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Comment by ANH | Hacker News Reader

This is a kind of ridiculous article. It entirely ignores NASA's Earth Science work, which gets the largest allocation of science funding in the FY2014 budget (almost $2B).

Caveat: I work with a team of NASA & contractor Earth scientists. I think they'd all tell you they don't need to go search for a justification; justifications are self-evident. Here's one: Maintain the climate record.

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Perhaps my memory is wrong, or the emphasis less that I recall, but I remember fundamental change in NASA's direction in the late 90s or early 2000s that explicitly focused NASA's work on Earth.

Some of this was a result of remote sensing tech coming into it's golden age, some as a result of climate change needs, and a lot was a result of NASA needing to find a source of funding.

But I can't find anything extensive about that on the web at this moment.

Earth Science is only 10% of NASA's budget.

From NASA's 2014 budget request (in millions of dollars):

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/750614main_NASA_FY_2014_Budget_Estim...

   Science               5,017.8
   Aeronautics             565.7
   Space Technology        742.6
   Exploration           3,915.5
   Space Operations      3,882.9
   Education                94.2
   Cross Agency Support  2,850.3
  ===============================
   Total Request        17,715.4

To break down "Science":

  Earth Science              1,846.1
  Planetary Science          1,217.5
  Astrophysics                 642.3
  James Webb Space Telescope   658.2
  Heliophysics                 653.7

By comparison, most of the "Exploration" budget is spent on the development of the Space Launch System -- which some sarcastically refer to as the "Senate" Launch System, because it is designed to spread money among the states. Just the SLS alone is bigger than the Earth Science budget.

> which some sarcastically refer to as the "Senate" Launch System, because it is designed to spread money among the states

I thought it was because the project was invented in the Senate version of the NASA budget, where Senate staffers made up arbitrary requirements for its design and functionality.

Thank you for taking the time to post this (and format it.) I definitely appreciate it.

Not sure where I got the impression NASA had adopted such a dramatic shift in focus.

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