Tuesday, March 25, 2008

NASA Budget Cuts Means Mars Rover Will Sleep

The Associated Press reports "Scientists plan to put one of the twin Mars rovers to sleep and limit the activities of the other robot to fulfill a NASA order to cut $4 million from the program's budget, mission team members said Monday. The news comes amid belt-tightening at NASA headquarters, which is under pressure to cover cost overruns of a flagship Mars mission to land a Hummer-sized rover on the Red Planet next year."

The rovers are one of NASA's biggest successes. Originally planned to run for just 90 days, they've been running for over 4 (earth) years at a cost of a mere $20 million a year.

Meanwhile the Census Bureau was going to spend a record $11 billion for the 2010 Census including using new handheld computers. Now there might be a $2 billion cost overrun because they couldn't manage the $600 million contract with Harris Corp. for the handhelds.

And then there's Iraq. "Officially, the US spends $16 billion every month to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan, but this figure includes only direct expenses." That's over $6,000 a second and that doesn't include everything. About 11 minutes of merely the official costs of the war could fund the Mars rovers.

"On Thursday, Joseph Stiglitz told the congressional Joint Economic Committee that $3 trillion was at the low end of estimated war costs. After factoring in the cost of weapons and operations, future health-care costs for veterans, interest on foreign loans used to fund the war, and future borrowing, Stiglitz said the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be somewhere between $5 trillion and $7 trillion for the US alone. Another estimated $6 trillion will be borne by other countries, he said."

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