Bush Space Vision Dealt Setback by Senate Budget Committee

space.com ^ | 8 Mar 04 | Brian Berger

[RightWhale]

Bush Space Vision Dealt Setback by Senate Budget Committee

By Brian Berger Space News Staff Writer

posted: 09:10 am ET 08 March 2004

WASHINGTON -- With the United States experiencing record budget defecits [sic], the Senate Budget Committee is reining in many White House spending priorities, including the proposed 5.6 percent budget hike for NASA for 2005.

The Senate Budget Committee voted March 4 to trim about $600 million from President George W. Bush's $16.2 billion request for NASA. The Budget Committee's budget resolution sets the guidelines for Senate appropriators responsible for crafting the 13 annual spending bills that fund the federal government.

Bush wants to increase NASA's 2004 budget of $15.4 billion by $800 million next year to serve as a downpayment on a new exploration agenda that aims to send humans back to the moon as early as 2015 in preparation for more ambitious missions to Mars and beyond.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles (Okla.), in a paper released Monday detailing the committee's 2005 budget resolution, said the committee "supports the president's vision for exploration and discovery [but] the current budget situation necessitates slower implementation."

The 1.4 percent increase recommended by the committee would give NASA $15.6 billion for 2005, about $200 million more than this year.

The Senate Appropriations VA-HUD and Independent Agencies subcommittee is holding a hearing Thursday on the space agency's budget. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe is scheduled to testify.

[RightWhale]

$200 million is what the increase was said to be anyway.

[The_Victor]

Here we go again. All new directives with grandiose plans, and no funding to cover the work. SSDD.

[KevinDavis]

I know NASA is a waste right. As usual NASA gets the blame....

[RightWhale]

Probably as other parties, ESA and China, especially China, begin to press hard in space, Congress will respond with crash programs. Right now the pressure is less than intense. OTOH, Peak Oil indicates that it may already be too late to establish a meaningful presence in space.

[from occupied ga]

There are plenty of agencies that should not get budget increases.

All of them.

[KevinDavis]

and NASA one of them correct???

[zarf]

Yeah, but keep your hands off Mediscare and the rest of the entitlement bucket.

[The_Victor]

Probably as other parties, ESA and China, especially China, begin to press hard in space, Congress will respond with crash programs.

All too true, but it's a sad, and inefficient way to fund long term goals.

[Cincinatus]

A vote by the Senate budget committee is a single footstep in a journey of a thousand miles. There will be many changes before a budget emerges from the other end of the tunnel.

[RightWhale]

do it on your own dime

There are two impediments to private sector advance into space. First is the onorous 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty. It is similar to the Law of the Sea Treaty and will cut the private sector out of business altogether. The other is the lack of private property rights to celestial resources.

Someone, and I suspect China will do this before the US or Europe, needs to register private claims to outer space resources--land claims.

[RightWhale]

We need fiscal conservatism now more than ever

According to Peak Oil we have to make massive investments now, or even 30 years ago, to avoid total economic collapse in 3 to 13 years. We need to do some serious investment in the infrastructure, in which I would include space infrastructure since we must grow.

[spetznaz]

Please explain Peak Oil (does it have to do with the moving average of petroleum reserves left?) Thanks RW.

[Bombay Bloke]

"Someone, and I suspect China will do this before the US or Europe, needs to register private claims to outer space resources--land claims."

Totally agree with you. Public financing of space exploration is not going to get us very far very fast - although I guess at this stage it's necessary. Frankly, the Bush plan was clearly unrealistic given the deficit anyway. Think it's gonna be later than '15 before we get back to the moon...

[from occupied ga]

There are two impediments to private sector advance into space.

The third "impediment" is that most people don't care enough for pictures of rocks and dirt to pay their own money for them, although there is a vocal minority that wants to spend other peoples' money. My own personal take is that I might pay as much as $29.95 for a really nice coffee table book of martian pictures, but I'd rather keep the money that the government has been squandering on this stuff.

We now know that mars consists of rocks and dirt. We now know that the moon consists of rocks and dirt. I suspect that Mercury consists of rocks and dirt. The russians showed that Venus consists of rocks and dirt. The gas giants consist of gas (and never to be seen) rocks and dirt too. All this does is keep a buch of PhDs and engineers happily grunting and swilling at the public trough rather than doing stuff people would voluntarily pay them for.