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The Senate just lobbed a tactical nuke at NASA’s Mars Sample Return program (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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"The Committee has significant concerns about the technical challenges facing MSR and potential further impacts on confirmed missions, even before MSR has completed preliminary design review," stated the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee in its report on the budget.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That sucks, kinda seems like they're saying 'we don't think you can do it on budget or on time so here's even less money to work with'. To be fair there are valid criticisms of NASA going over budget and time but also feels like congress just doesn't care that much about science

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It seems most barely care about earth science. Why would anyone expect them to care about Mars science.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Every big program is appropriated annually; this isn’t a death knell, it’s just a vote of no confidence in the way things are. Proposed budget Is probably enough to keep the lights on during a reorg and rethink of the current mission scope, it’s just not enough to make forward progress. If they can get back in the box, I’d expect future appropriations to match the cost challenge Congress gave.

Of all the stupid things that Congress does, this feels…less stupid than usual. Usually they’d just cancel it outright.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Not saying there isn't any journalistic value in the article but it feels like this mostly exists to get 'nuke' and 'Mars' in the same title lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah garbage title. Hard to take seriously after seeing that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Frankly, good. I'm sick and tired of NASA throwing endless good money after bad when a program is clearly off the rails and needs to be rethought from the ground up or simply given up as a bad idea for the time being.

There have been many examples where a project has gone billions of dollars over budget and years (or even decades) over schedule, and then when the bloated carcass finally gets dragged over the finish line cheerleaders go "see, it was all worth it! The naysayers were wrong!" When they can't see the innumerable other better projects that could have existed with those resources but never had the chance to get off the drawing board.

[+] [email protected] -6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hot take: defund any space research outside geostationary orbit and move these resources to fixing Earth. Really, we don't need to know if there were bacteria on Mars 2 billion years ago, we need more green tech, more monitoring of Earth systems and an attempt at carbon scrubbing.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This isn’t a particularly hot take. It’s been a steady drumbeat since at least the instantiation of NASA… and it’s probably traceable all the way back to the folks standing around eating raw meat and laughing about the fool trying to tame fire.

The two biggest drivers for innovation are exploration and war. Exploration is the useful force in your proposed endeavor, teaching us how to survive in hostile environments and giving us insights about other resources or natural systems that we can adapt to our own. Exploration keeps the human race learning, thinking, and working together. You need those things.

What isn’t going to help you is the piddling handful of spare change that is spent across the world on space exploration. If your goals look inward, I respect that - you’ll have better returns by reforming the health and education mafias that siphon cash and stifle innovation. You’ll find more money and progress by far if you can divert funds and engineering focus from the military to environmental renewal.

What you shouldn’t want is to stifle any existing area of peaceful collaboration and innovation; this isn’t an either-or, it’s a yes-and. The target should be any societal aberration that makes it harder for people to get higher on Maslow’s pyramid. You’ve got valid goals, but bad aim.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks for this. Much more clearly put than I would've done, had I tried...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Beautifully sad. The value of space exploration on society goes far beyond the the important yet not very far reaching science that we get from missions. NASA was pivotal in the development of more capable computers, many formats of data compression, and many other technological innovations that we take for granted.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

At the heart of the OC’s question there’s a valid and useful impulse. We should, as a society, always be asking whether we’re putting our resources in the right places. I just think that the case for space exploration dovetails pretty nicely into where OC wants to focus. Folks that want to shift funding into environmental reclamation are the natural allies of us space exploration nerds. It’s all science, it’s all toward improving humanity. Just need to get us all on the same side of the ball. :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

(of course alongside defunding 75% of the military)

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