Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Funding Edict for Mission has NASA Over a Barrel

Too bad this isn't about the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

It seems that Congress, in its infinite wisdom (and probably some very effective lobbying as well), has somehow directed NASA to spend more money that it has allocated for the Space Interferometry Mission. Frankly, I'm shocked that any science mission got 3 times more money than planned, considering that the rest of science, and especially high energy and nuclear physics, got shafted.

I don't know whether this is just more proof that how science is funded here in the US is completely ridiculous, but it certainly looks very silly right now. At what point is something funded based on scientific merit? Why bother having steering committees and all that if lawmakers aren't going to listen to them?

Zz.

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