Bush's space plan stalls | Orlando Sentinal

[Ediacara]

Bush's space plan stalls
Unanswered questions keep lawmakers from endorsing proposal

By Gwyneth K. Shaw | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted March 7, 2004

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's ambitious plan to launch a new era of space exploration is adrift on Capitol Hill.

With critical questions about the initiative still unanswered, some key lawmakers have publicly declared themselves undecided about the proposal -- or are not talking about it at all. And as what promises to be one of the toughest budget battles in years begins to take shape, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's request for more money may not survive.

Since Bush's Jan. 14 announcement of a plan to phase out the space shuttle and international space station programs and eventually send humans to the moon, Mars and beyond, NASA has laid out its five-year spending plan, opened an Office of Exploration Systems and begun reorganizing.

What neither the agency nor the White House has done, according to lawmakers and congressional staff, is spend a lot of time currying the kind of favor that will be needed to advance the initiative as well as the budget increases it entails.

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[grasswire]

1. well...

...they'd better not let the Hubbell go. What a stupid, venal man Bush is.

[Dudley_DUright]

2. This is the problem with Bush

He destroys everything he touches. The Hubble is the best thing that happened to astronomy since Galileo used a telescope to look at the night sky. There is $200 million worth of new instrumentation that would completely upgrade the abilities of the telescope that are siting in a warehouse. All that would be wasted just because Bush wanted a JFK moment. :eyes: