Today's NASA Budget: 'Irrational' Cuts to Planetary Science Mean Mars Missions Get the Axe

Whew! Thank goodness we have a president who respects science in office instead of a neanderthal republican...

It is going to take openly acknowledged contact via radio signal (globally) for the US to put real money and effort back into any space program worth getting excited about.

From what I understand the James Webb is getting so expensive BECAUSE they cut so many other programs so they tried to add those onto the James Webb telescope platform. In reality, they should be comparing the budgets of those combined projects, is it still twice over budget then?

Obama Fail.
Anyway, hes out next election.

Hey Max, you know what? Go piss up a rope.

Max= epic fail. Obama by a landslide. No one wants the radical bible thumping science hating crap the right wingers are selling.and just remember,i will undo your vote with mine.

hmm 15 trillion dollars in national debt, unfunded obligations larger then the entire GDP of two planet earths. Yes I agree, cutting spending is completely 'irrational". Lets continue to spend money we dont have!

It is a shame that we are cutting back so far. We spend less then 1% of our budget on space exportation and still it is too much. We already spend money on ourselves and get little to nowhere, so the money we save will change nothing. A bit more of this and the US will lose it's superpower status.

@lostausername so you're saying that the people that want to have permanent settlers on the moon, want to make the moon the 51st state, and the people that INVENTED THE LIGHTBULB, are bible thumping science haters?

Let me tell you who's to blame here;

. . . "the James Webb Space Telescope, which is now running more than twice over budget. The $3.5 billion telescope turned $8 billion telescope" . . .

I have said this for years. NASA is a reckless bottomless money pit for contractors and local interests. Since the early eighties NASA has not been able to complete a project ON BUDGET AND ON TIME. Year after year for the past 4 decades, contractors have gamed the system by proposing projects that always . . .AND I MEAN A L W A Y S . . . turn out to be more than twice over budget, always behind schedule and many times flawed. Contractors have pocketed BILLIONS in over-budgets on the backs of us . . . the American taxpayers. I will say this once again;

NASA's role as a space agency needs to change. There is no way that we can sustain a NASA program the likes of the early 70's and 80's. The political will nor the money is there any longer. As I see it, NASA is like a drug addicted celebrity - a "has been" that is just prolonging the inevitable, a slow but sure death.

All of you Obamatrons are entirely irrational douchers. Obama has had casualty rates so high that more servicemen and women have been killed since his inauguration than in the previous 8 years. Also, our national debt has increased about 2 trillion a year. That is $6,000 per man, woman, and child in the US. Oh,and that doesn't cover the unfunded liabilities of social security and medicare. And in case you were wondering, the national debt per family of 4 is over $200,000.

What's that you say? Social security is funded via the FICA tax and the surplus from all the decades gone by was safely squirreled away in a trust fund? Well, NEWSFLASH, that trust fund is nothing but a stack of gov't bonds (taxpayer IOU's, the money has already been spent) and the surplus is scheduled to end no later than 2018 unless we jack up FICA tax rates. Oh and if FICA isn't raised, then the burden is shifted to either the income tax or the national debt.

Now don't think that I am taking it lightly on all of Obama's predecessors, but he is the one in charge at current and HE is the driving force behind all of the current BS. There is no point bringing up the past mistakes when we should be focused on fixing our current situation and our children's future. Of course, I personally believe that only Ron Paul could actually do anything to put a dent in our current situation before we go off a cliff and wind up in a debt crisis that will make Greece look like a nice day at the beach.

It's amazing how even intelligent people, deeply interested in science, are ready to defend a guy who's cutting already meager science budgets left and right, yet spending trillions to bail out financial institutions that produce zero innovation. Of course Republicans, including Ron Paul, will cut these budgets even further, and probably continue the same pro-Wall Street policies. And even if there are no other alternatives popular enough to rally around... it's a real shame that so many intelligent people are falling victim to this dumb team mentality.

How can this be so expensive. It looks like a satellite dish mounted on a shower curtain.

I suggest the following write-in candidates for president:

Elon Musk

Richard Brandson

Robert Bigelow

So what if some are not born in the U.S…it is still a question if Obama was.

-TC- Its a real shame we cant separate politics from science.

Its about time we cut the Mars budget...30 years of "hey...we found orange rocks" is enough....We should have had a moon base with all that money. We could have had a Moon base with a mining operation and a road going all the way around the Moon by now. How cool would it be to go zipping around the Moon. Of all the money we have put into the Mars program..we dont know much more then we did 20 years ago.. at least not any thing that helps us. We prove erosion by water, we prove ice at the caps...

We spent hundreds of billions of dollars for what....what did we get?

I'm not sure which is more painful. Your bellyaching over money well spent or your webcam photo?

I would be ok with these cuts if significant amounts of other govt budgets were cut as well. Problem is, if 1 govt worker loses their cooshy job and cries foul then all the cuts will end due to media backlash. The media is the worst thing that ever happened to the govt. Now you have to be a celebrity to govern, not be logical and educated.

Aren't lobbyists and special interest groups still the biggest problem to real effectual change? The rich want to maintain their richness... at the expense of everyone and everything else.

What do the People of the United States really want? Or, what are they willing to live with? EVERYONE wants to be safe and secure(monetarily and in their property)... We have the ability to spread out our employment infrastructure and live in areas we once couldn't due to economic factors... cities run up the cost of real estate in such a way that it's a struggle to afford a home anymore...

I think people need to demand MORE from the government in way of protections, and accept LESS in respect to what they own...

Keeping up with the Jones' is utterly devastating to nearly every aspect of living.

We need more small businesses, and we also need to support those who own them, instead of handing money to Wal-mart. Each of us have the ability to support local businesses and domestically produced products, and the state we're in now shows that the majority support lowest cost products, and people.... those don't come from the United States because people demand living wages.

The problem hasn't been caused by the Office of the President(and he/she can't fix it)... it's been caused by each and every last one of us and how we spend money.

Man up to our responsibilities to each other and the environment, start making the changes in our own lives to improve our lives... the only way to do that is from the bottom up.

Quit bitching and start doing more.

I'm not a Obama fan at all.....
But he has actually helped our space program. Opening up space to private industry will drive down the price of launching things into space.
This will help universities and other private entities to get into space research as well as helping NASA achieve its goals at a cheaper price.
Trimming the NASA budget is needed now. But once the economy is going again future presidents will be able to reevaluate the situation.

Here's an idea, take the $1.5B from those repressive bastards in Egypt and spend it on mars and lunar missions using the dragon capsule.

OH! You wanna find a few billion around the U.S. that's been scammed fer years, why not put a couple of oil refineries' turnarounds up for qualified bids? Just because Dick Cheney gets ALL refinery contracts (never a bid) now certainly does NOT mean that every single wrench turner or welder that he hires from a union shop can't be hired by someone else far cheaper. Well, it WOULDN'T except for the quiet, hush hush illegal monopoly. We'd have A LOT more money than people think if we actually CUT SOME CORRUPTION FOR ONCE.

Yeah, lets not put carpetbaggers that bilk the U.S. for millions or billions per year in jail, let's jail the guy that shoplifted the can of chili. Yeah, Archer Daniels or Dick Cheney have their uses; but they aren't supposed to be receiving what they do receive, and every citizen in this nation knows it's BS to create ethanol when it increases the harm of gas EIGHTY TIMES OVER. And just think, those two particular TRILLION DOLLAR SCAMS are just like ALL THE REST; right out there in everyone's face as they drive on by.