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Barack Obama reverses on NASA funding cuts |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
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 Speaking recently at Titusville, Florida (twenty five miles northwest of Cape Canaveral and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center), Senator Barack Obama reversed his position on NASA funding from a statement made in Denver in March of this year, when he said he would cut the space agency’s budget to finance educational reform. Now in the backyard of NASA’s most prominent facility, the Illinois senator and presumptive Democratic nominee is apparently in full support of correcting NASA’s financing woes.
Appearing with Florida Senator Bill Nelson and former Senator John Glenn of Ohio (both Democrats), Obama said, “Under my watch, NASA will inspire the world once again and is going to help grow the economy right here in Brevard Country.” He made no mention of his earlier remarks and as of yet unrevised budget plan, which cuts $5 billion from NASA’s current $17 billion annual budget and transfers those funds to the Department of Education (which currently has a budget of $65 billion, in a $3 trillion total federal budget).
Obama offered no specifics on his goal for the US space program. “Here’s what I’m committing to: Continue Constellation. We’re going to close the gap,” he said, with reference to the predicted five-year gap between the retirement of the space shuttle fleet and full operational capacity for the replacement Ares I and Orion CEV system. Obama also said that “we may have additional shuttle flights,” a statement that clashes with NASA’s own repeated proclamations that continuing to fly the space shuttle past 2010 not only would severely impact the agency’s budget.
NASA administrators have also pointed out that a many of the contractors that supply spare parts for the space shuttle fleet have already started to shut down their production lines and transition to producing parts for the Constellation Program spacecraft. The decision was made in early 2006 to retire the space shuttle fleet following the competition of the International Space Station. After the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, it was deemed too dangerous and expensive to keep flying the three remaining and aged shuttles beyond the needs of ISS construction.
Obama did not say whether or not he would make changes to President George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration, which envisions returning man to the moon by 2020 and following on from there with a daring manned mission to Mars. The senator also would not commit to a $2-3 billion increase to NASA’s budget proposed by both Nelson and Glenn. The budget increase would be meant to keep the space shuttle fleet flying in a limited capacity, thus preserving some of the 4000 jobs that are expected to be lost at the Kennedy Space Center when the shuttles are retired.
“I don’t want to give clear figures yet,” Obama said. “I want to have a thorough evaluation of a combination of manned and unmanned missions, what kind of exploration would be most appropriate, and I want the budget to follow the plan. I’d want to see the proposal first.”
Obama will be officially nominated as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee at the party convention in Denver, Colorado, on August 28th. His opponent for the White House, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, will officially take the GOP nomination in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on September 4th. The general election to vote one of the two into the White House will be held two months later on November 4, 2008, with the winner taking office on January 20, 2009.
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