(*UPDATES) Wires, Wash Post, more: NASA budget to go up, dollars for NASA astronauts not
Last week’s leaks and investigative reporting on plans in the White House to pull the plug on Moon landings and new spaceships (previous post) got their vindication today – along with news that NASA’s science budget is to go up significantly while the space shuttle retires with no replacement in sight. Immediate plans to abandon the Int’l Space Station are off. As little attention as the public has paid to that extravagently impressive (if not clearly sensible) engineering masterpiece, one suspects that if NASA were to ditch it as once planned into the Pacific in five years it would be a $100 billion political and public relations fiasco. Think bringing in Skylab was a headache…???
The news is that the proposed budget – underline proposed – calls for a $276 million bump up to $19 billion for NASA in 2011. It has no mention of Moon landings and ditches the Constellation Program to construct a new family of NASA-owned boosters and human-rated capsules for getting people and their cargo to orbit and beyond. It does continue research toward fundamental improvements in the way astronauts travel and how far they go – such as to asteroids or other points distant from Earth – and that are not just modernized versions of Apollo-era concepts. But better and more robots and such are on its nearer term agenda.
I’ll update this post tomorrow as more news agencies flesh out today’s breaking news. Plus, we’ll look for pieces analyzing impacts generally on US scientific research and development (NSF would go up 8 percent, DOE’s office of science by 4.6 percent). I’ll put up another post on that this morning if there is enough to go on. Here are some examples of NASA budget stories already in:
- Washington Post – Joel Achenbach: Obama 2011 budget request: NASA ; Just a shorty followed on line by a link to the OMB-budget request chapter on NASA. This could be a preview of how subscribers will be getting news in the possibly looming new, tablet-reader paperless years ahead. A reporter provides distinct info on top. Then rather than just rewriting boilerplate, refers readers to reliable sources that have it already done.
- NYTimes – Kenneth Chang: Obama Calls for End to NASA’s Moon Program ; Instead, he writes, here come “radically new space technologies” if this wish list is granted in Congress. Chang gives this the traditional big-newspaper take – outside sources consulted, advance quotes gleaned on Sunday from the administration, a recap of the advance rumblings last week, and the precariousness of any White House budget as it first emerges. He notably gets a comparison of the imagined new NASA to its 1950s predecessor, NACA.
- *UPDATE: NYTimes – Kenneth Chang: News Analysis: Billions for NASA, With a Push to Find New Ways Into Space; By Tue morning, the print edition carried a more polished, reflective piece from much the same but significant fresh material. The lede declares the budget “omits two major details: where the agency will send its astronauts and a timetable for getting them there.”
- Atlantic Online – Derek Thompson: Why Obama is Smart to Cut the NASA Moon Plan ; A brief essay that needed a news hook. Now it has one.
- NPR – Nell Greenfieldboyce: Budget Analysis By Issue: Space Exploration;
- ABC – World News with Diane Sawyer: What Do You Think About Obama’s Decision to End NASA’s Moon Program: I dunno but this seems back assward news coverage. Before the public has enough info to decide, ask it what it thinks. Given the abysmal tone of public comment on news stories as it is ( and initial replies to this venture do seem slightly less vitriolic and may have a lower quotient of ignorance-shot-from-the hip), why do this kind of ‘poll’?
*UPDATES (Feb 2):
- NPR blog – Adam Frank: The Vacant Sky: The End Of The Manned Space Program ; Frank’s an astrophysicist. The hed on his essay (Frank’s an astrophysicist) carries a perhaps deliberately dated, ring-out-the-old tone with its traditional ref to a “manned space program.” (The gender-free “crewed” or “human” term doesn’t work quite so effortlessly.) His lede stretches back a century+, to Robert Goddard imagining ships to Mars. The upshot of the new budget, he writes: “We need to stop pretending we have a manned program for space exploration.” I like this essay for the usual reason people like such things. I agree with it. Every word. India and China may try the flag-waving gov’t model for awhile. But if there is a grand future for people out there it has to be a privately financed and profitable one. If our entrepreneurs don’t pave the path then Indian and Chinese capitalists and maybe Russian or European ones will. Governments can then collect taxes, train space cops, and impose regulations.
- Telegraph (blog) Toby Young: Obama’s cancellaton of moon landings is a case of ‘No we can’t', not ‘Yes we can’ ; A Brit leaps to his feet to defend the new Moon program because it proves US and Western superiority in what some might call the war of civilizations, freedom v. totalitarianism, and so forth. Well meant, some merit, not persuasive as a case for a $100 billion dead end.
- Time Magazine – Jeffrey Kluger: We Have No Liftoff: Obama’s Plan Grounds NASA ; This fellow probably writes for a lot of people. He can’t see a single positive, and from the reading of this, is blind to the fact – again, FACT – that for the last 25 years all the lasting space excitement from NASA has come via automated and robotic missions – excepting for shuttle crashes and perhaps the first stages of space station assembly. Without people up there with US flags on their shoulders he sees nothing NASA will do “that would get your heart to race.” You’re speaking for yourself, Mr. Kluger. We’ve got a craft headed for Pluto. That’s thumpingly exciting.
Samples from the Dept of Winners and Losers:
- St. Petersburg Times via Miami Herald- Kris Hundley, Alex Leary : Florida feels heat of NASA cutbacks / The loss of at least 7000 jobs…. : And, they add, this brings “A sense of betrayal along the Space Coast.”
- Baltimore Sun – Paul West : Md. stands to gains despite Obama budget cuts / No return to moon but NASA gains ; Yep. Florida has Kennedy, but Maryland has Goddard and the Space Telescope Science Institute, where robotic space missions rule.
- Houston Chronicle – Richard S. Dunham, Stewart M. Powell: HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT / NASA reaffirms JSC’s importance ; But local lawmakers are blasting the plan.
- Cleveland Plain Dealer – John Mangels: Obama’s new budget for NASA kills moon-return program but may still bode well for Cleveland’s Glenn Research Center ;
Grist for the Mill: Budget Request NASA summary ;
Pic. Moon over Washington, source ;
- Charlie Petit
