The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
Some science saved
Jun. 14, 2006 | 16:28 PDT | 23:28 UTC
Edit since I first posted this: some further details on the markups are at the bottom of this posting.
Some good news came out of Washington today! The Planetary Society just issued a statement: "House Subcommittee Helps Save Our Science." The gist: some (not all) of the funding cuts have been restored, including $50 million directed specifically at restoring some of the cuts to research and analysis programs. And $15 million was directed specifically for a mission to explore Europa. Read the statement for more details.
If I remember correctly from the discussions that took place at the recent Outer Planets Assessment Group meeting, $15 million is in the ballpark of the right amount of money that is thought to be necessary to perform a "Phase A" study of a future flagship Europa mission. In other words, this is exactly the step that the Outer Planets community asked for. So that's good. Thanks to all of you who have contributed your voices to the Save Our Science campaign -- Lou Friedman told me that the campaign was noticed and made a difference.
Of course, the fight is not over -- Lou noted that "80% of the cuts still remain." And while there was restoration of some funds, there were some cuts in other places to compensate. Here is some information that Lou forwarded to me unattributed -- so take it with a grain of salt. House Appropriations Subcommittee Mark of FY 2007 NASA Request
Preliminary Summary 6/14/06
NASA total: $16.709B, reduction of $83.227M from request.
Total adds: $175M
Total cuts: $258M
Adds:
Science, +$75M (50M, R&A; +$10M, TPF; +$15M Europa) Europa mission is a new start
Aeronautics, +$100M
Cuts:
Constellation Systems, -$16M
ESRT, -$135M
Advanced Business Systems/Innovative Partnerships, -$23.7M
ISS, -$33.4M
Corporate G&A, -$50M
Full Funding:
Mars
CEV, CLV
Shuttle
ISS Cargo Crew
Other programs are apparently fully funded as well; these are the programs mentioned specifically by Subcommittee staff
Other:
- no earmarks
- account structure as proposed by President
- includes funding amounts by theme in bill language
- includes transfer authority between accounts (not to exceed 5% from any account, but no account can be increased by more than 10%) That's a big bite out of Exploration Systems Research and Technology (ESRT) -- I wonder what that means. I'm far from savvy enough to understand what significance all these numbers actually have. I'll have to wait for others to comment in order to find out.
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