In the last few days some details have emerged about what NASA’s FY05 budget—scheduled to be released on February 2—will look like. NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe told reporters this week that the agency will get $16.2 billion in ’05, an increase in line with what the President announced this week. He didn’t, however, offer details about what programs would see more—or less—funding in the budget for 05.
O’Keefe, though, has offered more details about the longer term. About $6 billion of the $11 billion that will be transferred from other programs to the new exploration initiative will come from the Orbital Space Plane and Next Generation Launch Technology programs, which will be killed off as a result. Since the Crew Exploration Vehicle development programs is much slower paced than what OSP was planned, this means that there won’t be an ISS “lifeboat” other than Soyuz for about 10 years instead of 4-6, and develop of RLV technologies within NASA will also grind to a halt. (Although the X-37 program will continue at least through the drop test phase according to the New York Times.) However, the agency plans to maintain unmanned space exploration as much as possible, according to MSNBC, conducting “robotic exploration across the solar system for scientific purposes and to support human exploration.” We shall see…
