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Should NASA fund old missions in operation, or new missions in development?

3/17/2015

 
By Stuart J. Robbins
Last week, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden testified before the Senate Subcommittee responsible for NASA's budget. In response to questions about the funding of Mars rover missions, The Planetary Society blog reported that Bolden stated the following:
"We cannot continue to operate instruments and missions whose time has passed, because I won't be able to put something like InSight on Mars in 2016 ... I have to make choices."

This is an interesting statement and sentiment, and it's one that I've wrestled with myself for several years. The question really boils down to this: Should NASA continue to fund proven missions well past their design lifetime that are still successfully operating, or should they "pull the plug" and move the funding (that they never originally budgeted for in the first place) to some other project, one that uses technology a decade newer? And, if funding is pulled, will it spark a new conspiracy?

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How your tax dollars are spent on research grants, and how angry people make it look like waste

1/29/2015

 
By Stuart J. Robbins

Federal research grants are important. They provide money for a huge range of scientific research that otherwise would not be done. We, as a society, have decided that they are good, though both the left and right and everyone in between may disagree about specific programs.

Here is a behind the scenes look at your tax dollars at work for federal research grants and the problems that arise when non-experts have a go at the process.

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    SWIFT is named after Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels. In the book, Gulliver encounters among other things a floating island inhabited by spaced-out scientists and philosophers who hardly deal with reality. Swift was among the first to launch well-designed critiques against the flummery - political, philosophical, and scientific - of his time, a tradition that we hope to maintain at The James Randi Foundation.

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