Bush Aides: No Budget Boost for NASA Planned

[kskiska]

Lack of Money Cited as White House Faces Questions About Future of Space Program

A stinging report on the demise of the space shuttle Columbia is increasing congressional pressure on President Bush to resolve long-postponed questions about his plans for space, but aides said yesterday that he plans no immediate upgrade of NASA's budget or mission as the space agency struggles to restart the shuttle program.

Administration officials disclosed in an interview that the White House will begin work next week on a blueprint for interplanetary human flight over the next 20 or 30 years, with plans calling for Bush to issue an ambitious new national vision for space travel by early next year.

The officials said they will wrestle with the military's role in space, as well as with whether to emphasize manned or robotic missions, whether to build a base in space, what vehicle should replace the shuttle and what planets should be visited.

"The question is: What do we say to the president about why we should continue humans in space and in what vehicles and to what ends?" a senior administration official said.

(snip)

"You can't fight a war on terrorism and stimulate the economy and put billions and billions of new dollars into the space program," an official said, adding that the end of the Cold War had made mastery of space a less pressing priority.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61757-2003Aug28.html

[starroute]

1. I get it -- ambitious new vision but decreased funding

Sort of "leave no spaceship behind."

[legin]

2. Which is why

the report into the crash picked out 'NASA culture' as the cause of the crash, because it is the cheapest thing to fix, and it is also a non-falsifyable hypothesis too, one day the culture can be percieved to be wrong and another day it can arbitarily determined to be all right again.

Basically it was a 'everybody needs to just damn well pull their socks up' report.