Buried in President Trump’s latest budget proposal is a little item that zeros NASA’s education budget! Evidently it “duplicates spending elsewhere.” I’ll bet FIRST grants would be effected and not in a good way.
If this gets taken seriously by congress we’ll need to rally the troups.
I think that FIRST would be able to find private companies to replace any lost NASA money. I think many in the FRC community would all help if needed.
Personally, in my opinion, I don’t think government should be funding a program like FIRST, we are more than capable of finding corporate sponsors. And government money can go away in a blink of an eye, it is foolish to rely on it.
are we great again yet
im v tired of winning
NASA sponsors more teams than any other single entity. And at least in the case of the grants (which I think make up the majority of that funding) is 5k and 6k grants they likely make up a massive chunk of of cash to be made up.
Personal feelings and politics aside - it’s not “just find some companies”.
Edit - NASA is no longer the largest entity (DoDStem is larger by team count but likely not total amount) And this gutting will likely not have a DIRECT impact on FRC funding (see Basel’s posts) I still object to cutting this and object to the flippancy with which some folks seem to think that money could be replaced.
I hope Congress denies this budget. NASA’s Education Office is one of the primary reasons I am where I am today (Masters in ECE working at Intel). It provides many up and coming children and young adults the opportunity to take part in brilliant things.
Here’s what I’ve gotten out of the NASA Education Office:
NASA Sponsored FIRST team
4x internships at the NASA Stennis Space Center
Several lifetime friendships with NASA mentors and coworkers
That is just my opinion, I know NASA is a huge sponsor but I’m not going to be upset with spending getting cut, I am sorry but we live in a country where our spending is out of control. I would be for this even if Hillary or Obama proposed it. It has nothing to with politics just being realistic.
It’s just 180 $5-6000 grants, the house teams, and the engineering inspiration grants which can total up to 70 more $5000 grants for EI winners. What’s the big deal? The government shouldn’t be in the business of education, only corporations and churches.
Then try to ACTUALLY be realistic instead of discounting a simply herculean amount of work. Work that, if failed, will directly kill teams and negatively impact education in this country (NASA’s ed budget is more than just FIRST)
But FIRST is the only thing that directly impacts me…
Also wish to point out that tighter government spending, while a strain on NASA (who gets far too little of the discretionary spend in my opinion), will also be a strain on defense contractors, who get the largest portion of US government discretionary spend by far. That will also negatively impact FIRST teams and it will become harder to fund these organizations so competition for all grants will go up, even from private foundations.
Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GibiNy4d4gc
Keeping the conversation within scope here (NASA’s influence in FIRST), corporate sponsors can be more difficult because the cash flow would be much less static. A company might commit money for one year or two years, but if a key contact leaves the company, or the company scales back its budget, FIRST or FIRST teams could be left scrambling. From FIRST’s perspective, this would be a heavy blow.
[On a personal note, I am not against government agencies providing government funds for education-based programming- we can never have too much. If you want to move the FIRST sponsorship funds from NASA to the Dept. of Education, an argument can be made for this, but you also lose a lot of the little bonuses that come with having NASA as a partner.]
steelerborn, are you suggesting there is some massive pile of corporate sponsorship that is currently being dissuaded from contributing to FRC by the presence of NASA and other federal revenue sources for teams? If so, I would love for you to point me their direction, because I know plenty of teams in need of additional sponsors. The reality that I see is there’s already plenty of corporate sponsorship in FRC, yet plenty of teams still in need of more.
Furthermore, are you aware one of the stipulations of the FIRST grants is for teams to find matching funding elsewhere? Are you aware that NASA growth grants are only for 1-2 years, with the intention of helping teams get started, but ultimately transitioning them over to other funding sources? And that NASA hardship grants are for teams who can demonstrate they recently lost a significant financial sponsor, with the intention of keeping them afloat while they search for new sponsorship? There’s only a handful of permanently-sponsored NASA teams (the NASA “house teams”), with the majority of NASA grants being intended are short-term funding while teams acquire other revenue sources.
This is no longer true. NASA is now the second largest sponsor of teams behind the DoDSTEM, aka the Department of Defense (also federal government money).
It’s not that I don’t believe you but do you have numbers for this? I didn’t think that was the case and I’d like to update my knowledge.
I don’t recall the numbers, but this was specifically cited by Dean during closing ceremonies at Championship last year.
I believe that was him roasting the guy from the DoD and the fact that NASA sponsors more teams but my memory isn’t great either.
For reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/FRC/comments/4h75zp/dean_is_a_savage/
I was not paying attention when he was talking about this… I’m pretty sure I was chatting to Omar about motor controllers.
Dean mentioned DoDSTEM sponsors more teams, but also that the DoD budget is orders of magnitude larger than NASA’s. He was trying to get DoD to sponsor teams to the same proportionality as NASA does.
If you’re upset about this, call your congresspeople.
I recognize the implied sarcasm in this sentiment.
I still submit the following:
Imagine what would happen to 118…