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Politics
posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 19 2018, @12:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the science-of-politics-and-politics-of-science dept.

The Planetary Society reports:

Representative John Culberson, an 8-term Texas Republican and staunch supporter of NASA and planetary exploration, lost his re-election bid to Democrat Lizzie Fletcher last week. Many factors played into this outcome, but one bears consideration by space advocates: his support for the scientific search for life at Europa was seen as a weakness and attacked accordingly.

Over the past four years, Culberson used his chairmanship of the Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) appropriations subcommittee to increase spending on NASA and missions to search for life on Europa. He directed hundreds of millions of dollars to this effort and played a critical role in getting the Europa Clipper mission officially adopted by NASA and the White House. And he did this without cannibalizing other NASA programs. His motivation was passion, not parochialism, as the prime benefactor of these federal dollars was California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, located far outside his Houston-area congressional district.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday November 19 2018, @01:39AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday November 19 2018, @01:39AM (#763716) Journal

    We already discussed Culberson: Impact of the Midterm Elections May be Felt at NASA [soylentnews.org]

    The Planetary Society's post was written after that date and goes into details I didn't know (the Houston Chronicle editorial and attack ad), so I won't drop the D-word.

    The Planetary Society doesn't consider whether a half-baked lander will do any good at Europa, or Culberson's support of the pork rocket.

    We need to think about drilling [nextbigfuture.com] kilometers down into Europa and Enceladus. That is not on the table yet.

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