| |
And you thought the brouhaha over the HST was intense... this one will turn into
a big old catfight before it’s over.
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040721-120555-7068r
Basically, the House Appropriations subcommittee in charge of NASA’s budget just
gave a big thumbs-down to the space agency’s budget request. Not only did they
essentially axe every single new space initiative budget item request, they
sliced off more of NASA’s traditional budget. Bush had asked for $16.2 billion
for FY 2005, an $866 million increase over 2004’s budget, but the subcommittee
only approved $15.149 billion.
Thanks so much. Space exploration, apparently, is over their heads. So to
speak.
The “good” news (highly qualified) is that this isn’t the final decision. But
it’s apparently gonna get uglier before it gets better. For serious space-head
geeks like me, this is a (not entirely unexpected) blow to the solar plexus
(note to House subcommittee members: that means “gut”, fellas).
“The subcommittee even killed the small, $20 million down payment on a new NASA
project to offer prizes to achieve new space technologies and systems.” Now
that’s just stupid. The X-Prize generated a ton of positive awareness on
affordable space exploration, and some bright boy at NASA put 2+2 together and
proposed a similar prize incentive - a paltry sum, compared to their regular
budget, but substantial enough to grab attention. Poof - gone.
So the one bright spot of the current administration - increasing space
exploration funding - is being eviscerated by (unprintably shortsighted)
bureaucrats and left out to dry.
It’s enough to make one wonder if ABS bricks could be made airtight, and
withstand reentry somehow...
Kelly
|
|
Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: Bad news for NASA
|
| (...) That sucks. That was a great way to potentially generate billions of dollars in NASA R&D without having to spend tax dollars to pay for it all. It also allows a greater variety of ideas to be explored, since noone has to justify experimenting (...) (20 years ago, 21-Jul-04, to lugnet.off-topic.geek, FTX)
| | | Re: Bad news for NASA
|
| (...) All those new initiatives were a neat idea, but as you can see Shuttle has eaten them alive. Congress voted $4.3 billion for a shuttle that won't fly before that money is all gone. It has always done this because our lawmakers are addicted to (...) (20 years ago, 22-Jul-04, to lugnet.off-topic.geek, FTX)
| | | Re: Bad news for NASA
|
| (...) It's not over yet. Look at House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's comments in these articles: (2 URLs) He's quoted as calling the proposed NASA budget cuts as "unacceptable" and followed that by saying, "It would be very hard to get this bill to (...) (20 years ago, 22-Jul-04, to lugnet.off-topic.geek, FTX)
|
5 Messages in This Thread:
 
 
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
