Posted on 03/15/2015 12:58:19 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
A battle of interplanetary proportions is brewing on Capitol Hill.
It’s not “Star Wars,” but partisan lines are quickly being drawn in a budget battle over the future of NASA, which could have a long-term impact on the space agency’s ability to explore the deepest corners of space as well as the ground beneath our feet.
On one side are Republicans who accuse the Obama administration of taking its eye off the ball by funneling too much money into research about the planet Earth, rather than focusing on distant worlds and stars.
On the other, Democrats argue that the administration’s plan is critical to harness the best of NASA’s talents, protect our planet and consistent with the agency’s wide-ranging mission.
Now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress for the first time in years, the fight is spilling into the open.
“In the past six years, too much of NASA’s focus has been driven by the political agenda of politicians in Washington rather than the core mission of focusing on space exploration,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who leads the Senate subcommittee on Space, after a hearing on the agency’s budget this week.
“That’s what NASA was created to do and it’s where its energy should be focused.”
Cruz pledged to flex Capitol Hill’s muscle by passing a NASA authorization bill that “continue[s] this discussion of getting back to the core priorities of NASA.”
But Democrats are likely to push back.
Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.), the top Democrat on Cruz’s panel, warned against “false choices” between exploring distant worlds and studying our own planet.
“Rather, we should seek a set of complementary initiatives that will pay returns to our civilization for centuries to come,” he said.
“Earth science directly relates to everything that we’re doing in exploration,” echoed Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.).
In its budget request for fiscal 2016, NASA asked for a total of $18.5 billion, a 3 percent increase from last year.
Of that, more than $1.9 billion is slated to go to earth science programs, which will pay for high-quality mapping and the development of a slew of satellites for monitoring the planet, among other issues.
About $4.5 billion is requested for exploration, meanwhile, including development of rockets to be launched into deep space. Another $4 billion is slated for space operations, including support of the International Space Station.
According to Cruz, that represents a 41 percent increase in earth science funding since 2009, compared to a 7 percent decrease in funding for exploration and operations.
“Are we focusing on the heavens in NASA or are we focusing on dirt in Texas?” asked Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.).
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the head of the Commerce Committee and the Senate’s No. 3 Republican, is similarly concerned that some research may be “redundant with activities being undertaken at other federal agencies and may actually reduce the availability of funds for research related to the traditional sciences, aeronautics and space exploration,” his spokesman said.
NASA has pushed back against Cruz’s number, claiming that the analysis did not include stimulus funding or account for inflation. By that account, earth science funding has actually gone down by 1 percent, the agency says.
In all, the agency has devoted $49 billion to manned spaceflight during the Obama administration and $11 billion for earth science.
“With this funding, America has maintained its world leadership in space exploration and scientific discovery,” NASA spokesman David Weaver said in a statement.
The GOP effort also might meet some resistance from the nation’s scientists who say that rebalancing could hinder critical research.
“Earth science within NASA provides a broad array of benefits and applications across the public and private sectors,” Christine W. McEntee, the head of the American Geophysical Union wrote to Cruz on Friday.
For instance, NASA projects helped respond to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, she noted, and also track algae blooms and monitor severe storms.
While other federal agencies may perform similar work, none have the technical expertise found at NASA, supporters say.
“NASA has the space capability and it’s important that that capability be used,” said George Abbey, the senior fellow in space policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and the former director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
Over the next few years, the Obama administration wants to spend more money to both push humans deeper into space and expand our knowledge about our own planet, with the ultimate goal of sending a manned mission to Mars by the mid-2030s.
Ironically enough, that’s a goal that Cruz shares.
But before it gets to Mars, NASA is going to need to go through Congress.
March 14, 2015 - The Hill - NASA scientist: California has one year of water left
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But wait! The Left says they're winning the war on climate change - could it be true?
March 14, 2015 - SALON - Humanity’s “surprising” climate win: Global CO2 emissions didn’t rise in 2014 "Humanity’s ongoing contribution to climate change didn’t get any worse last year, the International Energy Agency reports.
We did it!
Global carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector stalled in 2014, the IEA found, news that the group’s Chief Economist Faith Birol called “both a very welcome surprise and a significant one.” The big news is that this was the first time in forty years that emissions have stalled while the economy grew 3 percent — suggesting, said Birol, that the two are “decoupling.” .................."
Time to "decouple" the green Marxists from their dictates to all aspects of our lives.
Part of the reason our country is facing so many problems today is that we’ve got so many entrenched bureaucrats. Going way back to the Clinton administration. One of Bushes screw ups is that he didn’t clean house of all the Clinton people. Obama kept them. Now we have 24 years of entrenched liberalism in our government.
And they’re building it bigger and bigger and bigger - BIG government will employ more and more people to manage people/economy/thoughts - it always collapses.
NASA was established in 1958 to make Muslims feel more welcome in this country. It had nothing to do with climate change.
We ceded our world leadership to Russia when we prematurely cut the shuttle program. We have zero capability for manned space exploration until such time that we can safely deliver astronauts to the space station, and return them to Earth.
Right now we are 100% dependent upon the Russians with whom we have deteriorating relationships. We have no redundancy or capability.
So, how are we maintaining our world leadership in space exploration with a substantially reduced budget and no capability? Talk is cheap.
But. . .wait. . .what about MUSLIME OUTREACH. . .can't forget that important NASA mission.
http://www.space.com/8725-nasa-chief-bolden-muslim-remark-al-jazeera-stir.html
$49 billion to manned spaceflight.
I do not see any American rockets taking astronauts anywhere.
When they named NASA, the atmosphere and space were the frontier and beyond. Just as the Appalachians are no longer on the frontier, the atmosphere is no longer part of space. NASA should be rededicated to exploring beyond the CURRENT frontier.
Maybe it should be called the “National Astro-Space Administration”?
NASA studying anything for the global warming community is a total waste of money as is doing anything to stop the supposed warming of the earth except warming up the sun.
2 things. If NASA was really smart they would be searching for the meteors that are mentioned in Revelation. One lands in the ocean, lots fall all over the world, and then possibly a big one that causes the great earthquake that moves islands and flattens all the mountains.
The other thing is the waste of money our military is spending on global warming. They need to spend that money on training and equipment, not new trash cans or expensive solar panels.
Just needed to vent and warm up the world with my flaming.
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