News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:NASA Struggles Over Deep-Space Plutonium Power by cjensen on Tuesday September 15, 2015 @11:58AM (#10221349)
That's flatly incorrect. Both parties are pretty much equally disinterested in NASA. The current Democratic administration, for example, is no friend to NASA.

Worse is the politically-driven directives given to NASA. Human space flight, for example, generates very little science per dollar spent. It's basically PR.

Re:NASA Struggles Over Deep-Space Plutonium Power by wnevets on Tuesday September 15, 2015 @12:29PM (#10221546)
Why are you bringing up the current administration? It's congress that controls the purse strings. Only 5 minutes of google searching would show you that republicans fight to lower the NASA budget and democrats fight to increase it.
Re:NASA Struggles Over Deep-Space Plutonium Power by cjensen on Tuesday September 15, 2015 @06:54PM (#10223646)
Nope. Congress gave NASA more for their 2015 budget than the Administration requested [1]. In other words, the Republican-controlled Congress is more supportive of NASA than the Obama administration. Assuming it's partisan is ill-advised: the extra congressional support came from both parties.

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/space_20/20...

Re:NASA Struggles Over Deep-Space Plutonium Power by gizmo686 on Tuesday September 15, 2015 @12:14PM (#10221449)
Human space flight also has a social engineering aspect to it, where it likely gets better returns in inspiring the next generation to be interested in science.