Obama's 2016 NASA Budget Status Quo, Funds Europa Mission 92
MarkWhittington writes The Washington Post reported that the NASA portion of the president's 2016 budget proposal is basically status quo though it does provide further funding for a mission to Europa. A Europa probe is near and dear to the new chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA, Rep. John Culberson. However, the $18.5 billion budget proposal also funds the asteroid redirect mission, which has come under increasing fire from both Congress and the scientific community. The Houston Chronicle suggested that the final spending bill will be considerably different once congressional Republicans get through with it.
Europa (Score:5, Funny)
But I was told not to attempt any landings there
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Tell them there's oil there. If you tell them there's life, they'll probably want to nuke the place lest the Evangelicals' version of Yahweh be brought into question by those evil scientists.
Re:Europa (Score:4, Funny)
But then they'll try to fund a pipeline from Europa to American refineries so that they can sell the gasoline to China.
Re:Europa What is really needed is vision: (Score:1)
But then they'll try to fund a pipeline from Europa to American refineries so that they can sell the gasoline to China.
Addressing Congress:
With all due respect, the only way (dramatic pause) to create a pipeline between two orbiting bodies to recover oil in such a fashion cheaply, is through funding of
wormhole technology which my research and development already has a line on. All that is needed is your continued funding to help me pursue and apprehend (second dramatic pause) John Crichton.
sincerely
Scorpius
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Why would yhe evangelicals version of god be threatened? Their teaching say god was the creater and always will be. We know he created other beings like angels and worst case scenario would be that satan created them as we know he created deamons.
Oh, i get it now. You just wanted to bash some Christians and didn't care how stupid you appeared doing it. Well, cary on i guess. Your doing a fine job at it.
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Evangelicals cannot even tolerate the idea of biological evolution on Earth, let alone the idea of it happening elsewhere. If you have to justify exobiology funding by playing into bizarre superstitions like "Satan created life on Europa", I say your religious worldview has some significant issues.
Fortunately, Evangelicals do not constitute the majority of Christians, so attacking their absurd beliefs hardly constitutes "bashing Christians".
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I would posit that the version of God believed by Evangelicals as opposed to, say mainstream Catholics, Anglicans or Lutherans, are sufficiently different that even the Nicene Creed is sufficient to patch over the differences.
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I'm pretty sure evangelicals are a growing proportion of Christians in the USA.
(Outside the US, yes, they're a tiny minority, but the US is full of nuts.)
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What part of a creator creating makes you thing biological evolution? Just because it happened elsewhere does not mean it is different. Revelations 10-6 says god created the heavens and all that is in it. Nothing really out of line with the bible.
Oh, and satan is one of three possabilities i listed. I'm not sure why you are focused on it while intentionally ignoring the relevat things. Is it more of the not caring how stupid you look?
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You will forgive me for pointing out that many Evangelicals assert a literal interpretation of Genesis, and asserting some form of theistic evolution is at best wrong or at worst heretical.
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Again, what part of a creator creating makes you think of evolution?
You seems dead set to inject a premise not neccrsary in order to keep your opinion of someone else reaction alive. Life on other worlds in the context of a creator creating needs evolution about as much as you insisting your three year old kid's finger painting relies on evolution to exist. Its purely a false premise in context.
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I find this interesting.
While there certainly are batshit crazy christians out there. There may even be a few cults in the same line. The problem i had was not with him bashing them, but being utterly clueless in the attemps to do so. He made shit up with no clue to what he was talking about. He is the equal of your BBQ friend upset over the god particle. Actually, its worse.
But i guess it isn't worth getting upset over. Oh, ever hear the saying love the sinner but hate the sin? Or maybe hate the sin not t
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For evangelicals, the discovery of advanced extraterrestrial life has the potential to be devastating. Humans, in the view of most evangelicals, are the singular focus of God's creative attention and Christianity is the universal religion. Therefore, other advanced intelligences cannot exist.
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And yet anoyher incorect opinion. And you even need to change the goal posts to put it into play. Life does not equal only inteligent life. But its not important because yhe bible says god created the heavens and all that is in them revelations 10-6.
That is why it doesn't matter. If it exists, god created its existance according to the bible.
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"We know he created other beings like angels and worst case scenario would be that satan created them as we know he created deamons."
That's "demons", and how do we know she created these entities? Reaching for the Bible as a reason is just an exercise in non-wellfounded set theory, e.g., why is this true, because the Bible says so. Why is the Bible true? Because the Bible is true." In symbols,
x = { a, y }
y = { y }
And in non-wellfounded set theory, the above (flat) system of equations has a s
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OMG, are you a lost?
