Two Thumbs
Platinum Member
Are you suggesting that no scientific work should go forward until we have resolved whatever still remains of the "financial crisis" and it is completely resolved?
Work done on projects like the aforementioned is not done exlusively by NASA, but in collaboration with University Astronomy and Physics departments around the US and other countries.
Could nuclear energy and Einstein's relativity formula have been postulated had there been no prior development in the astronomical sciences?
Just saying to illustrate how new ideas come from research that seems to be without much useful purpose at the time it is done.
You do understand that if there is a major collapse, there will be no money for any science?
Looking at planets will not help now, nor in the near future. Cutting funds to something like this only puts them back the time that the funds were cut, or, god forbid, they get money from private people.
Money for medicine = great idea
Money for something that is 2000 light years away = waste
This is a non-sequitor. The Kepler space telescope is already in orbit and 23 months into it's planned 42 month mission. Time on the telescope is scheduled (timeshared) by universities, and wages paid to the university personnel doing the research is paid by the universities, not by NASA. The work we are discussing here is a small part of the daily work being done on Kepler; it is not its sole work. The scope is able to work 24-hours a day because it is beyond the earth's shadow.
If the work being done was halted the investment in the telescope would be lost, and the savings would only be the cost saved for administering the scope for the benefit of the scientific community.
TY, that's what I wanted to know.