Bush's 'Vision' For Space Clouded

Questions, Doubts Mount in Congress

Saturday, May 1, 2004; Page A01

President Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration" made headlines when it was announced 31/2 months ago, but Congress has refused to even consider funding the initiative until NASA comes up with more concrete proposals to flesh it out.

The impasse has brought to a standstill NASA's plans to begin work on the new strategy, even as long-standing programs ranging from the grounded space shuttles to Earth science and aeronautics remain mired in uncertainty.

Space advocates in both the Senate and the House have already rebuffed NASA's attempts to reallocate money in the current year to jump-start parts of the plan and have warned the agency that its 2005 budget proposal will not pass at its $16.2 billion price tag -- and maybe not at any price -- in a Congress trying to cope with record budget deficits and protracted war.

The pessimism shrouding the proposal is unusual for Capitol Hill in that it is both bipartisan and unequivocal. "I cannot commit this Congress or future Congresses to support an undefined program," Rep. James T. Walsh (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, said at a hearing last month.

"There's a lot of consternation about this process," added Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), the ranking minority member. "I think we would like a plan, and that's not apparent here at all."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57790-2004Apr30.html

Announce a broad, sweeping program, establish a bureaucracy for it and let the next Dem in office figure out a way to pay for it making everyone happy?

No offense, but I don't think there will be another Clinton in office anytime soon.

First let me say that I worked for NASA for 11 years, basically
from Challenger to near Columbia. Kalpana Chawla was a co-worker
of mine before she went to the Astronaut corp.

In general, I'm for manned space missions. In theory, I'm for
a complete redesign of the Shuttle... the Space Shuttle was
really a nice prototype, but should have been replaced in
the late eighties.

But, from what I hear, the new NASA manned mission programs (first
back to the moon, then to mars) are nothing more than a bald faced
attempt to halt all other NASA missions. In particular, the ongoing
Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE). That mission is the primary method
for many research scientists to gather raw information on global
climate change. The EOS (Earth Observation System) and it's
constituent parts such as the EOSDIS (EOS Distributed Information
System) are the primary remote sensing platforms and data
distribution systems that allow climate researchers around the
world to understand climate change. These will be defunded and no
NEW climate change data will be available after this year ( starting
October 1 ).

Thank you. That was my understanding as well.

The loss of MTPE has the ESA scrambling for a way to make up the slack. I also noticed that they have partnered with China to launch an alternative to the US controlled GPS system.

More power to them.

This administration gets away with so much because a story only gets one news cycle, if that.

A couple of years ago, this bunch of clowns ordered ALL water table records the the state libraries and archives destroyed. This was to prevent "terrorists" from using them. The real reason is the only thing they have been consistanly used for during the last thirty years, sniffing out polluters. When you find pesticides in your well, these used to help you find out who was to blame.

I doubt an incoming administration will have time to restore water table records or MTPE with Iraq and teh Republican attack machine running at full tilt.

because there's simply no money to pay for it . . . what we're doing NOW is already a HALF TRILLION short, and that's not counting the billions being poured into the Iraq fiasco . . . Congress may be a bunch of corrupt idiots, but the know that their constituents won't react well to a major new initiative that will drive the deficit even higher . . . and constituents are voters . . .