No Tradeoff (Constellation)
No new spending and key to global competitiveness
Gibson 2-24-10, (“CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN THE NASA FISCAL YEAR 2011 BUDGET PROPOSAL” http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-111shrg64486/html/CHRG-111shrg64486.htm) JC
This also ties into the question of the proposal to cancel the Constellation program and continuing the Ares I testing, and has a significant bearing on what we derive from the nearly $10 billion investment that went into Constellation. The need for the heavy lift vehicle has already been discussed, and the cancellation costs in these contracts would add significantly to the overall price of this program, with nothing to show for it. For no more cost, the completion of the Ares I testing would support the heavy lift launcher with the technology needed such as the 5 segment booster, and the J-2 engines. To launch and fly this spacecraft will not cost any more than actually canceling it. In addition, it would maintain the skilled team in place necessary for any future space endeavor. With the ending of the Space Shuttle program and the proposed cancellation of the Constellation program, and with no specific program to replace them, more than a third of NASA's workforce of experienced space professionals is at risk of being lost. This will result in a major disruption to our industrial base and loss of core expertise for exploration and Human Spaceflight within both industry and government. At least one of the commercial developers has stated that they can not succeed in Human Spaceflight without this core of expertise within NASA to rely on. Maintaining this knowledge base is critical to our future in Space as well as preserving our place in global competitiveness.
***NASA Tradeoff Aff
U Overwhelms L
Webb Telescope not on the chopping block – overwhelming support
DiMascio 7/15 – writer specializing in defense for Politico, Congress for Defense Daily and military policy for Inside the Army. publications. (Aviation Week, “Move Afoot To Keep Webb Telescope Alive,”July 15, 2011, http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/asd/2011/07/14/01.xml&headline=Move%20Afoot%20To%20Keep%20Webb%20Telescope%20Alive)
A top lawmaker who sought to end the James Webb Space Telescope indicated July 13 that he may be willing to keep investing in the Hubble replacement. After recommending that funding be zeroed for the infrared telescope being developed by Northrop Grumman, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee in charge of NASA spending, said, “We’re going to try to take care of the James Webb.” Rep. Chaka Fattah (Pa.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, pulled an amendment he had planned to offer that would have restored funding for the telescope, saying he hoped they could work together to keep it going. President Obama had asked for $354.6 million for the telescope in fiscal 2012. The exchange came during debate by the House Appropriations Committee on a bill including $16.8 billion to fund NASA. The committee approved the bill, which will be forwarded to the full House for additional debate. If the provision to end the Webb telescope remains in the bill, it is bound to face opposition in the Senate, where Wolf’s counterpart on the Senate Appropriations Committee holds sway. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) represents the state that is home to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, which is managing the project. She has already made it plain that she will defend the telescope. Still, Wolf continued to blast the telescope’s ongoing cost overruns, saying that NASA’s recent cost estimate of $6.5 billion is too low. According to Wolf, the Government Accountability Office now pegs the price at $7.8 billion. In addition to cutting the program that will promote ongoing scientific research of the universe, the bill also fended off an attempt to restore technology funding. According to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the bill cuts 60% from the president’s request for space technology research, including deep-space exploration. Schiff’s amendment would have increased the account to $500 million, calling that figure “the minimum amount” for real technological research. The amendment was defeated on a voice vote, after Wolf argued that raiding the account from which Schiff wanted to pull funding would have hampered important programs and led to the loss of 1,100 jobs around the country. “Let’s not pretend the 60% cut to technology ... isn’t even more harmful,” Schiff says, adding that even more jobs would be lost by a cut to technology accounts. “Let’s not pretend that this will be an innocuous cut.”
No Tradeoff - Webb
Cancelling Webb won’t tradeoff with any program
Kendrew, ’11 - an engineer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, where she is a member of the Adaptive Optics Lab and the Planet and Star Formation Group (Sarah, “To Scrap the James Webb Telescope would be Short-sighted,” The Guardian UK, July,http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/jul/11/james-webb-space-telescope])
The crucial point to the proposed budget is that the money taken from the JWST mission is removed from the Nasa budget entirely. It will not go into other missions or research grants. Some $3billion has already been spent in the US alone, simply to be written off.
No Leadership IL
Cutting Webb won’t hurt leadership – project can’t meet funding or time deadlines
Campbell, 11 [Hank, “Webb Space Telescope- Why Congress May Be Right To Kill It”, July 2011, Science 2.0, http://www.science20.com/science_20/webb_space_telescope_why_congress_may_be_right_kill_it-80701]
The Webb telescope has likewise been a black hole for funding. In James Webb Space Telescope delivers more bad news last year I noted that the budget was up to $6.5 billion and now an earliest completion date of 2015, though its original claim was it would be done by now.
Budgets are finite. Everyone knows this except partisans in science. The $1.5 billion that JWST now claims it needs in order to not waste the billions already spent could fund 5,000 basic science research projects in space science (see While Webb Bleeds, Space Science Hemorrhages) and $1.5 billion is just the latest cost overrun, not the total budget that may come up as more engineering concerns arise - so rather than circle the wagons around this project because it is science and people want to avoid a slippery slope, scientists can do a world of good holding each other accountable and making it less necessary for politicians to do so.
The idea behind the Webb Telescope is a great one - continuing the work started by Hubble and Webb will be able to see light from about 250-400 million years after the Big Bang whereas the Hubble Space Telescope sees back to only 800 million years. It sounds esoteric to the public but there are fascinating things we can learn. However, science has to have a cost attached to a value, basic research or not. This is what killed the SSC.
Those who compare the Webb Telescope to losing the SSC should take note - canceling the SSC made the much more reasonable, both in cost and engineering, Large Hadron Collider (LHC) a reality. Did it give Europe some ethereal, unquantifiable ‘leadership’ in physics? No, lots of projects are still done in the US and Japan but the task of finding the Higgs boson, which may not even exist, and its press has fallen to Europe. America still contributes and its knowledge will benefit all scientists, just like the Tevatron in the US has helped all scientists worldwide.
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