As a zealous nerd, I love space news.  As a RACIST!!eleventy!, I hate Obama.  Every now and then, these two things collide into one gooey, sticky mass of fail.

With less than a year remaining to spend $1 billion in stimulus money that the U.S. Congress gave NASA in February as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the space agency has spent roughly $570 million, with nearly half of those dollars going toward its embattled Constellation program.

So far, some $270 million in ARRA funding has gone to Constellation, a 5-year-old effort to build new spacecraft and rockets optimized for sending astronauts to the Moon. The administration of President Barack Obama is reconsidering those plans and looking at scenarios that would entail the cancellation of projects currently receiving stimulus funds, including the Ares I rocket.

The administration's argument is that we won't be able to have our own working shuttle until 2015 at the earliest, with a panel of his choice suggesting that even that target is impossible without another 3 billion in funding.  However, we've poured billions of dollars into the new program, and all ready essentially scrapped the shuttle system (it's due to end in 2010).  Hell, we're all ready planning on relying on Russia to get us into space for the next handful of years, while looking into some pretty cool private sector opportunities - which I, of course, totally think is the way to go.

The shuttle program has its flaws, which is why we're scrapping it.  However, when we've all ready poured billions of dollars into our new programs, like Ares I, and the experts suggest that it would only take 3 billion dollars to get NASA back on track (which, in Obama math, is, like, a shiny quarter), why should we start taking funds from NASA now?  Besides, with such amazing opportunities for the greentards to capitalize on as solar-arrays in space, you'd think we'd be jumping at the chance!

Posted by: Ember at 01:16 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
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