Shadowy Man

You are either not very familiar with the workings of NASA or are limiting your discussion of NASA's science endeavors to some very narrow-minded viewpoint.

NASA is quite capable of producing and funding good science. Virtually none of this good science is being performed by the manned space program, but the unmanned program has been quite successful.

aerion_13

I wonder how many of you could become astronauts. Right now NASA is in denial and can't understand why they've had so many tragedies. :boohoo:

Stiletto One

Lessee...

Underfunded.

Old equipment which they can't replace or update (they aborted the VentureStar project, due to lack of funding).

Sketch management.

There's a reason why the ISS got scaled down so much and we don't have as many flights as we'd like to: we just don't have the money for it.

Maybe when the pork-barrel politics and general inefficiencies of the federal budget get ironed out, NASA will get a sane amount of money.

Marklar

ES

But isn't this a discussion about things that look like other things?

Or is it just NASA hate mongering?

Marklar

Theli

And a <removed> who thinks there are dinosaurs on mars is a reliable judge of scientific competence?

Stiletto One

Hey come on, no ad hom is allowed in Elsewhere.

The Evil One

Since you're clearly fully aware of the inner workings of NASA, why don't you explain for us EXACTLY what the negative consequences to NASA would be of making knowledge of life on Mars public, assuming for the sake of argument that they found some?

wonkothesane

A naked lady.



A naked lady.



An idiot with a baby.

- wonko

ExtraSense

I will do it for you.
Currently NASA funding is in play politically.
A Presidential comission on Space exploration is finishing its work and has to issue a Report soon. The President is expected do give major speech on Moon and Mars goals early in the summer.
House and Senate are considering NASA budget bills.
NASA is highly militarized-bureaucratic and highly incompetent in science.
They have presented funding requests, which contain some estimation of Mars conditions - done before any Mars data came in.
If NASA bureaucrats would admit that their estimations were totally wrong, they would lost any credibility with politicians. So they hope that their requests will go through as is...
Besides the NASA management simply does not know what is going on, so mush it is incompetent in the science.

ES

Shadowy Man

Could you please list a few of the science incompetencies to which you refer?