NASA Aeronautics budget thread

[spacester]

Flightglobal.com had this little budgetary nugget for any interested budget wonks:<br /><br />***<br />Commenting on the recent budget, which again has received widespread criticism from lawmakers from both parties, academics and aerospace leaders who say the reductions are hampering NASA's ability to develop new aviation technology, Griffin says "I'd like to see it increase, but money is limited." <br /><br />He adds that the aeronautics budget impact appears to be worse than it actually is because of a comprehensive accounting revamp that is included in NASA's new budget for the first time. "Under this new and unified accounting system the overhead will be managed on an agency-wide basis," he says, adding that much of the money ordinarily appearing as budget allocations for aeronautics research in former years was actually always intended to support one of the four main centres at Ames, Dryden, Glenn and Langley. <br /><br />"This will now be centralised. As of 1 October we scrape off all the overhead and identify all the directorates which are directly funded. It's a lot more transparent and that isn't pretty. But the change does mean, however, that in future the money will go to aeronautics research alone (and not subsidising the centres)." <br /><br />Speaking the day before, on 26 September, at the House Committee on Science's Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, associate administrator Lisa Porter says the aeronautics budget will "decrease by about $200 million under the overhead cost simplification system. But let me be clear, the $200 million was never used for research; it was always set aside to pay the overhead costs of the four research centres."<br />***<br /><br />Discussion? To me, this is a closing chapter in a long story from a completely fiscally mismanaged agency to respec <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[jschaef5]

Sounds to me like a new way of hiding the fact that they want to cut more money from aeronautics...<br /><br />Kind of funny to me that its the National AERONAUTICS and space Administration yet aeronautics reasearch only accounts for about 4% of NASA's total budget. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[halman]

spacester,<br /><br />I think that it is time that the United States admit that space exploration is a major field in and of itself, and should be dealt with by a seperate beauracracy. I purpose the creation of the Off Planet Exploration Administration, to deal with space exploration and only space exploration. NASA has far too many projects underway, in my opinion. <br /><br />In that regard, I would really like to see a pie chart of the NASA budget, to get an idea of where the money goes. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>