|
[an error occurred while processing this directive][an error occurred while processing this directive][an error occurred while processing this directive] |
  
|
|
FUNDING Bush's spending package includes more money for NASA
By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff, 2/4/2003
The $2.23 trillion federal budget proposed yesterday by President Bush would boost spending by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to $15.47 billion for the 2004 fiscal year, up from an even $15 billion in the current year. Spending on the shuttle program itself would increase to $3.97 billion from a fiscal 2003 request of $3.2 billion. While investigators continue to seek a cause for this weekend's crash, which killed all seven astronauts on board, the administration sought to buffer itself from some agency critics who have warned that not enough money was being invested in the shuttle program. ''The president is committed to moving forward in space. He has made that plain. His budget makes that plain,'' White House budget director Mitchell Daniels told reporters. ''If there is a lesson in the last couple of days, I suppose it is another sad example that more money alone can't always avoid very sad setbacks.''
During an accident update with reporters, two top NASA officials also downplayed any budgetary link to the Columbia crash. Bill Readdy, a former astronaut who now serves as associate administrator of the office of space flight, noted that Bush signed a budget amendment in November that further increased spending for NASA. Congress has yet to act on the request, but ''what that did was adjust the NASA budget to include more money for upgrading the space shuttle, with the recognition that it would have to continue flying for longer as part of our integrated space transportation plan.'' Michael Kostelnik, head of the agency's space shuttle and International Space Station program, added: ''I am quite comfortable with the posture of our vehicles, despite what you may be reading about or hearing about from people in the press.'' Government budget data show that Congress bounced around NASA's requested shuttle funding in recent years. For example, in the 2000 fiscal year, the Clinton administration requested $2.987 billion for shuttle operations, yet Congress approved $3.01 billion. In the 2001 budget, however, the space agency requested $3.165 billion for shuttle operations, while Congress approved only $3.118 billion. In the 2002 fiscal year, the Bush administration requested $3.283 billion for the shuttle, while Congress approved $3.278 billion, according to figures compiled yesterday by the House Committee on Appropriations. As recently as the 2000 fiscal year, NASA's overall budget was $13.6 billion, nearly $2 billion less than the current spending proposal. In the new budget outline, the Bush administration is making space science, including planetary missions, the fastest-growing part of NASA's spending. That segment would rise to $4 billion, or nearly one-quarter of the agency's budget, in fiscal 2004, up from one-fifth of expenditures in 2002. NASA would also initiate Project Prometheus to develop nuclear propulsion for high-peed space travel, to be used first to explore some of Jupiter's 12 moons. Of those moons -- Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto -- scientists speculate that Europa may have a liquid water ocean, making it a target for the search for life beyond Earth. While the budget includes cuts for earth science research, it would encourage development of optical communication systems, which can carry more data than current radio waves. Both the November budget adjustment and the fiscal 2004 spending proposal include the Shuttle Life Extension Program. Last fall the president decided to keep the nation's then-four shuttle fleet flying as late as 2020, eight years longer than planned, and boost funding for a proposed companion craft known as the orbital space plane. It is designed to ferry crews to the International Space Station more safely and serve as a lifeboat. The ferry would get an $882 million boost, an increase of more than 50 percent, through fiscal 2007. The Bush administration also wants an ''aggressive'' effort to complete a preliminary design of the orbital space plane by 2005, according to the latest NASA budget. The shuttles would get an extra $662 million from 2003 to 2007 to pay for safety improvements in the fleet, now reduced to Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour. ''Shuttle operations are well managed, but investments to improve the shuttle suffer from inadequate planning and poor cost management,'' the NASA budget proposal says. Daniels said it was too early to say what spending changes the president would recommend after the Columbia tragedy. NASA has yet to decide if it will request money for a replacement shuttle, as it did after the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Material from wire services was used in this story. Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.
This story ran on page A12 of the Boston Globe on 2/4/2003.
|
|
|
|
|
|
© Copyright 2003 New York Times Company |
|||||||
ASHINGTON -- In the budget it prepared before the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated Saturday, the Bush administration proposes a 3.1 percent increase in overall funding for NASA in the coming fiscal year, and a 4.7 increase in spending for the space agency's shuttle program.
