Anybody interested, here is the long term budget.
Posted on 01/30/2004 7:08:18 PM PST by demlosers
U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites) is requesting $16.2 billion for NASA (news - web sites) in 2005, including $1.09 billion designated for the new organization being created to carry out the president's new vision for space exploration, according to NASA budget documents obtained by Space News.
The money in the budget of the new exploration enterprise, as it is known at NASA, is not for all new programs, but includes funding for existing programs that will now fall under the new exploration bureaucracy. It includes $483 million for Project Prometheus, the nuclear power and propulsion program started in 2003 and $428 million for Project Constellation, the new name for the proposed Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). While the CEV is a new program, it replaces a similar effort known as the Orbital Space Plane.
Bush's request includes a five-year projection that calls for annual budget increases at NASA each year until the agency's budget levels off at about $18 billion a year starting in 2009.
When Bush announced Jan. 14 that NASA's new goal was to prepare for a return to the moon and an eventual mission to Mars, he pledged that the bulk of the money needed to start that effort would come from $11.6 billion that would be shifted over the next five years from other NASA programs. The five-year plan outlined in Bush's 2005 budget request details exactly where that money would come from:
$5.9 billion by phasing out or transferring to the new effort funding previously set aside for existing launch programs such as the Orbital Space Plane and the Next Generation Launch Technology program, an effort to develop reusable launch vehicle technology; $1.5 billion from the shuttle program; $1.2 billion by eliminating research aboard the international space station that is not tied to the president's new exploration vision; $2.7 billion by deferring the start of several planned new missions, including the Global Precipitation Measuring Mission, solar terrestrial probes and Beyond Einstein, a group of planned astronomy missions designed to investigate the origin and nature of phenomena like dark matter and black holes. In addition, spending on several Earth Science missions and Sun-Earth Connection missions will be held flat through 2009; and $300 million from reducing space technology development and deferring institutional activities such as the construction of new facilities at NASA field centers.
The budget request also outlines a number of other changes in major agency programs.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, which had been planned for a launch in 2011 or 2012 will slip a couple of years to about 2015, according to a NASA chart that accompanies the budget request.
The space shuttle and international space station would get $4.3 billion in 2005, including $200 million for dedicated return-to-flight activities. NASA plans to spend $680 million through 2007 on space shuttle changes in the wake of the Columbia accident.
The space station budget request also includes $10 million in new funding for "a flight demonstration initiative to pursue launch services with emerging launch systems." Industry and government sources said that money is earmarked for start-up firms such as Kistler Aerospace and Space Exploration Technologies.The budget also includes $70 million in funding for robotic lunar missions. According to budget documents, NASA plans to spend $420 million through 2009 on lunar exploration missions.
NASA plans to launch a robotic lunar orbiter in 2008 and a lunar lander in 2009. In addition, the New Horizons mission to Pluto remains funded.
Mars appears to be a big winner. It's $691 million budget request for 2005 — $84 million more than it expected at this time last year -- includes $175 million, a nearly 50 percent increase for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory, a nuclear powered rover in development.
It also includes $25 million to continue development of the 2009 Mars Telesat Orbiter. An additional $56 million was included in the budget for a laser communications demonstration payload on the 2009 Telesat mission.
Under Bush's request, NASA's 2005 Earth Sciences budget would drop $41 million to $1.485 billion in 2005. The decline is set to continue through 2008 before bumping up slightly to $1.474 billion in 2009.
SPACE.com's Jim Banke contributed to this report from Houston, Texas.
Personally, I'd much rather spend money on space exploration than on social programs.
I thought they went bankrupt, Elon Musk's rockets should play an ever increasing role in this new initiative.
Whooohooo. I was hoping this program wasn't cut, and, for now at least, it isn't. Anyways, at the moment, it does look more like shifting priorities then actually giving NASA a boost. Still, even simply shifting of priorties is still better then what NASA was doing before.
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