Obama Killing What’s Left Of NASA, Shutting Down Planetary Exploration?

Date: Oct 27, 2011 | Author: Josh Tyler | Category: Sci-Fi In Real Life

Earlier this week I opined the death of NASA, and a lot of you responded by insisting that even though they were no longer well funded enough to do manned space exploration, their new mandate of exploration of the solar system’s planets by robot was as good or better than anything they could have done with manned missions. Bad news: That may be dead too.

The Washington Times reports that the Obama administration plans to end all planetary exploration by NASA and the United States of America, by the year 2013. Worse, word is that they plan to position the space astronomy program for destruction too. American won’t just stop exploring outer space, we aren’t even going to look at it anymore.

The story published in the Washington Times doesn’t cite any sources and merely says that this “leaked out” in the Obama administration’s budget, so we’ll need more details before we can call this a done deal. But, this move isn’t entirely unexpected, and seems pretty much in keeping with the Obama administration’s overall attitude towards space exploration in recent years.

If this happens, it’ll be the complete and total end of NASA and the American space program. This isn’t just scaling back or mothballing the shuttles, this is the total abandonment of exploration of any kind.

These are dark and depressing times.

UPDATE! Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science division spoke out to Space News on the subject of the Times editorial. He says, “It is not true the planetary program is being killed.” He didn’t elaborate any further and to me that’s not enough to entirely discount the Washington Times piece, at least not yet. The Obama administration’s budget was leaked, as in it hasn’t been officially released. It’s entirely possible that even if they were planning to shut him down, he might not know about it yet. More on this as it develops.

Comments

Laya

Considering your source, you might want to verify that story.
- JT
  
  I can only verify that this is what the Washington Times is reporting. If I find another source which contradicts their report, I’ll bring you guys that too.
  - Laya
    
    Thanks! I’m not disagreeing that these are dark times for national space exploration, by the way. They are very dark times. I agree that there are huge mistakes being made, such as canceling the shuttle program.
    
    Here are some links I found with a quick search, although they are a little old:
    http://mediamatters.org/research/201101310015
    
    I look forward to reading whatever you can find. Thanks again.
    - JT
      
      No problem. Stick around I’ll definitely keep posting new information as it happens. This is something we care about deeply here at GFR.
      - http://profiles.google.com/cliff1969 Cliff Hesby
        
        I have to agree with Laya – the Moonie Times are hardly the best source, particularly if its anything derogatory about anybody who isn’t a Republican. Take the story with a grain, make that a TON of salt.
      - JT
        
        Let’s not act like they’re some sort of British tabloid or something though. They do have at least SOME measure of credibility. Also you have to weigh the fact that this isn’t exactly out of line with the government’s overall recent policy towards NASA and space exploration.
Lonewolfdesigns5

huh, I guess Obama’s takeover of the planet is complete.
http://twitter.com/FloridaBeachMG FL_Beach_Media_Group

If anyone wants to kill manned and planetary exploration, then finish the most insane waste of taxpayer dollars since … well … the Shuttle program. Put James Webb Space Telescope up there. Was supposed to launch in 2005 for $3,500,000,000 with $1,000,000,000 for ground operations costs for 10 years. If you want to kill NASA’s entire spaceflight program, then put that thing up on that European rocket as planned for the costs now quoted which are more than four times the original cost. In fact, the cost of JWST is now equal to the entire construction and fielding of the entire Shuttle fleet, and it’s just not worth it. The call is coming from Senator Barbara Mikulski and others in States or Districts with skin in the game – Taxpayer dollars coming home as pork through this project. No one out here in the world believes in this project, and after tens of thousands of years of waiting, we can wait a few more years to find out the shape of some distant galaxy that will not really impact Earth’s human understanding of the Universe any more than Hubble has. In fact, there really is not much of human understanding of the Universe that JWST can provide that Hubble has not provided to humanity. In fact we have either lost interest in new Hubble pictures or the Hubble crowd at JPL have grown weary of showing us new pictures of old places that humanity could honestly really care less about in this economic crisis. In fact, finishing JWST will do very little if funded to launch than to drain the remaining limited funding from NASA and related commercial launch programs that ARE important to humans. In fact, I hope that the only planet JWST ever discovers is an Earth it never leaves.
- JoeSix
  
  It is no surprise NASA got totally gutted by Obama, that was very predictable. That money can serve a better use in more EBT cards and other social spending bribes. China could use the unemployed scientist to build new industries.

Giant Freakin Robot