NASA Stuck in Limbo as New Congress Takes Over

[johnnie]

"With a new Congress now in charge, NASA is stuck in a political limbo, waiting for the funding needed to carry out a new objective approved by the last Congress.

Lawmakers in October passed – and President Obama signed – a NASA authorization bill that gave America's space agency the go-ahead to abandon its previous moon-oriented human spaceflight program and take aim at new targets: visiting an asteroid and Mars. That bill called for NASA to receive $19 billion in 2011 – a boost from the 2010 NASA budget of $18.3 billion.

But that promised funding was not appropriated, since the outgoing lawmakers, along with the president, could not agree on a federal budget. Instead they enacted a continuing resolution – a kind of placeholder law until a full budget can be agreed upon – that froze the federal government, including NASA, at 2010 spending levels through March 4."

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"Based on claims by new House Speaker John Boehner (R–Ohio), who said his party will aim to cut non-military discretionary spending back to 2008 levels, the space agency could be in for some serious budget cutbacks."

More:
http://www.space.com/news/nasa-budget-new-congress-limbo-110107.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo#comments



Even though I work in the aeronautics part of NASA this will still affect my future there.

Personally I think the whole moon mission thing was another of george's stupid proposals that he underfunded almost immediately. I know many here aren't big fans of NASA, but there is a lot more going on there than space exploration. It will be interesting to see what goes on there as March approaches.