Today’s NASA Appropriations Hearing | Transterrestrial Musings

…was amazing.

I expect stupidity from Congress, but I wish that we had an administrator who was a brighter bulb. Bolden also said earth was “the most important planet in the world.”

9 thoughts on “Today’s NASA Appropriations Hearing”

How long until he gets the Griffin treatment?

Those primitives in the 1960’s used to think that the expenses had to be less than the budget. Now, everyone in government knows that spending is unlimited!

Godzilla says:

March 15, 2016 at 5:40 PM

In the 1960’s people also thought that you needed to have a budget in order to do something afterwards. That the budget was dependent on a bunch of real world factors. Now the budgets are automatic and automatically supposed to go down (at the same time US population is going up) so yes of course this nonsense spending limit is ignored.

This is hardly new anyway. Ever since the US left the gold standard when Nixon was in power or, even worse, after Bretton Woods collapsed budgets have been based on fiat currency. So the entire economy is based on expectations of value and feelings or whatever. Which are tied to oil. Which is probably one of the few things which has an actual impact in the modern economy.

Let us hope the first flight of the Senate Launch System is an unmitigated and spectacular disaster. And that the Russians run out of money for their nuclear rocket program.

Godzilla says:

March 15, 2016 at 5:47 PM

Even if it was a disaster it might actually be propagandized as a success. Remember the stick (Ares I-X)?

As for the Russians they seem to have enough trouble getting their LOX/LH2 upper stage for Angara working let alone a nuclear rocket program. They lost a lot of population with the disintegration of the USSR and oil prices are at historical lows. While they do sometimes come with some surprisingly interesting technology I expect the space interest to switch to China eventually. Russia still has an important historical headway but I dunno.
Vladislaw says:

March 17, 2016 at 11:25 AM

Doesn’t failure get rewarded at NASA?

Any remaining historical advantage for Russia remains on the extinction path, reinforced by recent additional massive cuts in spending due to the plummet in oil prices.

As far as I know the last nuclear rocket work in the USSR/Russia included firing of a NERVA-like system at Semipalatinsk in the early ’80’s. Nothing since.