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NASA Budget Cuts Narrows Horizons
Washington - August 1, 1999 - "It is ironic that, in order to stay beneath the spending caps, Congress is crippling precisely those NASA programs that provide smaller, cheaper and faster missions," Mars Society president Robert Zubrin said today in response to the $900 million cut in NASA's FY2000 budget approved by the House Appropriations Committee Friday. A previous version of the budget bill approved by the VA, HUD and Independent Agencies subcommittee had slashed $1.3 billion from NASA's budget, including $849 million from science and aeronautics programs alone. The full committee restored $400 million to space science by killing the AmeriCorps program. While the amended bill restores full funding to NASA's popular Mars exploration program, it cuts $60 million each from the Explorer and Discovery programs. In the Explorer program, astrophysics mission concepts compete for funding on the basis of maximum science return for dollar. Planetary mission concepts do likewise in the Discovery program. The committee killed outright CONTOUR, a Discovery program mission slated to investigate the nuclei of three comets. The overall cut in Discovery funding will likely sink Deep Impact, which would have studied the interior of comet P/Tempel 1, and MESSENGER, an orbiter which would have studied the planet Mercury. "Even though the Appropriations committee restored funding for Mars exploration, if the budget were approved in its current form, it would still lead to a significant retreat from solar system exploration," Mars Society Board member Richard Wagner said. "Rather than crippling the Discovery program, Congress ought to be expanding it," Zubrin noted. "The current Discovery program does not allow mission concepts for Mars exploration to compete for funding. Congress should create a similar program for Mars exploration to ensure that the Mars program remains creative and effective." In the words of Mars Society Steering Committee member and past Mars Exploration Program manager Donna Shirley, "We are an exploring species and space is truly the last frontier. Decimating the already tiny and extremely cost effective U.S. investment in knowledge of our planet and its environs is truly shortsighted." Gregory Benford, UC Irvine Physics Professor and fellow Steering Committee member added, "These cuts deprive the next generation of horizons, of dreams and realities alike. We should be expanding human perspectives, not slicing them away."
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