Congress: Money for Pork but Not So Much for Science (UPDATE: Rover Saves, but Not By Congress)

Hey Congress, give NASA the stinking 4 million dollars and keep botht he Mars rovers working, okay?

The Rovers started doing their thing on Mars in January of 2004 and had about a 90-day mission. More than four years later the rovers are still sending back boatloads of information that we simply can not get any other way. That is, by any measure, an incredible achievement. As willing as I am to trash NASA for not being visionary enough, their engineers make equipment that works and works well.

Exploring Mars is important. It could well be a future home for part of the human race. It’s telling us stuff we need to know about our own home. It’s giving us a look at what we might need later to travel the stars.

More importantly, exploring Mars pushes back our frontiers just that little bit more. We need to keep doing that if we hope to thrive as a society. We need frontiers to explore and the folks at NASA are doing just that, even if they’re doing it by remote control.

The entire yearly budget for both rovers is about 20 million dollars. That is, when compared to the massive earmarks being gobbled up by our members of Congress, chump change. Al the project needs to keep running is four million bucks. You think Congress could find that in the blizzard of bribes and vanity projects we call pork.

I certainly do. So, come on, Congress. Fund the rovers. Keep them running.

UPDATE: NASA has said that it will keep both rovers running. Apparently, it has decided not to cannibalize the money from the rover program budget to fuel another Mars exploration program. I wonder where they’re going to find that $4 million.

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Category: Hey, Mr. Science Guy!