From The Washington Post:
Obama Suggests $2 Billion In New Funding for NASA
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 19, 2008; Page A04
Sen. Barack Obama has detailed a comprehensive space plan that includes $2 billion in new funding to reinvigorate NASA and a promise to make space exploration and science a significantly higher priority if he is elected president.
Obama's campaign said the additional NASA funds would be paid for by rolling back congressional earmarks to what they were in 1994, and by using the newly formed advisory council to potentially re-allocate space funding.
Among the more expensive proposals is Obama's plan to flying an additional shuttle mission to bring a $1.5 billion particle detector to the station. NASA dropped plans to ferry up the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer after the Columbia disaster, even though the instrument is one of the most expensive ever built and was funded by a group of international governments and universities.
Under current NASA plans, the last shuttle mission will fly in summer of 2010, and the three-spacecraft fleet will be retired after that. The aging shuttles are expensive to maintain and operate, and under current budgets NASA will not have funds to build the new Constellation spacecraft unless the shuttle is grounded.
Full article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/18/AR2008081802171_2.html
Last edited: