I guess it's just windmills and ditches for you kids!
Posted on 02/09/2012 7:20:41 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists say NASA is about to propose major cuts in its exploration of other planets, especially Mars. And NASA's former science chief is calling it irrational.
With limited money for science and an over-budget new space telescope, the space agency essentially had to make a choice in where it wanted to explore: the neighboring planet or the far-off cosmos.
Mars lost.
Two scientists who were briefed on the 2013 NASA budget that will be released next week said the space agency is eliminating two proposed joint missions with Europeans to explore Mars in 2016 and 2018. NASA had agreed to pay $1.4 billion for those missions. Some Mars missions will continue, but the fate of future flights is unclear, including the much-sought flight to return rocks from the red planet.
The two scientists, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the budget, said the cuts to the Mars missions are part of a proposed reduction of about $300 million in NASA's $1.5 billion planetary science budget. More than $200 million in those cuts are in the Mars program, they said. The current Mars budget is $581.7 million.
"To me, it's totally irrational and unjustified," said Edward Weiler, who until September was NASA's associate administrator for science. "We are the only country on this planet that has the demonstrated ability to land on another planet, namely Mars. It is a national prestige issue."
...
Two years ago, President Barack Obama said his ultimate goal was to send astronauts to Mars.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
NASA: http://www.nasa.gov
NASA will abandon both and take up a political mission of further enforcing the religion of AGW. Lysenko laughs from the pit of Hell.
Forget Mars, reach for the stars.......
Obama, the science president. /sarc
Leave it for the chi coms
Notice no one holds him to anything he actually says ... it's like he's just blowing gas or something ...
Has it not occurred to anyone that the Russians and Chinese are not busy studying AGW, and using their space programs for that end?
If it were such a big problem, their scientists would be all over it.......
That telescope should have been cut years ago. It has little chance of success and it's sucking money out of everything else.
See, Obama can limit his spending... when it hurts America! Gut the military, close down NASA. It’s all going according to plan.
And the morons who call themselves Americans are gearing up to re-elect the no good, filthy, homosexual traitor.
I don’t know about that. If we weren’t spending billions of dollars on entitlements and if the government wasn’t so bureaucratized, we’d probably be able to achieve both goals.
Muslims must be helped and NASA can do that!
Or worse yet, Obama could win it again.
absolutely!
...the entire annual planetary budget is 1.4 billion?
and the USPS alone, is losing 3.3 billion a QUARTER,
because of Unions?
I thought NASA was already shut down to create thousands of jobs across the country.
True, in a tsunami of waste, $1.5 billion is a small drop, however the new space telescope is a bad idea. It’s the type of project that only could have been proposed by those who thought they were going to get a blank check, and it’s hurting the rest of the unmanned program.
Mars isn’t going to happen in our lifetime. Probably not our kids, either.
NASA will be directed to explore space for Muslime Brotherhood in Egypt.
Nassa to announce plan to land man on Earth.
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