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WASHINGTON – The House Science Committee’s Republican chairman and senior Democrat told NASA Administrator Mike Griffin they had little interest in accelerating the U.S. space agency’s exploration plans at the expense of science and research.<br /><br />Griffin appeared before the House Science Committee Thursday to defend his agency’s 2007 budget request of $16.792 billion, which would hold science spending to a 1.5-percent increase next year in order to fund a nearly $1 billion increase for exploration. NASA plans to postpone or cancel several major science missions to help free up the additional money its needs to build new spacecraft and launchers while also operating a space shuttle fleet slated to fly 16 missions to the international space station before its retired in 2010.<br /><br />“I am extremely uneasy about this budget, and I am in a quandary at this point about what to do about it,” Boehlert told Griffin. “This budget is bad for space science, worse for Earth science, perhaps worse still for aeronautics. It basically cuts or de-emphasizes every forward looking, truly futuristic program of the agency to fund operational and development programs to enable us to do what we are already doing or have done before.”<br /><br />.... <br /><br />Boehlert, who said he had not made up his mind about what should be done about the NASA budget, said he would be willing to vote for giving NASA more money than the White House requested as long as the money went to unmanned side of the program and did not come from other science agencies.