

Petition to double NASA's annual budget - btr41n
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/least-double-nasa%E2%80%99s-annual-budget-one-penny-every-government-dollar-spent/WHRSzLRj?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl

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sytelus
Thanks for starting this effort. But we need a better language that
rationalizes the petition. I'm sure Nasa must have presented their data points
on how more budget would be helpful and what projects would get derailed if
there were budget cuts. You should consider spending time on researching these
data points. Simply saying that govt has lots of money and so it should give
it to Nasa doesn't justify much of the anything.

You also want to gather references on expert opinions on why govt should
continue invest on space program (as opposed to only hoping private sector do
things). My personal opinion on this is that private sector is driven by
profits and space is more of a scientific/academic research innately driven by
our need to explore. There would be several areas left untouched and/or won't
be attempted if govt pulls out its effort (such as private sector would have
little or no interest on doing Hubble telescope or probing in to deep space or
measure background uwave radiation with high precision). This is very similar
to what's happening in several other areas like medicine research where
private companies are folding research which is otherwise pure scientific
curiosity or only has long term perspective but have no direct profitable
opportunities in short term.

Again, these are not the data points you need to invent. I'm sure these are
well documented by expert on this subject. The petition's task should be to
gather them at one place and bring public support for it. Without doing this
home work, this petition is pretty juvenile and does not have much of a
backbone.

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btr41n
I definitely agree with you, and though I feel that this petition can be more
eloquently stated and logically founded, I think it's a good way to at least
start the ball rolling on getting a proper petition out there. (I didn't start
the petition, but as an advocate of NASA, I figured HN seemed to be a good
place for this to be discussed.)

As for private sector space, though much of it is currently driven by profits,
my thoughts are that if the private sector can lay out an infrastructure to
make it easier to access space, then the scientific community has more of a
capability to continue research at a lower cost. This is the same idea of how
NASA is continuing to send supplies (and eventually astronauts) to space
through SpaceX. Eventually, NASA won't have to spend as much on transportation
costs, because the private sector will have made reaching space cheaper. Or at
least here's to hoping!

