(click to enlarge, sourced from Wikipedia)TW: The above shows NASA's budget for the past 40+ yrs thru 2006. As the orange line shows spending in real terms plunged as the Apollo program wound down and has basically flat-lined since. Similar graphs for say defense or social spending would show massive real increases. Space spending is one program where spending in absolute real terms has not budged even as our economy has grown greatly over the past 40 years.
The latest "expert" report came out this week on the future of the U.S. manned space program. It was like many of the others, the conclusions could be summarized as:
1) there are many cool things we could do
2) if only we had the money and technology
3) but since we do not lets talk about cool options and oh btw we need to push back the time lines we mentioned last time (so who knows when we will actually have an operational manned space vehicle once the Shuttle stops flying next year)
4) finally yes it would be good idea to keep funding the International Space Station since it is not even finished after all these years but is currently scheduled to tumble into the atmosphere in 2015
See link for ABC's summary (these reports barely receive any coverage anymore even though they are meant to outline our space program's future)
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/AheadoftheCurve/space-program-major-revision-augustine-commission/story?id=8892321
No comments:
Post a Comment