurance for future overruns on JWST. That is, when JWST needs the cash, we all know where we’re going to go to get it. Don’t even need to move it out of the Center, and it is, after all, money to meet a Decadal priority.

To be clear, I’m not against WFIRST. I’m just against blowing a few hundred million taxpayer dollars on uncompeted earmarks for incompetent NASA field centers under the guise of flagships years before those flagships can begin design and development in earnest. Especially when the flight rate for the competed missions has plummeted and when that much money could have much greater impact on those competed missions.

“They’ll figure out a way to spend it for sure…”

Based on the repeated failure of JPL to come in with a viable and affordable Europa mission and GSFC’s incompetence on JWST, I doubt it will be spent well.

Great, in addition to the $80M per year earmark that JPL gets for thumb-twiddling on a Europa mission that’s a decade-plus away, now we’re going to waste $50-60M a year for the next 4+ years so Goddard can thumb-twiddle on WFIRST while we wait for Goddard to get its act together on JWST.

God forbid we up the rate of competed, cost-capped Explorer missions while the pigs feed at the trough, er, the system works through the current flagship. No, those competed, cost-capped programs don’t put a limit on the amount of pork and provide no guarantee that it will be steered to the right districts. We can’t have that! No, better write another blank check to the same NASA field center that’s failing at the current flagship, er… I mean assign them a new flagship. Yeah, that’s it! And since they’re still failing on the current flagship, we can stretch out the new flagship so that the pork flows through more election cycles. It’s a win-win!

How venal and dumb…

“In its fiscal year 2002 budget summary document the Bush administration expressed concern-based in part on the findings and conclusions of two National Research Council studies-about recent trends in the federal funding of astronomy and astrophysics research. The President’s budget blueprint suggested that now is the time to address these concerns and directed the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to establish a blue ribbon panel to (1) assess the organizational effectiveness of the federal research enterprise in astronomy and astrophysics, (2) consider the pros and cons of transferring NSF’s astronomy responsibilities to NASA, and (3) suggest alternative options for addressing issues in the management and organization of astronomical and astrophysical research. NASA and NSF asked the National Research Council to carry out the rapid assessment requested by the President. This report, focusing on the roles of NSF and NASA, provides the results of that assessment.”

In short, the NRC thought it was a bad idea to transfer NSF astronomy to NASA for several reasons centering around broad and sustained support of the astronomy community, which you can read in the report here:

U.S. Astronomy and Astrophysics: Managing an Integrated Program
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10190

The Bush II Administration obviously did not pursue the transfer after the NRC’s report.

Yeah, but THEY’RE DIFFERENT, you might say. So it is for astronomy with NSF and NASA (and don’t forget DoE)

Interestingly, when the GAO did a study on duplicative programs in the U.S. last year, identifying 51 areas where programs might be able to achieve greater efficiencies by reducing governmental overlap, astronomy was never mentioned. #22 was coordination of space systems organization and #23 was space launch contract costs, both of which pointed at NASA and DOD. So if NASA wants to get its house in order, there are other places where it should start.