XPost: talk.politics.crypto, alt.flame.rednecks, alt.flame.cycle-sluts   
   From: okamuraj005@hawaii.rr.com   
      
   What would you do to solve the problem with an ever growing National Debt?   
      
   "JobKilling GOP"  wrote in message   
   news:Xns9F1EB796A4FC2fdas@194.177.98.144...   
      
   In an attempt to further tighten the national belt, the U.S. House moved   
   this week to cut the James Webb Space Telescope from the budget,   
   effectively threatening NASA's follow-up to the Hubble, and the future of   
   our eyes-in-space program. There's something poetic (poetically dismaying,   
   that is) about the timing, too: Space shuttle Atlantis launched just this   
   morning—the last launch of a space shuttle probably ever—signaling the   
   demise of NASA's over 30-year-old shuttle program.   
      
   All it took was a voice vote by a House appropriations subcommittee to   
   strip funding for the project. Trouble is, the program was already $1.5   
   billion and change over budget. It's behind schedule, too. The Webb   
   Telescope should've launched in 2014, but it's currently delayed until   
   2018.   
      
      
   What's the big deal about yanking a space telescope? For starters, the   
   Webb Telescope's actually more than your average collection of curved   
   mirrors and lenses. In fact it's a full-blown infrared space observatory.   
   Its mission: to scan for light from the very first stars, understand   
   galaxy formation and evolution and study the origins of life in terms of   
   planetary systems. It's also the only thing scheduled to follow the   
   Hubble's mission, which ends (and apparently can't be extended) sometime   
   in 2014.   
      
   So should we support the funding cull or protest it? If you're coming at   
   it politically, positions tend to fall along current slash-or-save lines   
   (Democrats want to save it, Republicans want to quash it). But forget the   
   politics of spend-or-save for a moment.   
      
   Look at it through Wired's pro-JWST eyes, and you'll hear this sort of   
   argument:   
      
       ...Hubble has cost the U.S. a substantial amount of money, but its   
   contributions to science have been of incalculable worth... And JWST will   
   be a much, much better telescope than Hubble, and not just because it has   
   the benefit of decades-better technology. Not only will it be in a much   
   higher orbit than Hubble, but it will be substantially larger and thus   
   able to collect considerably more detailed and more distant observations.   
   Scientists have some educated guesses as to what kinds of discoveries JWST   
   could make, but it's very likely that, as it was with Hubble, many things   
   it will find are so revolutionary they're simply beyond our ability to   
   predict.   
      
   Or, alternatively, consider Science 2.0's hard-knocks counter-position,   
   arguing that:   
      
       Budgets are finite. Everyone knows this except partisans in science.   
   The $1.5 billion that JWST now claims it needs in order to not waste the   
   billions already spent could fund 5,000 basic science research projects in   
   space science (see While Webb Bleeds, Space Science Hemorrhages) and $1.5   
   billion is just the latest cost overrun, not the total budget that may   
   come up as more engineering concerns arise - so rather than circle the   
   wagons around this project because it is science and people want to avoid   
   a slippery slope, scientists can do a world of good holding each other   
   accountable and making it less necessary for politicians to do so.   
      
   I share the spirit of the first quote, but sympathize with the practical   
   sense of the second. If the JWST is in fact an artifact of sloppy budgets   
   or bureaucratic hobgoblins, we need to restructure the system so that   
   craziness like going over budget by more than $1.5 billion can't happen.   
   Budgetary compliance shouldn't be political. If we're so shortsighted that   
   budgets have to overspill by billions for admittedly ultra-complex   
   projects like the JWST, well, Houston, meet problem.   
      
   I can't say what the right position on JWST is since it's already well   
   along (according to the Baltimore Sun, one Democrat argues the project is   
   75% complete and that it supports 2,000 jobs, including 500 in Maryland),   
   but if the long-term fix means we have to do more (or less) with less, so   
   be it.   
      
   Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/07/08/house-pitching-death-of-   
   hubble-space-telescope-successor/#ixzz1Rk59sgnv   
      
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