We are talking about the religious beliefs of a set of people and how they would react to something (alien life). While what you just said is true, it is not in context with the discussion. Whether the bible is true or not is not
Re: Europa (Score:2)
Well, more than oil what we have is proper beer, and _real_ football
Re:Europa (Score:5, Insightful)
Life would be incredibly dull if we were all into only the same things.
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As my granddad used to say "If everybody liked the same thing, then we'd all run after your grandma."
(ok, well, not my granddad, but you get the idea).
Re:Europa (Score:5, Funny)
Hello from 2015!!! I see you are a time-traveler from the year 2034 (since the movie "2010" starring Roy Scheider came out in 1984), or have somehow discovered a rift in the space-time continuum by which you can communicate with the past. Can you please tell us about life in 2034 and what mistakes we can avoid?
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That's because Slashdot has been continuously devolving as real techheads and nerds have been abandoning it for greener pastures, leaving behind only morons. Honestly, I'm not sure why I still hang out here; the S/N ratio has gotten ridiculously low.
Attempt no landings there (Score:3)
Unless the lander is being built in your Congressional district.
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And it you think I'm shitting you, please cite the last Democrat-submitted budget.
You mean like last year [washingtonpost.com]?
You can even read the budget and scroll and see the numbers and changes on that page. I'm pretty sure he did so for years prior to 2014 as well.
Obama has had budgets; the Republicans (and truthfully congress as a whole) have argued that budget, fillibustered it, not allowed it to pass, and have been surviving on continuing resolutions for years. But that isn't Obama's fault that our congressmen can't behave like adults and compromise.
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Yeah, let's not forget the laugher that Obama sent in 2012, which the Democrat-controlled Senate rejected 99-0 [thehill.com].
Yes, the GP may have been wrong about not actually submitting a budget in six years. In actuality, submitting budgets that can't even get a single vote from your own party is basically the same thing as not submitting one.
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You cannot filibuster a budget vote. Most of the time Reid wouldn't even allow Obama's proposals to even come to the floor because he understood how terrible they were.
Budgets (in the Senate) are passed with a simple majority vote of 51 but none of Obama's proposals have ever been able to get more than 5 Democrat votes (in most cases 0) let alone 51 and the Senate, under Reid's leadership has failed to even propose a budget for most of Obama's 2 terms.
The Republican led House has passed several budgets, bu
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It wasn't long ago that Obama heralded the glorious "privatization of Space". He handed out big money to all his friends. There was big fan fare about the dawn of a new era. Private companies were going to replace those nasty rooskies charging us an arm and a leg to get into space, remember?
What happened? The new NASA budget shifts money into... wait for it... A way to get astronauts to the Space Station.
But I am sure the bribes were repaid handsomely, and a nice chun
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Also, lets not forget that it is the job of congress to set the budget. The president gets to submit a wishlist, but it is up to congress to specify what goes in or not. Then, after they pass a budget, it is the president's duty to approve it unless there is something terribly wrong with it. Congress cannot shutdown the government if they pass a balanced budget, but the president can by not approving the one that was sent. So lets call the 2013 shutdown what it was, a democrat government shutdown.
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it is the president's duty to approve it unless there is something terribly wrong with it.
$5.22 is allocated to [insert thing I don't like]. Vetoed!
Personally, I think it sounds like a good reason to bring back the line-item veto amendment. Obama can then veto spending on all of the Republicans' pork and pass the rest, and then the Republicans can do the same when it's their turn. Rick Perry's already got plenty of experience with this!
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Europa (Score:5, Funny)
Europa?!?!
Well that's it, we're doomed.
Thanks Obama
Re:More tax dollars up in smoke. (Score:4, Informative)
Private industry can barely get into orbit.
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And yet, they are close to being able to re-land the rockets. Which will keep costs significantly lower. Different attitude from the get go. One is far more wasteful fiscally...I'll bet it isn't hard to figure out which one....
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Nobody ever said Elon Musk was a Republican. But you sure knocked the hell out of that straw man.
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Re:More tax dollars up in smoke. (Score:5, Informative)
You're an idiot. Who do you think built the rockets that got men to the Moon? Hint: it wasn't NASA or the government, it was a company called Rocketdyne.
Today's private spaceflight companies like Orbital Sciences and SpaceX are mostly doing the same thing: they're vying for government contracts for things like ISS resupply missions (in addition to commercial contracts for satellite launches; they didn't have commercial communications or other satellites back in the 60s).
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That's all beside the point, which is that "the government" doesn't do that much, it contracts it out to private corporations to get done.
