Two NASA astrophysics projects get the axe due to budget cutbacks

NASA is shutting down LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, and the International X-Ray Observatory, due to budget cutbacks. Reports PopSci, the "gigantic laser experiment intended to study the nature of gravity and an x-ray telescope designed to look at black holes are being swept into the dustbin of history, too big and too expensive to survive the federal budget ax."

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Anonymous

I just got this news feed via time machine from 2020!

“China has announced the first definite proof of gravitational waves from their space laser interferometry satellites. Homeless US scientists congratulated them from their medicare-civil war wracked shelters.”
- Anonymous
  
  Faulkner correctly predicts China learning to control gravity!
  - Anonymous
    
    Sorry all, it’s Vonnegut that correctly predicted gravity manipulation. I should really read more than one book per decade.
snakedart

Luckily, investment in science has never contributed to the United States’ prosperity, so the impact of this and other cuts should be minimal.
Anonymous

Luckily, investment in science has never contributed to the United States’ prosperity, so the impact of this and other cuts should be minimal.

Yes, and it’s important to realize that this money is desperately needed to subsidize the lifestyles of banksters and other US corporate overlords. We’ll all have to make some sacrifices.

And if you are an attractive young man or woman, please call 1-800-USA-GOVT to find out exactly how you can serve! Clean bill of health required. Some diminution of personal integrity may result. No termination of contract without refund of signing bonuses and return of lingerie or other costume materials. All rights reserved. Be all that you can legally be!
desiredusername

LISA definitely sounds cooler than the Iraq war.
- telaquapacky
  
  Not if you’re Lockheed Martin or Xe or Halliburton. And after all, who decides when and if we go to war? Ain’t the president. Ain’t congress. It’s the defense industry. Only they have the $Authority$ to decide those things.
Anonymous

See, if the LISA project had military applications, we’d be gutting healthcare and education to keep it going instead.

~D. Walker
Drabula

ditto, that’s what I was about to say….does LISA funding amount to about what, 2 hours of operations costs in Afghanistan? Good that America has it’s priorities in order.
semiotix

I can’t decide whether to make a Simpsons joke or an Apple joke.
grimc

But, hey: AT-AT walker.

Something is seriously wrong with this country.
- g-clef
  
  Important point, though: another project (the James Webb Space Telescope) is running $1.4B over budget. That almost completely covers the LISA contribution that NASA’s bailing out on. IXO is still screwed independently of that, but if I were working on LISA, I’d be pretty seriously annoyed at the Webb overruns.
Angryjim

Mind you, yeah a huge part of our country’s budget goes to military, which does suck. And that may be a major reason we are in this mess, but we have some serious problems with our financial system that need to be fixed. maybe stuff like this should survive that ax, and I hope they would. But it’s one of those things. it’s hard to make cuts anywhere, because everything we spend money on has some logic behind it. And there’s gonna be heated debate of which of those is worthwhile. Some arts and sciences that don’t have direct impact on people’s health and wellbeing are going to be vulnerable under such conditions.

That said, I love that we support things like this, and I think it is valuable. It’s a sad state of affairs.
MrScience

Argh! This would have been good science. I’m really hoping that SIM Lite doesn’t get canned next.
- HD
  
  Sorry MrScience, SIM got canned the day the Astro2010 report came out. There was hope at the time for LISA, since it was rated highly, but between JWST and manned spaceflight, there is no money in the NASA astrophysics budget for anything else in this decade.
Heisenberg

Dear NASA,

Please use the billions of dollars we give you to fix the embarrassment that is our human spaceflight program, so we can stop relying on the Russians as the only way to get to that really fancy space station we built. Your x-rays and lasers can wait.

Sincerely,
Everyone
- echolocate chocolate
  
  Speak for yourself! I’d much rather NASA spent its money on actual science and pushing the limits of exploration, not running an overpriced low-orbit taxi service. The tech for getting people into orbit is proven and ripe for commercialization–SpaceX is practically there already. NASA should be focusing on the stuff that private companies can’t do.
- Anonymous
  
  ‘Heisenberg’ doesn’t speak for ‘Everyone’ in spite of their pompous byline. I’d rather have invesment in essential science than life-support for human exploration. If budget is an issue, sending humans to space is the biggest boondoggle of all. Well, except for foreign wars on false pretenses and unneeded and unasked-for weapons programs.
Anonymous

As long as we spend $7+ trillion on defense spending so I don’t have to make the slightest adjustment in my wasteful, throw-away lifestyle I don’t care about anything else.