{"id":7179,"date":"2011-07-20T10:38:43","date_gmt":"2011-07-20T17:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=7179"},"modified":"2011-07-20T10:38:43","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T17:38:43","slug":"nasa-astrophysics-it-really-is-this-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/20\/nasa-astrophysics-it-really-is-this-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA Astrophysics: It Really Is This Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Shorter House of Representatives:  NASA shouldn&#8217;t do astrophysics anymore.  Via the <a href=\"http:\/\/ksjtracker.mit.edu\/2011\/07\/20\/naturenews-nasa-wriggling-free-of-shuttle-costs-is-slashing-astrophysics-too\/\">Tracker<\/a>, an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/2011\/110719\/full\/475276a.html\">article by Eric Hand in <em>Nature News<\/em><\/a> that puts the fiasco in helpful graphical form.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/2011\/110719\/full\/475276a.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/files\/2011\/07\/NASA600.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"794\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7180\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Misleading graphic alert!<\/strong>  The vertical scale starts at $0.5 billion, not at $0.  But taking that into account merely changes the situation from &#8220;complete annihilation&#8221; to &#8220;devastating harm.&#8221;  We&#8217;re talking about a 40% cut, which won&#8217;t leave room to do much more than keep the lights on for existing programs.<\/p>\n<p>The 2011 numbers are the President&#8217;s budget request; the 2012 numbers are from the bill that passed the House.  This isn&#8217;t yet law, so there&#8217;s still time; the Senate and the White House will (thankfully) be involved in the final compromise.<\/p>\n<p>Times are tough, and not everything is worth doing.  But there are few things more important to the long-term flourishing of a country than investment in basic science.  Sad to see the future sacrificed for bizarre political reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shorter House of Representatives: NASA shouldn&#8217;t do astrophysics anymore. Via the Tracker, an article by Eric Hand in Nature News that puts the fiasco in helpful graphical form. Misleading graphic alert! The vertical scale starts at $0.5 billion, not at $0. But taking that into account merely changes the situation from &#8220;complete annihilation&#8221; to &#8220;devastating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-politics","category-space"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}