1. catdynamics
  2. Budget woes: astro $ at AAS

Budget woes: astro $ at AAS

By catdynamics on January 7, 2007.

NSF town hall meeting today was depressing.
The failure of the 2006 Congress to pass a budget is turning to catastrophe.
I don't blame the democrats from ducking the trap and going for a continuing resolution, am hoping the science budgets will be the pieces exempted, but am not holding my breath.

Cutting earmarks out is also good thing in general, except of course when they are our earmarks.
Eg a big part of the squeeze on the NASA science directorate are the unfunded earmark mandates, but the earmarks also kept Hubble going through the period when it was to be killed; and SIM right now is kept alive on an earmark.
If the budget reverts to plain 2006 with no earmarks and no supplements, then Terrestrial Planet Finder and Space Interferometry Mission are in even more serious trouble.

NYTimes article on this here - H/T Quantum Pontiff

I guess next we get to be depressed about the news at NASA

Sean provides a DoE perspective

Tags
astro

More like this

continuing resolution
Congress today takes on an omnibus continuing resolution spending bill for 9 out of the 11 appropriations for the current fiscal year. The bill proposes to continue funding for agencies at the 2006 level, with all earmarks stripped out. PS: I was wrong, House used earmark funding to bump a few…
NASA: ups and downs
It was NASA proposal season last month, meant to comment on it, but was so exhausted and pissed off about the whole thing that I needed some space. A typical proposals is 15 pages of main text; including biblio, bios, associated documents and blurbs the final (electronic) package is typically 40-55…
The Budget Mess
The Democrats have decided to punt on the budget, which the outgoing Republican Congress left unfinished in a childish fit of pique. Instead of completing the usual budget process, the incoming Congress plans to pass a "continuing resolution," to fund 2007 operations of Federal agencies at the same…
Decadal Survey: 2010
Decadal eTownhall meeting is about to start, and apparently some astronomy departments "forgot" to sign up for a webcast slot, so, like modern finance, those of us with the millisecond time advantage will leverage the advantage. For the rest, here is the liveblog of the webcast, or find a tweet…

Are you heading to the "town hall"? I have one perspective on what is going to be said there, but others would be interesting.

By Brad Holden (not verified) on 08 Jan 2007 #permalink