Congress Cuts NASA's Budget On Apollo Anniversary

colonist writes "A House appropriations subcommittee voted to cut NASA's budget request by 7 percent on the 35th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the Moon. The panel also cut environment and science programs, but increased funding for veterans' affairs. NASA would get $15.1 billion next year, $229 million below this year and $1.1 billion below the President's request. Most of the cuts are on new initiatives. The subcommittee is the first step of a long budget process and major changes to the bill are expected."

Comments

Finally Republicans act as they should.

[TS020]

I am a fervent liberal, but Republicans claim to be about smaller gov, and less taxes. Well, the tax cuts enacted earlier warranted great cuts in programs. I don't like seeing the space and science budgets cut, being a fervent liberal, but hey, they need to do things right, and it's about time. I have an 8 month old daughter and she will be paying for the sins of this administration for a long time after I am (possibly) retired. What they need are massive cuts around the board to protect her. They want to do big tax cuts, it needs to come out someplace. I am of the opinion, however, that the federal government should be nothing more than international relations and international science (these would include space exploration and military), and that would greatly reduce our national taxes. All other things should vary from state to state, and that would enable each state to model its own economy and laws that could overwrite the federal ones. Smoke up!

Re:We need another space race!

[meringuoid]

Go watch "2001 a space odyssey" (released in 1970) to see where it was widely thought we should have been by 2001.

IIRC, 2001 was released in 1968. Think: that film was made in a time when nobody had ever been to the moon, but they were just about to do so. At Christmas '68 Apollo 8 orbited the Moon for the first time. That's the backdrop to 2001.

Now it's 2004. We've been to the Moon, we gave it up because we wanted to spend the money on killing Vietnamese people, and nobody seems to care anymore.

There's a word for this. Decadent.