Bush's Vision for Space Means Big Cuts Elsewhere at NASA -WP

[Rose Siding]

President Bush's ambitious strategy for space exploration is forcing wrenching changes at NASA, putting thousands of jobs at risk, threatening closure of facilities across the country and sharply altering the way the agency does business.

Last week, NASA Associate Administrator James L. Jennings warned that the agency could lose as many as 2,680 jobs -- 15.3 percent of its 17,475-member full-time workforce -- in the next 18 months. "You have to streamline the organization and size it to the mission you're carrying out," he said. "It's essential to carry out the exploration mission."

The early target is NASA's aeronautics division, which studies such things as airport noise, pilot fatigue and experimental aircraft design. Aeronautics experts from NASA or its precursors have developed innovations including the X-15 "rocket plane" of the 1950s and 1960s, de-icing systems, and the rounded-bottom "supercritical wing" used today by virtually every commercial jetliner to increase speed, improve range and save fuel.

Under the reorganization, the three NASA centers with focuses on aeronautics -- including Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. -- could lose at least 1,800 jobs. At least 14 facilities at the same centers could close, among them 10 wind tunnels, a joint U.S.-Japan artificial-gravity project for the international space station and the lab that developed the X-43 "scramjet" that reached 7,000 mph to set the aircraft speed record last year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38103-2005Mar15.html

Even in his "visions" Americans lose jobs.

[derby378]

1. Don't you understand? We got little brown people to nuke!

King George commands us! That's far more important than lobbing tin cans up in the sky.

[TahitiNut]

2. Chimperor Codpiece doesn't know the difference between a 'vision' ...

... and a cokehead's hallucination. I've known blind people with more vision in their cane.