Trump Cuts Are Killing a Tiny Office That Keeps Measurements of the World Accurate

The rest of the workers are in the case of “in all the hands on the deck, Brett Howe, the head of the former Geodetic Services department Brett Howe, who chose to retire in late April, says Brett Howe. Despite a special personnel, the loss of many of the high leadership, which has been experienced and institutional knowledge for decades, means that the agency cannot pass another cut.

“If we recruit some people again, we will still have difficulty meeting with the schedule of 2025 and 2026 [for the rollout]But we will be able to work, “he says.” If you have more cuts or we cannot execute [National Spatial Reference System] Modernization Plan, then a year a year, a year and a half, or lose more people with another part, or simply retire, then I think we are real worried. Then I think we work as an agency. “

“At this time, NSRS modernization plans are still aligned by dates in the federal register,” said Gillespie Wired. “NGS will support the foundation information and products for basic information and opinions in 2025.”

The fate of NGS under red management is unknown. The NOAA budget proposal from the AIGA management and budget management reduces the budget for the National Ocean Service, which is more than half of the budget sent to the Agency in April. The project does not mark the NGS on the name of 2025, but the NOAA is a mandate that manages research opportunities to other institutions.

“We do not speculate about things that may not happen in the future,” Gillespie said, when the agency’s potential changes. “Noaa will continue to investigate weather data, forecasts and warnings, in accordance with our social security mission.”

The sharp drop in employees in the NGS is the tail end of a long decline for geodetic experience in the United States. A group of leading geodesy experts in 2022 a paper The United States has detailed the “geodetic crisis” and other forces have invested in trainings in the last three decades and established US financing and training. China has invested heavily in creating more geologists: 9,000 and 12,500 geodetic students in the country are hired by the government. On the contrary, about 20 students had finished In the last decade, US universities are developed with geodesy.

This is arguing with the authors, and we are rapidly overwhelming China on all kinds of location technologies and subjects. It is not clear that Beidou, China’s satellite navigation system, Beidou pot In the US GPS system accuracy. US government advisory council on GPS in 2023 stated in a souvenir This GPS is now “significantly low” for Beidou.

Like other cuts for mass science under Trump management, the losses from blows may be important. A 2012 analysis The NGS found the benefits of each taxpayer spent on the coastal mapping program $ 35, $ ​​35 returned in 2019 report The NGS program modeling the crasticational fields has discovered $ 4.2 to $ 13.3 billion in 10 years. The private sector also relies on social information provided by the NGS. Some analyzes, the growth of the location economy 1 trillion dollars until the end of the decade. This is more important, specialists, to have an updated space reference system in the United States, as well as the institutional knowledge of the main science of how to measure and understand our place.

Now many industries are “in developed location technology” this high-precision placement, “Doyle says,” Doyle says, “they do not understand the basics of science.