Congressional Appropriators Cut NASA Funding;

Moon Program, New Launch Vehicle, and Science All Cut

Sadly thats the headline today from a report by the Planetary Society and other news sources too.

Apparently, the great success of the current "Golden Age of Space Exploration" means nothing to certain leaders in Congress. Funding cuts by the Bush Administation will be reinforced and even deepened by the new House leadership.

Does NASA have any friends left?

Link and details in the first few paragraps from the TPS post of 31 Jan 2007:
http://www.planetary.org/news/2007/0131_Co...s_Cut_NASA.html

The House Appropriations Committee has passed its version of the 2007 federal government budget. In it, funding for NASA was cut by $550 million (approximately 3.2%) from the amount proposed by the Bush Administration last February. The $16.2 billion budgeted for NASA for 2007 is the same as the amount approved for 2006. To become law, the Appropriations Committee’s proposal still must be approved by the full House and Senate.

The Planetary Society strongly opposed the Administration’s request for fiscal year 2007 because it had slashed science programs in order to increase funding for the shuttle, the space station, the new Ares and Orion launch vehicles, and lunar programs. The House Appropriations plan accepts the funding cuts to all of these areas, and adds to them even more cuts to space science and to the NASA Exploration programs.

It’s a double whammy,” said Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society. “First the science underpinnings to the NASA exploration architecture were removed; now the whole enterprise seems to be collapsing.”

The budget includes cuts of $576 million from the Moon-to-Mars program, $94million from shuttle and space station, and $78 million from NASA's Science programs. Spending for Aeronautics was increased above the NASA’s request by $163 million, and another $40 million was added to miscellaneous programs.


read the full sad details via the link

ken

Well, that's it. At this rate there's more chance of Jade Goody being named "Ambassador to India" than there is of me seeing a man or woman set foot on Mars.