Recent news accounts suggest a tone of cautious optimism about the fate of NASA’s FY2005 budget, as Congress reconvenes today for a brief lame-duck session. CongressDailyPM reported late Monday that while a budget cut of 0.75 percent is in the works for non-defense, non-homeland security agencies, NASA may be exempt from this cut and instead get an additional $800 million. The article doesn’t specify, though, from what baseline this money would be added to: if it’s the President’s original budget it’s good news, but less so if it’s from the House version of the budget, which cut $1.1 billion from the President’s request back in July.
The Houston Chronicle also reported Tuesday that there’s some optimism about NASA’s budget, with a spokesman of the House Appropriations Committee saying that a deal may be reached by the end of this week. The article quoted anonymous aides, though, as saying that while the space shuttle may be fully funded, other programs may still suffer cuts in the end. Florida Today takes a more skeptical tone, saying that right now “prospects don’t look good for the moon-Mars missions.” Sen. George Allen (R-VA) told the newspaper that some of his colleagues in the Senate “still have to be convinced (NASA officials) have a plan to spend money wisely.”
Sen. George Allen (R-VA) told the newspaper that some of his colleagues in the Senate “still have to be convinced (NASA officials) have a plan to spend money wisely.”
Retiring an experimental system, and building a spaceship with existing, tested, proven technology is a wise move.
Philip, things can always go from bad to worse. I think that’s what the senator and his pals are worried about. Case in point: Boeing, Northrop Grumman to Team Up on Spaceship. If that doesn’t sound like the formation of a federally sponsored “rocket cartel”, I don’t know what does. Add to that the fact that Boeing seems to be coming up with all kinds of asinine ideas on how to launch to the Moon and the Senate has reason to be concerned that they money spent will be spent wisely.
Fiscal conservatism doesn’t mean anti-space. In fact, there’s nothing better to make sure we get out of LEO then to do it “cheaply”.
Where is the bottleneck?
Who should get letters or phone calls seeking full funding for the VSE?