Re: Panel Cuts Bush's Budget Request for NASA

From: David Sander (surfren_at_bigpond.net.au)
Date: 07/27/04 

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 02:12:33 GMT

james_anatidae wrote:
>
> "rk" <stellare@NOSPAMPLEASE.erols.com> wrote in message
> news:Xns952FD97C614DErk@199.184.165.239...
> > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64974-2004Jul20.html
> >
> > Panel Cuts Bush's Budget Request for NASA
> >
> > By Guy Gugliotta and Dan Morgan
> > Wednesday, July 21, 2004; Page A02
> >
> > A key congressional subcommittee slashed President Bush's NASA budget
> > request by more than $1 billion yesterday, dealing a sharp early blow
> > to the administration's efforts to set in motion an ambitious plan to
> > send humans to the moon and Mars.
> >
> > The panel eliminated $438 million the administration had requested to
> > begin work on a new "crew exploration vehicle" to replace the space
> > shuttle, cut its request for medical and biological research in space
> > by $103 million, and eliminated $70 million for lunar exploration.
>
> Leaving only enough money for the white elephant ISS and some extra coffee
> filters for the Mission Control breakroom, right?

This sort of vindicates my earlier scepticism regarding Bush's
announcement - making a policy declaration such as the one he made looks
to have provided an opportunity for committees such as this to indulge
in some budgetary hacking and slashing (well, they weren't going to
*increase* NASA's budget, were they? Who'd imagine such a scandal? *Tsk*).

Without a suitable CRV, the ISS continues to rely on Soyuz, and AIUI
therefore cannot support more than three permanent crew at any one time.
With such a small crew, there is no need for such a large platform and
range of experiments, thereby rendering the ISS incapable of meeting its
original scope of goals. Hobbling such a visible element of the
humans-in-space side of things (alongside the already delicate position
of the crippled STS fleet) is a quite effective way to demoralize public
sentiment and support (regardless of upbeat propaganda, like the recent
IMAX film about ISS for instance), making humans to Mars or even the
Moon even more remote a possibility.

Without a CEV, the STS remains the only space access for US crews. While
the STS has proven itself to be a remarkable flying machine, it remains
a vulnerable system - described by one astronaut who flew on it many
times as "a butterfly riding on a rocket". Its design was flawed from
the beginning, and a new CEV might have provided an opportunity to set a
new standard and right some of the wrongs committed in the past.
Instead, this committee has dashed that hope and lumbered NASA with
increasingly ageing technology with known flaws for its operations here
onwards, with essentially little hope of evolving.

It is still too soon to rely on private enterprise for such endeavours
as lunar or Martian exploration and/or exploitation - space remains the
budgetary domain of governments, and will remain so until further
research and development brings the cost down. Without adequate R&D
however (especially that done by NASA), the costs will stay high, and
IMNSHO nobody will be going anywhere.

David 

-- 
per aspera ad astra
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