That was the takeaway message from a town hall meeting at the NASA Langley Research Center where three members of Congress answered questions from employees about the upcoming NASA budget process, according to the local newspapers the Daily Press and the Virginian-Pilot. That “problem” is funding for aeronautics, which was threatened with significant cuts in last year’s budget proposal and is expected to see the budget knife again in the 2007 proposal. The Daily Press reports that aeronautics will get a 14 percent cut in the 2007 budget proposal; however, the same report also says that the overall budget will rise to $17.9 billion, contrary to earlier reports that NASA would see a much smaller increase, if any. While there’s no immediate danger of layoffs at Langley or other NASA centers—such measures are prohibited until March 2007 under the NASA authorization bill signed into law last month—it still won’t be easy to fund Langley’s aeronautics programs. “This last budget, we were cutting food stamps for the working poor. Medicaid, foster care, student loans were all getting cut,” said Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA). “It’s hard to fund long-term research in an atmosphere like that.” Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-VA) on funding NASA’s space exploration programs: “I have nothing against going into space, but I have a real problem with spending all of the millions and billions we need to go to Mars and not taking care of what we need to spend here.”
I just received an e-mail from Jim Hodges , the author of the recent Daily Press article which discussed the 2007 NASA budget(Delegates To Push NASA Vision At Budget Hearing). In the e-mail he stated to me that the approximate $17.9 billion 2007 NASA budget figure he cites in his article is “from a fact sheet from the Dec. authorization legislation passed in Congress”.
In the e-mail he stated to me that the approximate $17.9 billion 2007 NASA budget figure he cites in his article is “from a fact sheet from the Dec. authorization legislation passed in Congress”.
True enough. Of course, the actual presidential budget request (due to be released in two weeks) is likely to be lower.
Oops, sent too soon. From Hodges’ original article:
The president’s NASA budget for fiscal year 2007 is expected to be about $17.9 billion, up from $16.2 billion a year ago.
Since Mr. Hodges himself acknowledges that the source of the $17.9 billion figure was the congressional authorization legislation, he should have said so. Surely he realizes that presidential budget requests are unconnected to prior years’ authorizations?
Screw aeronautics.
Screw aeronautics.
Explain why, please sir.
>>Explain why, please sir
Aeronautics makes no sense anyways, unless they are using it to launch payloads into orbit. We are talking about squeezing another percentage point in performance out of something. Surely industry can handle that.