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Senate: NASA May Get Better Budget
colonist writes "The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bill that funds NASA at $16.379 billion: $200 million more than this year, but $665 million less than President Bush's budget request. (The House version of the bill funds NASA at $15.1 billion: $229 million below this year and $1.1 billion below the request.) The shuttle budget is fully funded, but the International Space Station budget is reduced. There is initial funding for a robotic servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The budgets for the Crew Exploration Vehicle and Project Prometheus are reduced. $10 million is provided for the Centennial Challenges."
I'd cut both the Space Shuttle and the Space Station. Completely. They are a waste of money at this point.
Instead, I'd increase NASA's budget, tell them to switch to some robotic planetary missions, a small amount of space elevator research, and a somewhat larger effort to develop a two-stage to orbit booster consisting of a reusable flyback booster and a reusable space capsule. The damn thing will be stacked like a real rocket not in the dangerous side-by-side configuration that has killed two shuttles so far.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
What a waste. Inside that budget is the fact that they're cutting everything worthwhile that the agency does in favor of some dream of "going to the moon/mars." There's no point in going to the moon/mars. A better option would be to build a space elevator (5-10 billion dollars) and then do whatever missions to mars/the moon for 100 times less (as the space elevator would transport material up into space for just 100 dollars a pound, instead of tens of thousands...)
I cannot understand this line of thinking.
NASA's *entire* budget is less than 3% of just the budget deficit. To inform you, Bush's "manned mission to mars" initiative is going to cost more than the budget increase alone, which means that NASA's funding to projects with scientific merit (according to scientists, not politicians) is going to get cut.
It's an unconscionable stretch to blame unemployment in government programs in NYC on NASA! Maybe you should think about offering your Bush tax cut back instead if you want to re-employ government workers?
My suggestion, based upon the rationale originally employed in the massive NASA spending, would be to require tangible military returns on any NASA spending within a period of 1-2 years. If we fund $20B for NASA, and get $20B+ value for our military I'd be more than happy.
With the Chinese threat on the horizon I don't want to see things like space station funding unless said space station is ours and comes with nukes pretargeted for Beijing.
The budget for our space program is ridiculously low as it is. We spend $15 billion/year on it - do you realize that the military alone spends $300 billion/year and they aren't even our biggest spender??!! With almost no dedication from the public towards a goal of pure scientific exploration, we should focus on the commercialization of outer space - that is where future development lies.