This is dumb that it's even an issue. But in lieu of an administration change, could they "rent" them out? Like rich institutions could either pay for what they were already planning to do or they could request a different mission/objective.
Can someone help a Danish person understand these cuts? I dislike the current government of USA, but it's not like I can't see the motivation behind wanting Greenland and all the other things they do. Reductions on USA space supremacy is the one area I really can't see a reason behind. Like who benefits from this? In the grander scheme of the entire USA budget these cuts aren't going to be meaningful, if anything, it seems like a waste to not utilize something you've already spend the majority of it's life time cost to get up there.
Hopefully it will lead to a situation where the freed time will be rented out. I mean, xuntian won't be capable of replacing James Webb since it's meant to complement rather than rival.
Is it part of the anti-science? Do they hope they can contract stuff out to the private sector? Or what?
There is an incredible amount of waste in the US government (both state and federal), almost by design. Departments get fixed budgets for the year. If they don't spend it, their budget for the next year is reduced by that amount. This obviously leads to all kind of perverse incentives to waste resources.
The second factor is politics. The progressive party in the US is trying so hard to be the "good guy" vs Big Bad Trump. Much of this is manufactured outrage, expertly crafted to win elections. ( However, some of it is true. There's some quote out there that the best lies have some grain of truth in them).
So when any conservative actor makes an effort to reign in egregious waste, the opposing party uses their best tactic: claiming victimhood. It's never the waste that is reigned in, no. The cuts always go directly to the most disparaged, "under-served" weakest segment of whatever population they can apply it to. In fact, this party doesn't even acknowledge that there is gov waste at all, or that any of it is borne by the taxpayers, thanks to MMT.
tl;dr there are incredibly wealthy political factions that want Trump out. Any move he makes will be amplified and mischaracterized to maximize outrage and retaliation. You cannot trust the media anymore, sadly.
There has always been a significant section of the US public that's anti-science, and would have posed a strong obstruction to funding any of the space achievements of the 20th century - if not for the fact that the Soviet Union demonstrated space supremacy first. Because of that, space research and technology was made palatable to this demographic by making it a "let's show them commies" thing.
The momentum from that kept things going for a while after the Soviet Union fell, but the inertia has been running out and anti-science sentiment has been raising to the surface in its full form again. The sad truth is that it will most likely be at least another decade to swing things around again, if it's possible at all.
As I understand, NASA ain't the only party involved with James Webb Telescope - there is ESA and CSA (Europe/Canada) involved here. So... do they get the opportunity to take over those particular operations?
ESA already has at least three other major projects (the Venus probe, the much-delayed LISA, and something else) wherein NASA is, or at least was going to be, a junior partner, so if ESA has to pick up the slack on any joint projects, it'll probably prioritise those.
(LISA is a particularly ridiculous case. It was pitched in _1997_ as a joint ESA/NASA mission, was finally picked up in the noughties, NASA pulled out in 2011 due to budget cuts, LISA was cut down and then cancelled in favour of JUICE (which itself was a redesign of _another_ joint mission that NASA pulled out of), then LISA was brought back a few years later, with NASA as a junior partner, and an MoA was finally signed last year. Now the NASA side has apparently been cut, though the ESA side is continuing, and who knows, maybe eventually it'll be launched...)
Honestly, ESA should probably consider just stopping doing joint missions with NASA; NASA is just too vulnerable to political interference.
These figures are not proof of an anti-science administration (I’m not disputing that the administration is anti-science, just disputing that this budget is evidence of that)
If you compare Biden’s FY2022 budget estimates to this budget, it matches almost exactly (Webb 175M, Hubble 85M)
We dislike it as much as you that it seems so difficult to have a sober discussion about political topics here these days, but it's probably more related to the state of the world, and particularly the prevailing style of politics and media we're living with. We'd love it if HN could be better than other discussion platforms, but try as we might, we can't help but be affected by what's going on in the rest of the world.
Rather than condemning the whole community like this, which is against the guidelines, it would be more helpful to highlight the important parts of the article that you think others are missing.
That's an interesting question! Can you tell us what research you've done to try to answer it? It's public funds, so there's probably some documentation for what jobs were created to support the telescope.
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[ 23.5 ms ] story [ 299 ms ] threadHopefully it will lead to a situation where the freed time will be rented out. I mean, xuntian won't be capable of replacing James Webb since it's meant to complement rather than rival.
Is it part of the anti-science? Do they hope they can contract stuff out to the private sector? Or what?
The second factor is politics. The progressive party in the US is trying so hard to be the "good guy" vs Big Bad Trump. Much of this is manufactured outrage, expertly crafted to win elections. ( However, some of it is true. There's some quote out there that the best lies have some grain of truth in them).
So when any conservative actor makes an effort to reign in egregious waste, the opposing party uses their best tactic: claiming victimhood. It's never the waste that is reigned in, no. The cuts always go directly to the most disparaged, "under-served" weakest segment of whatever population they can apply it to. In fact, this party doesn't even acknowledge that there is gov waste at all, or that any of it is borne by the taxpayers, thanks to MMT.
tl;dr there are incredibly wealthy political factions that want Trump out. Any move he makes will be amplified and mischaracterized to maximize outrage and retaliation. You cannot trust the media anymore, sadly.
The momentum from that kept things going for a while after the Soviet Union fell, but the inertia has been running out and anti-science sentiment has been raising to the surface in its full form again. The sad truth is that it will most likely be at least another decade to swing things around again, if it's possible at all.
(LISA is a particularly ridiculous case. It was pitched in _1997_ as a joint ESA/NASA mission, was finally picked up in the noughties, NASA pulled out in 2011 due to budget cuts, LISA was cut down and then cancelled in favour of JUICE (which itself was a redesign of _another_ joint mission that NASA pulled out of), then LISA was brought back a few years later, with NASA as a junior partner, and an MoA was finally signed last year. Now the NASA side has apparently been cut, though the ESA side is continuing, and who knows, maybe eventually it'll be launched...)
Honestly, ESA should probably consider just stopping doing joint missions with NASA; NASA is just too vulnerable to political interference.
If you compare Biden’s FY2022 budget estimates to this budget, it matches almost exactly (Webb 175M, Hubble 85M)
Rather than condemning the whole community like this, which is against the guidelines, it would be more helpful to highlight the important parts of the article that you think others are missing.
As a taxpayer, that's what I want to know.