Well, there ARE a lot of people who think shuttle was worth the risk – I just don’t happen to be one of them. 
I’m kinda one of those… It’s a long game and I think that every bit of failure is exponential in it’s benefits.
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I have a friend who works at JPL in Pasadena and she said their annual open house was absolutely swamped after that movie came out.
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Thanks for turning me on to those. I just watched one (Life Looks for Life) and it’s just the Cosmos extension I’ve been looking for.
Help me understand… Isn’t SpaceX doing a lot of work for NASA? Though I haven’t checked, I would imagine that their budget is benefited in large part by being a US Government (ie, NASA) contractor. Do they get to do all that work, get all that knowledge and experience (and money), then turn around and develop their own systems to use for whatever their own private heart desires (like going to Mars)?
The history over the last seventy years has seen robust funding for NASA and fuck all for the oceans. So apparently not.
I’m not reflexively opposed to space exploration either. But we are in the middle of a climate and extinction crisis that is pushing regions of the earth to the point of unlivable. All hands on deck to meet the crisis, continue unmanned space missions, and allocate available resources to ameliorate the approaching horrors.
You seem to be under the impression that slashing funding for space research would equate increased funding for ocean research. That’s not really how budget cuts work. If you want to free up some real money then cut military funding or corporate welfare.
Anyway, it’s kind of like saying we should cut vaccine funding to focus on climate change. Neither need exist at the expense of the other.
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And a big part of our understanding of climate change comes from NASA’s ongoing climate research programs.
All those fancy gizmos in orbit measuring atmospheric gases and tracking arctic ice loss weren’t put there by oceanographers.
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They’re mostly doing a lot of work for the DoD. Lotsa military satellite launches.
…but the NASA climate monitoring program was absolutely slaughtered when Bush the Lesser proposed his vapourware Mars mission.
Due to NASA handling both, real space science and pointless canned monkey missions are in direct competition for funding.
Before I watch, are there any frozen monkeys in it?
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While NASA does perform some remote sensing for ocean research, the main federal agency in charge of ocean research is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
This is their research website: https://research.noaa.gov/Labs-Programs/oar-programs. It has a link to their NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research.
Examples of NASA activities and missions supporting ocean monitoring and research are:
- Oceanography - NASA Science Mission Directorate
- Grace Mission and GRACE-Follow-On
- Aquarius
- SWOT
- SeaSat, Topex/Poseidon, Jason…
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No, I’m under the impression that when NASA makes funding requests, a shitload of it is for putting meatbags on remote rocks, which I don’t think should be a priority. The gist of my comments here is that NASA should become much more focused on desperate problems here, rather than putting on spectacular demos.
No, really? I linked to one of NASA’s climate pages above. Try to keep up.
Good links.
I’m hip to the different agencies, they just haven’t gotten the many hundreds of billion dollars over the years because they’re not as sexy as NASA’s astronaut program. Weirdly, with so many wonders discovered on our beautiful planet each day by the people who work at those places and others around the world. It’s planet on fire time, and urgency is needed.
The last 20 years of exploration has mostly focused on putting meatbags in Earth orbit and robots on rocks.
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Fantastic. You get the last word!
Well, it sort of spins off quickly… into space.
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