Meanwhile funding is being pulled for a host of other projects that were promised not to be touched. I won't go into why. Ultimately the reasons are self-evident.
Quote:
Some of the most highly promoted missions on NASA's scientific agenda would be postponed indefinitely or perhaps even canceled under the agency's new budget, despite its administrator's vow to Congress six months ago that not "one thin dime" would be taken from space science to pay for President Bush's plan to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars.
The cuts come to $3 billion over the next five years, even as NASA's overall spending grows by 3.2 percent this year, to $16.8 billion.
Among the casualties in the budget, released last month, are efforts to look for habitable planets and perhaps life elsewhere in the galaxy, an investigation of the dark energy that seems to be ripping the universe apart, bringing a sample of Mars back to Earth and exploring for life under the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa — as well as numerous smaller programs and individual research projects that astronomers say are the wellsprings of new science and new scientists.
The agency's administrator, Michael D. Griffin, says NASA needs the money to keep the space shuttle fleet aloft, complete the International Space Station and build a new crew exploration vehicle to replace the shuttle.
|
Uh, why are we pulling money from other projects and funneling it into the shuttle system, while at the same time designing its replacement? And frankly the ISS has pretty much already accomplished what it set out to do: help us understand the prolonged effects of weightlessness and close quarters on the human body. Why are we spending anything more than maintenance money on that??
Most of these surveying satellites, telescopes and probes do not require launch by shuttle. They can get up there with a Delta rocket in most cases. This stuff pisses me off.
We always hear the talk during promise time, but rarely see the walk. If they fuck with the NGT, I'm going to start a new space-friendly terrorist group. Unlike PETA and ELF, people will like us because they understand what the quest for this kind of knowledge can do to advance our civilization as a whole. Plus -and this is key- we won't' burn down their houses or throw paint on them as they walk out of the butcher shop or furrier.
