Congress may slash NASA budget

[omegamogo]

Most of probably heard about this by now, but good news from the Whitehouse. (From the SDC home page)<br /><br />White House Threatens to Veto Budget Bill Over NASA Cuts<br />By Brian Berger<br />Space News Staff Writer<br />posted: 12:02 pm ET<br />23 July 2004<br /><br />WASHINGTON --The White House has threatened to veto a spending bill that would deny NASA the funding it is counting on to get started on a new space exploration agenda next year.<br /><br />The veto threat was issued after the House Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to cut President George W. Bush’s 2005 budget request for NASA by $1.1 billion, a move that would leave the space agency with $229 million less than it has this year.<br /><br />The White House Office of Management and Budget Director Josh Bolton wrote the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee July 22 informing him that the cuts imposed on NASA were unacceptable and would be reason for the president’s senior advisors to recommend a veto.<br /><br />Bush is asking Congress for $16.2 billion for NASA for 2005, a 5.6 percent increase over NASA's 2004 budget. House appropriators approved a 2005 budget of just $15.1 billion.<br /><br />Although the bill would fully fund NASA's request for the space shuttle and Mars exploration programs, NASA's proposed Crew Exploration Vehicle and the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter programs would have to make do with significantly smaller budgets for the year ahead.<br /><br />House appropriators, in approving the cuts, said they are supportive of the space exploration vision espoused by Bush, but do not have the money this year to give NASA such a large budget increase.<br /><br />The Senate has yet to take up the 2005 NASA budget and is not expected to do so until Congress returns from a six week recess in September.<br /><br />Meanwhile, a NASA authorization bill scheduled for markup in the Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday was pulled from consideration by the committee's chairman and one of the bill's sponsors,

 

[lunatic133]

Yes! Now we must just hope and pray that someone sympathetic is in the white house when the time for veto-ing comes.<br /><br />And if those who never quit and never win are idiots, that makes half of us here idiots -- a smart person would have given up on getting out of LEO thirty years ago <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" />

 

[omegamogo]

<img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /> lol Then I guess I should change it if I'm going to hang around here!

 

[blacknebula]

That is good news, but we cannot be comfortable with this. A budget veto from the White House is serious, come election time. In fact, it's stupid. This needs to be changed in the Senate before it arrives on Bush's desk ( assuming the House passes it ). Considering DeLay, the House majority leader, is opposed to the funding cuts, I find it hard to believe that the House floor will pass the measure. The last thing you need before an election is a divided party.<br /><br />Call, write, and email your senators and representatives today!

 

[lunatic133]

CALL your congressmen, and ask them WHAT KIND OF MAN....<br /><br />Oops, wrong commercial.

 

[radarredux]

> <font color="yellow">"<i>Following the subcommittee action, Rep. C. W. Bill Young, R-Fla., chair of the Appropriations Committee, said the plan was to bring the VA, HUD and IA bill to the House floor for a full vote soon after Congress returned from its summer vacation in early September. But Delay vowed to in effect kill the bill and the subcommittee's work by blocking it from floor action in the fall.</i>" <br /><br />What exactly does that mean??</font><br /><br />Another administrative trick that sometimes makes American's implementation of democracy look foolish. If a powerful person who controls the agenda in a committee or the full house or senate doesn't like something that may pass if voted on, they can just make sure it doesn't get on the agenda. Sort of like the filibuster, where a minority can thwart the majority by preventing a vote, but in this case a single powerful person can do it.

 

[lunatic133]

Yes, but what exactly are they trying to prevent? Are they going to make sure that the cuts aren't going to pass, or are they going to make sure NASA DOESN'T get the money?

