The Dallas Morning News February 07, 2006
NASA budget: more space travel, less science
Texas to draw benefits from missions that will support Bush's vision
By Bruce Nichols
HOUSTON – President Bush's proposed NASA budget supports the shuttle, space station and future exploration programs, but it cuts space science and aeronautics. That's good news for Texas, but eyebrow-raising for those who question the trade-off.
The $16.8 billion for fiscal 2007 is a 3.2 percent increase over last year's budget, according to NASA officials, but only 1 percent if $350 million in emergency money for Hurricane Katrina repairs is counted.
Officials said the plan will support 16 shuttle flights to complete the International Space Station and another to repair the Hubble Space telescope before the shuttle is retired in late 2010. The shuttle and station programs are based at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said the budget advances Mr. Bush's long-term vision for space exploration – a manned return to the moon by 2020 and later missions to Mars – announced in 2004. Johnson Space Center is also helping to lead that program. Mr. Griffin deplored cuts to aeronautics and space science but said they were necessary to balance the books.
"There's not enough money to do everything that NASA wants to do," Mr. Griffin. "There's enough to support the president's vision."
Last year, Mr. Griffin disclosed a projected five-year shortfall of $3 billion to $5 billion in funding for the shuttle. But he said Monday that the $2 billion in cuts to space science and $1.5 billion in reduced costs in the long-term exploration program will help close the gap.
Although space science is being cut, officials said that program has enjoyed relatively generous budgets over the last decade. The savings in exploration costs will come from using parts of the shuttle in developing the new vehicles, Mr. Griffin said.
The budget plan, which is both ambitious and tight, depends on the success of the next shuttle flight, which is scheduled for May but widely expected to take place in July. The final decision whether to send a shuttle to repair the Hubble telescope also awaits the success of that flight.
Meanwhile, Texas members of Congress welcomed the favorable budget numbers for Texas.
"Great news for JSC, shuttle program," headlined a news release from the office of Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land.
"I am pleased," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said in another release.
"Texas did pretty well," agreed longtime space program analyst John Pike of Virginia-based GlobalSecurity.org.
But the chair of the House Science Committee, which oversees NASA, questioned the tilt away from space science. "I am greatly concerned," said Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y. "We have to be sure that we are not demonstrating that science is a 'crown jewel' of NASA by seeing how much we can get for it at the pawnshop."
Long term, NASA's funding future is clouded by the legal tangle ensnaring Mr. DeLay, the former House majority leader and a strong space program supporter, Mr. Pike said. "The question is whether they're going to have somebody high and mighty helping out or whether they're gonna be nickeled and dimed," he said.
Skeptics also noted that the White House has already scaled back from the original five-year spending plan. In fiscal 2005, the White House proposed spending $500 million more than it did in fiscal 2006 and $1 billion more than it is proposing in fiscal 2007.
"One question is how sustainable this will be," one congressional source said.
Also unclear was where NASA will get the rest of the $760 million the agency said it needed for repairs to facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina, including the key shuttle tank-building plant in New Orleans. There is some speculation that it might be included in another hurricane-relief appropriation.
© Copyright 2006, The Dallas Morning News Co.
