Posted on 10/27/2011 8:28:43 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Word has leaked out that in its new budget, the Obama administration intends to terminate NASA’s planetary exploration program. The Mars Science Lab Curiosity, being readied on the pad, will be launched, as will the nearly completed small MAVEN orbiter scheduled for 2013, but that will be it. No further missions to anywhere are planned.
After 2013, America’s amazing career of planetary exploration, which ran from the Mariner probes in the 1960s through the great Pioneer, Viking, Voyager, Pathfinder, MarsGlobalSurveyor, MarsOdyssey, Spirit, Opportunity, MarsReconnaissanceOrbiter, Galileo and Cassini missions, will simply end.
Furthermore, the plan from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) also leaves the space astronomy program adrift and headed for destruction. The now-orbiting Kepler Telescope will be turned off in midmission, stopping it before it can complete its goal of finding other Earths. Even worse, the magnificent Webb Telescope, the agency’s flagship, which promises fundamental breakthroughs in our understanding of the laws of the universe, is not sufficiently funded to allow successful completion. This guarantees further costly delays, with the ensuing budgetary overruns leading inevitably to eventual cancellation.
The administration’s decision to derail planetary exploration and space astronomy is shocking and portends the destruction of the entire American space program. As an agency, NASA is a mixed bag. It includes a large bureaucracy and wasteful, pork-driven spending. But it also includes departments that are technically superb and really deliver the goods. First and foremost among NASA’s most productive divisions are the planetary exploration and space astronomy programs. Kill those, and what is left will be indefensible.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
anything that smacks of american exceptionalism is subject to attack by comrade obama.
So he’s going to terminate their legitimate mission.
Can’t have no mo whiteys on the moon.
NASA’s leadership signed up for the muslim outreach, global warming agenda rather than stick with space exploration. Did that save them?
Nope. Marxists are ruthless in their drive to control everything.
Love NASA,,, hate obama. But nasa is a global warming and muslim advocacy agency now. The resemble old nasa in name only. Let obama do what he wants,,,, in a little over 14 months,,, proper rebuilding can begin.
Don’t you people know all that tax money would be better spent on socialist projects right here on Planet Earth? I guess you haven’t been listening to our would-be rulers over the past half-century.
His contempt for America has no limits.
He is the political verison of a hijacked airliner, heading straight for our strengths in order to topple us.
It’s all about priorities. Tons of spending on fetal stem cell research so Michael Fox might get a few more years of less shaking. Money to Planned Parenthood for abortions. Funding for ObamaCare death panels and studies to show we are over testing for prostate and breast cancers, etc.
There just isn’t enough cash to expand human knowledge of our universe, the science behind God’s wonders or getting humankind off a bit of rock called Earth. Meanwhile, Obama has AF one gassed up to go joke with Jay Leno.
Well, so much for the Occupy Mars movement.
But, it's clear that this isn't about money. I'm sure Obama is glad to have a few more billion to piss away on failed "social programs", but in the end, Obama wants to make sure that never again will America do anything that will capture the imagination of the world and display any sign of technological prowess, much less superiority over the rest of the world. It doesn't fit his ideology that America is an exceptional nation. Therefore, will will do nothing that would indicate that we are.
Socialism always eats away at public spending until there is nothing left but welfare transfer payments and political slush funds. We are well down that road now but the left has no answer but to do more of it faster.
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this was also my first thought but i know Zubrin and he is not chary in his use of hyperbole. word leaked out is not a dependable source of data.
Word has leaked out that in its new budget, the Obama administration intends to terminate NASA’s planetary exploration program
The first line tells you this is a lie.....the Obama Administration having a budget?? Has to be BS
We need more Martian voters!
Lemme guess. This is considered by B.O. to be a prime budget bargaining chip to play against house republicans.
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