 

[radarredux]

spayss: <i><font color="yellow">do you want the Shuttle and ISS or a return to the Moon. You can't have both. Any Moon or Mars mission funding will come out of the existing NASA budget. I don't like it. You might not like it...but it's the reality.</font>/i><br /><br />lunatic133: <i><font color="yellow">So why doesn't congress just cut the shuttle/ISS and instead fund the moon program (which will in the end be less expensive).</font>/i><br /><br />In general I agree with the question, but I can give a couple of speculative reasons why the shutte/ISS has more clout:<br /><br />(1) It already has an existing constituency (existing NASA facilities, large aerospace companies, and their local communities) that vote and contribute money to congress-people. The new vision, for which no one has a contract yet, has no serious constituency. Voting against shuttle/ISS will lose you votes and money; voting against the new vision will lose you very little.<br /><br />(2) Its "almost done". NASA has a <i>long</i> history of starting manned space projects and killing them before they are actually built, flown, or shortly after they have flown (the first space station, crew escape vehicles, X33 shuttle replacement, Skylab, (and you could even add Apollo to this list -- success then we walked away)), and to abandon the station when it is half way to completion would add to the list. It would also call into question all the NASA arguments that the shuttle/ISS were vital.<br /><br />(3) Internation obligation. Partly for a need of Russia's expertise, partly to distribute the exploding costs of the space station, and partly to promote political objectives, the U.S. made agreements with over a dozen countries to contibute money and effort to ISS (hence the 'I' in ISS). To back out now could hurt US/NASA reputation for future large-scale international space efforts.<br /><br />For about the last 20 years many involved with the space program have complained that the shu</i></i>

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">Yes, but what exactly are they trying to prevent? Are they going to make sure that the cuts aren't going to pass, or are they going to make sure NASA DOESN'T get the money?</font>/i><br /><br />Tom Delay's district includes a lot of JSC employees, so I think he wants more money for NASA (or at least he wants his voters to think that). If he refuses to let the full House vote on the VA-HUD bill, he may force the appropriations subcomittee to go back and put in money for "the vision"... or at least for vision work done at Johnson.</i>

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">So why doesn't congress just cut the shuttle/ISS and instead fund the moon program (which will in the end be less expensive).</font>/i><br /><br />Just a couple of quick question(s) to throw out...<br /><br />About the only scientific argument I have heard for the US to continue with ISS is to study the long-term affects of weightlessness and radiation on humans in order to prepare for long journey's to Mars.<br /><br />Question 1: While the Moon has some gravity, couldn't the effects of limited gravity and radiation be studied just as well on the Moon as they could on ISS?<br /><br />Question 2: I believe Zubrin has pointed out that we could produce gravity by rotating parts of a space ship to mars on a tether, thus removing the need to study long-term weightlessness on humans. Also, I believe Zubrin has poined out that the flight time to Mars (assuming you go to land) is about the same as the current missions on ISS (roughly 6-7 months, and Russia wants to go to a full year). So the question wrt to a Mars mission is: Does the need to study micro-gravity's effects on humans on the ISS hold water?</i>

 

[thecolonel]

<i>Tom Delay's district includes a lot of JSC employees, so I think he wants more money for NASA (or at least he wants his voters to think that). If he refuses to let the full House vote on the VA-HUD bill, he may force the appropriations subcomittee to go back and put in money for "the vision"... or at least for vision work done at Johnson.</i><br /><br />True, but it's not just JSC, there are literally THOUSANDS of NASA contractor employees (USA, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, Titan, and on and on) working within Delay's district also. Therefore, it definitely serves him well to stick up for the budget increases.

 

[lunatic133]

It may not be right, but if it's going to help NASA get the money they need, then I'm all for it <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /><br /><br />Of course Colorado is the third largest aerospace state in the country (although we have no NASA installations I believe we are ahead of even Texas as far as aerospace in general, although California and Florida are ahead of us) and you don't see our senators jumping up and down in support of space exploration, although I believe Wayne Allard said something nice about it once....

 

[belisarius]

There was an earlier story on Space.com about the threatened presidential veto of the NASA budget cuts, but the following story from SpaceDaily (note, its actually a UPI story) seems to include more details and sounds even more encouraging:<br /><br />http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacetravel-04zp.html