After Years Of Budget Cuts & Cancellations, Bush Wants To Spend More On Earth-Monitoring Satellites

[hatrack]

After years cutting of budgets for tracking global warming, President Bush on Monday proposed more than a $1 billion increase over the next five years for launching more and better Earth-observing satellites. The president's 2009 budget provides money for six new NASA satellites to watch Earth's changes, costing at least $910 million over the next five years. It also calls for an increase of more than $200 million for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's weather satellites and climate monitoring, including restoration of key instruments that had been cut from a troubled and delayed weather satellite.

NASA had not approved a new Earth sciences mission in four years and the number of NASA Earth-observing satellites either in orbit or in the pipeline had dropped from 26 in 2004 to 21 last month.

A critical report last year by the National Academy of Sciences contended the government was unprepared for collecting vital information about global warming. It noted that NASA's Earth sciences research budget had been effectively cut by 30 percent since 2000 and the report prompted changes in the government's Earth observing plans, officials said.

EDIT

"This is the right time for Earth observations," said White House science adviser Jack Marburger. "Everyone's concerned about climate change."

EDIT

Yeah, Jack, and you have all been so concerned and on top of this issue.

Asshole.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004163492_apbudgetearthwatch04.html

[NV Whino]

1. Hell yeah.

He wants to watch them oceans rise up.

[lapfog_1]

2. As a former member of the internal NASA review committee

on EOSDIS (Earth Observation System, Distributed Information Systems)...

FUCK YOU BUSH!

Why were you cutting the budget right and left and "re purposing" major NASA programs away from MTPE???

Why did a large number of missions either get delayed (with the observation satellites stored in clean rooms at Lockheed for years, costing 100s of millions) or canceled?

Why was the Distributed Information System scaled back, refocused, and ultimately nearly scrapped?

For 7 years this went on, 7 years that were critical in getting data compiled, archived and distributed to climate scientists around the globe.

Oh fuck... I just can't stand it anymore. So mad that my fingers won't type.

All the while Bush's political appointees were editing the science and gagging the scientists!

[JohnWxy]

4. WE ARE losing a spy satellite. He probably is going to use NASA funds to put up a replacement

spy satellite. A way to keep the defense budget down, don'tcha know.

[lapfog_1]

5. Actually, he started talking up a manned mission to the moon

and refocusing NASA back to manned space flight missions...

And this is after the robotic missions have proven that they were much "faster, better, cheaper" (Dan Goldin!) and much less risky than manned space flight missions.

And he was for the manned mission to Mars (eventually).

And when he announced this, my very first thought was "He is doing this to scrap the MTPE because his buddies in the oil industry told him to... the data that was being collected on climate change was undeniable and they didn't like it." The handwriting was on the wall when I left NASA.

All the folks I worked with from Goddard and the DAO were depressed. And the customer base, the climate scientists, would come to meetings either angry or bewildered and we had nothing to tell them. I couldn't say when the data would be available and even where the repositories would be located. The only one that was for sure was Goddard and even it was underfunded and a total cluster-fuck (Lockheed again, hiring hundreds of programmers to write specialized code to store the data and fetch it, when there were plenty of COTS solutions available for a few hundred grand!) And because the data storage systems weren't available, NASA had decided not to fly some satellites... and so they sat in clean rooms at a cost of something like a few million a month.

It was a very difficult time to be in government service.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. A disturbing scenario I heard suggested

for why Bush would be interested in returning manned missions to the moon, is to take the "high ground."

Now that the Chinese have demonstrated their ability to take out a satellite, the current "high ground" is the moon.

I had been puzzling about why Bush all of a sudden was interested in manned space exploration. I asked if it was an effort to preserve a remnant of humanity. The reaction of the person whose knowledge I respect (but who claimed no inside knowledge) was, "No, it's about strategic positioning of weapons."

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Important Distinction - He wants the next president to spend more on them

...

The president's 2009 budget provides money for six new NASA satellites to watch Earth's changes, costing at least $910 million over the next five years.

...

He won't be the president in 2009. (Unless something really, really, bad happens, in which case, no budget is safe.)