But in addition to that, there's no commercial reason to build Europa probes and the like. There is a commercial reason to build and launch communications satellites, but it only happened after all the technology was developed at government expense for other purposes (sending men to the moon and having ICBMs).
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Too early to be discussing the contents (Score:5, Insightful)
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Republicans representing their constituents interests? Yeah, that's going to happen.
I'm pretty sure their constituents don't want them signing it, either. Fucking democracy, eh? There oughta be a law...
Re:Too early to be discussing the contents (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama has, in Hollywood jargon, "jumped the shark".
As he provocatively noted in the State of the Union Address . . . he does not have to face any re-election. He has found legal loopholes, which allow him to do whatever he wants, and totally ignore Congress or the Supreme Court. He can open the borders to the US to floods of illegal immigrants, change foreign policy against nations that have threatened the US with nuclear missiles and call for violence against domestic police forces.
And now he will be implementing a tax plan to "help the middle class" . . . by taxing the middle class more. Rich folks don't pay any taxes. They can afford expensive tax lawyers. A lot of families with two working parents will be surprised to learn that they are "wealthy" under Obama's new rules.
I recently watched documentary in German television about infamous dictators Josef Stalin, Muammar Gaddafi and Idi Amin.
It was quite frightening that I thought that Obama would fit in quite well with this crew . . .
Re:Too early to be discussing the contents (Score:4, Interesting)
Your idiocy is showing.
1- They aren't legal loopholes. A law previously passed by Congress that gives the POTUS authority to act is NOT a legal loophole. It is simply the exercise of powers already granted.
2- He isn't flooding the country with illegal immigrants. No POTUS in history has cracked down as hard on immigration as he has. In his first term alone he deported more people the in the previous 12 years. Furthermore, net immigration across the Mexican border has actually been negative for the past two years.
3- He is the POTUS. He IS the head diplomat of the country. HE SETS FOREIGN POLICY.
4- What you said about taxes is a blatant lie. The taxes proposed are wholly on the upper classes and business.
What's truly frightening isn't how uninformed and detached from reality you are,
nor even that you still vote despite that ignorance,
but that people modded you insightful, which means you aren't the dumbest one here.
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Your idiocy is showing.
No . . . yours is hanging out . . . wildly. Call me up when you go to High School and get accepted at MIT and Princeton. Insider tip: They look at the "character" of the applicant.
1- They aren't legal loopholes. A law previously passed by Congress that gives the POTUS authority to act is NOT a legal loophole.
The law says that people who are in the US illegally . . . are well, illegal. Obama is refusing to enforce the laws of the country. He could tell the FBI not to prosecute car jacking or rape, as well.
2- He isn't flooding the country with illegal immigrants.
Then why are shelters for illegal immigrants bursting to the rafters? Obama is pandering to Hispanic/Latino voters. There was
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No POTUS in history has cracked down as hard on immigration as he has
Sir, with all due respect, you're not being terribly honest. It's also widely reported (Outside of liberals blogs like thinkprogress.org, dailykos, etc.) that almost ALL the new jobs created since Obama took office have gone to immigrants.
To the moon and beyond (Score:1)
Europa is nice, but what I would argue is the following
1) asteroid redirect mission... go, we want another smaller moon, preferably one mostly made of useful metals, and that can be used as a counter-weight for a future space elevator
2) manned moon/mars missions... we got there once, we should go back to the moon and establish a colony, to advance both our understanding of low gravity environments and the challenges of living 'off world'. Also, the dark side of the moon would be a great location for any nu
Creating a budget isn't the POTUS' job (Score:2, Informative)
That function is assigned to Congress.
So why should I care what a lame duck president who lost control of both houses of Congress has to say on the matter? The only influence he could have right now it propose every idea the republicans want to push through and watch them try to figure out how to not support him. Everything he's for they are automatically opposed to so they'd be stuck. It might be entertaining to see a congress person repeating "does not compute" endlessly until their head explodes. Kin
Re:Creating a budget isn't the POTUS' job (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, they passed a law a while back requiring the administration to present a budget to congress so they wouls stop crying about not funding what the administrations wanted. Its just a whishlist more or less and often quite a bit maked it through to the final budget.
But yes, you are correct, constitutionally it is congress' job. But i think this is more political theator to set up issues for 2016. They cannot really poke a candidate running for more of the same so they have to find a wedge of some sorts to say elect another democrat and this time it will be different without running against the sitting administration.
Expect a lot more of this in the future.
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That function is assigned to Congress.
No, that's approving the budget.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_budget_process
The Budget itself, is requested by the President (who has the authority to submit needful legislation to Congress), under the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921.
