US Manned Space Flight Taking a Budget Hit

An anonymous reader points out that Congress has quietly begun dismantling NASA's manned space flight program. "Other recommendations contained in the bill include a $77million reduction in NASA's proposed space operations budget, which includes the space shuttle and international space station; a $6 million reduction in science; and a $332 million shift in funds from the Cross Agency Support account to a new budget line-item included in the subcommittee's mark. Dubbed Construction and Environmental Compliance, the new account would be funded at $441 million. Congressional aides said the new line item and accompanying funds are aimed at consolidating NASA's various construction efforts into a single pot of money."

Comments

A shame and ironic

[Hmmm2000]

In a bad economy, pure science and space exploration seem to be first on the budget chopping block. However the information learned and technology developed while performing these activities quite often lead to innovations that fuel the economy for years to come.

Re: A shame and ironic

[MightyMartian]

NASA has produced a helluva lot of useful technology. The drive to miniaturize onboard guidance systems and other computers in the Apollo program pretty much lead to the blossoming of integrated circuits and microprocessors in the 1970s. The value that that has produced over the last forty years for just about every industry in the industrialized world would be hard to calculate. So even though Apollo was an insanely expensive program, the spinoffs were enormous.

I'm not saying NASA doesn't need to live within its means, and I'm not saying that there aren't areas where efficiencies can be gained, but guys like you who just mindlessly go "money shouldn't be wasted on space research" are tragically ignorant of just how important the Unites States' space exploration programs have been to the technological innovations of the last few decades.

Is sending humans a novalty at this point?

[ViennaSt]

With robotics coming such a long way since the 60s, it is more efficient and cheaper to just send robots to do all the exploring and data/sample collection in space. Until the average American thinks the cost of human presence in space is a priority for the tax payer dollar, space flight will have to be unmanned in the meantime. We are just going to have to wait for China or another rising global leader to send humans to Mars until the US population is willing to put in the extra effort and dollar to compete in a second space race and reinflate their ego as the "pioneers of space".