The National Space Society emailed a “legislative alert” to its members on Friday, calling on them to contact their Congressional representatives to urge them to support the new space initiative. Here’s a key paragraph from the message:
The new human space exploration initiative has run into serious opposition in Congress. Many Senators and Congressmen are convinced the new plan will cost too much — after passing large increases in nearly every other category of the federal budget. The fact that the President failed to mention the new initiative in his State of the Union address is disturbing; he may be leaving his options open to back away from support for the program before it even passes its first budget hurdles. If we don’t stand up now in loud support of this initiative, we’ll be stuck in low earth orbit for another 30 years.
It should be noted that while other federal programs have received “large increases” in past years, in the FY05 budget proposal NASA is one of the few agencies getting more than a token increase. That, of course, has made it a target of Congressmen who have become more budget conscious in this election year and who may be skeptical of the new initiative in any event because of a lack of specifics.
