If Mars and cosmology both count as 'out there' then I'd expect the currently funded missions to be safe - good for me on Planck and Herschel. However, I'd expect that funding for future missions would be much more tightly focussed on the Mars landings. There wasn't much space astronomy in the Apollo era, as I recall. This is bad for the future of astronomy in the UWS since its the large NASA missions that keep a lot of it funded.
Using Mars as an excuse to cancel Earth Observation is, frankly, criminal, but is entirely in keeping with the Bush mob's attitude towards the environment. Indeed, this may be the reason behind the whole Mars hoopla (excepting, of course, the electoral boost he hopes it will bring). I could quite easily see NASA rejiggng their budgets to eliminate Earth Observation missions and transfer this money into Mars, and then Congress balks at the cost of the Mars programme and cancels the lot. Space astronomy might continue in this scheme, but the slimmer NASA that would result would have no environmental programme, and precious little else apart from the 'out there' stuff that wasn't Mars.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-01-10 09:23 pm (UTC)Using Mars as an excuse to cancel Earth Observation is, frankly, criminal, but is entirely in keeping with the Bush mob's attitude towards the environment. Indeed, this may be the reason behind the whole Mars hoopla (excepting, of course, the electoral boost he hopes it will bring). I could quite easily see NASA rejiggng their budgets to eliminate Earth Observation missions and transfer this money into Mars, and then Congress balks at the cost of the Mars programme and cancels the lot. Space astronomy might continue in this scheme, but the slimmer NASA that would result would have no environmental programme, and precious little else apart from the 'out there' stuff that wasn't Mars.