So why should I care what a lame duck president who lost control of both houses of Congress has to say on the matter? The only influence he could have right now it propose every idea the republicans want to push through and watch them try to figure out how to not support him. Everything he's for they are automatically opposed to so they'd be stuck. It might be entertaining to see a congress person repeating "does not compute" endlessly until their head explodes. Kind of a cross between Mudd from "Star Trek" and "Scanners".
How did you figure out the President's SECRET PLAN? Damn you!
Standard government doublespeak (Score:1)
If you read it closely you'll see it's actually increasing the budget, not holding it constant.
Washington is the only place where increasing by less than 5% (I think that's what they've been using) is a spending cut.
Re:Standard government doublespeak (Score:4, Insightful)
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I guess that only occurs to thinkers that wonder why the cost of living keeps going up even though the cost of producing keeps going down... but what do I know... I've explained why this is so repeatedly to folks like you and you deny it vigorously in order to irrationally defend your statist beliefs.
it'll get slashed in half as usual (Score:5, Interesting)
while the military spend of the US clears $800Bn - making it yet again the single largest military spender in history, outspending every other nation combined.
BTW when an increase doesn't keep pace with inflation + the CPI over the same period (which 5% doesn't, and providing that 5% counts annually it's short by about 0.2 for 2013/12-2014/12), then it's a cut.
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If you're wage covers less and less purchases, particularly NON-DISCRETIONARY purchases (like food, clothing and housing), then the effect is a pay cut. When wages do not roughly follow inflation, it is an effective reduction in wages.
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It is a decrease in buying power. Which is equivalent to a reduction in your historical wages, true. But that's not the way the terms are used by the general population, and the bureaucrats switch between real and actual dollars in order to disguise what they're doing. Walk out on the street outside of Washington and ask 100 people "if my budget was 50,000 last year, and it's 52,500 this year, did it get cut" and probably all 100 will say "Hell no, it went up". At least outside of that fantasy land cal
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the base rate of inflation (AKA core inflation) is the amount of currency in circulation against a fixed amount of a nonvolatile commodity (gold). When the amount of currency in circulation goes up, for example after a bout of quantitative easing, the value of the commodity stays the same but the value of the currency goes down - resulting in a higher peg. That's your core inflation. The consumer price index is the core inflation measured against the marketable value of a given amount of a volatile such as
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the government isn't responsible for inflation, that's down to (in the US) the Federal Reserve.
See, they dictate just how much currency is in circulation, measured against the availability on the open market of a nonvolatile commodity (let's call it "gold") which is where the total money worth of the currency against the total amount of "gold" available, gives you the Peg. When the Peg goes up, the amount of gold doesn't go down (which is what you're expecting here, supply against demand etc., but remember
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the government isn't responsible for inflation, that's down to (in the US) the Federal Reserve.
Huh? So printing money by the boatload... to finance an absurd deficit... doesn't create inflation? The U.S. Treasury would need to collect about $1.33 for each and every day since the Dawn of Time to be able to pay off the hard debt racked up in just the last six years. A buck-thirty-three a day may not strike one as a lot of money, it’s considerably less than what some folks pay for their daily latte, but the payment schedule would be spread out over “eternity.”
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And no, if you budget a 5% increase, and you are borrowing more than you take in, and the rate of increase is only 3%, that is NOT A TWO PERCENT SAVINGS!!! Only governments can get away with this nonsense.
Europa vs Asteroid Rendezvous and Redirect (Score:2)
I'm biased the Asteroid mission was the first mission I had been looking forward too in a long time.
It would have been a step down the road to actually getting off the earth and establishing human civilization elsewhere in the solar system. Europa ? It's about on a par with looking for life in ocean vents or the deep lithosphere. Except there is less chance of finding life on Europa.
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The asteroid mission has a technological return. Europa ? Seriously Want to tell me what the great scientific advances have come out of 4 decades of mars missions. Why yes it may have had water, why yes it may or may not have had life. No the face is just mountains.
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By water I mean significantly wet.
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There have been a ton of scientific returns from Mars such as methane, organics, and possible bacterial mats. Also climate change and loss. Hydration cycles, vulcanology, wind erosion, .. i.e. lots of Martian geology
wow, I would call all that pork. An out and out gift to the planetary sciences community that has no chance of payback in anyone's lifetime.
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There has been a payback already. NASA/JPL's missions to Mars have been hugely successful. As has Cassini, and Voyager, etc. at a fraction of the cost of the ISS.
http://spinoff.nasa.gov/pdf/Ma... [nasa.gov]
That's what NASA lists as the spinoffs from the mars mission. It's rather lame even for a NASA spinoff brochure. Especially seeing as everything on it originated outside of NASA.