NASA proposed budget

President's proposed 2008 NASA budget all glorious 623 pages, in full colour PDF.

So, where to begin:
Here is the slide version for lite readin'

NASAwatch has a good summary of links, including Griffin's spin

Science opines

The bottom line is roughly as Science notes - the story is in the out year projected budgets, where there is a cumulative shortfall of ~ $2.5 billion over the next 5 years. (That is about 70 tons for those keeping count).

Science attributes these to STS and ISS cost overruns, but that is not quite accurate. The shortfall is because of the rapid development of the "Constellation" launchers and spacecraft in the Exploration division. NASA is implementing the Exploration vision without asking for or getting the actual funding needed to do so (assuming they do it on budget) - this is impossible, so something gives.
There is nothing left in aeronautics, and they are committed to "finish ISS" and run STS out until the Constellation launchers are ready, so Science gets cut.

The devil shows up in the details: Science funding is flat, through 2012, which means it is being cut each year.
Within the Directorate the Earth Science budget is flat, despite the climate observers urgently needing to be replaces;
Heliophysics is flat until a 20% spike in 2011 - presumably a mission ramp up.
Planetary Science is up, in 2009, this is because they're ramping up a Discovery class mission then and a New Frontier (Explorer class) mission.

So, if you been doing your 'rithmetic, you will realise this means Astrophysics must go down - and it does, 20% cut in 2009 and then nothing until after 2012.
In 2008 they are doing HST refurbishment and padding the JWST budget for reserves and known overruns - but in the outyears those savings are taken away.

So there are NO new starts in astrophysics, except for the "one who leaves" after the Beyond Einstein selection is done; there is a funding wedge to start formulation/development after 2010.

So, if you look at page 217, you see ALL the current missions are expected to shut down by around 2011, except HST (2013) and GLAST and Kepler (2012).
Now, this is partly an artefact of the "nominal" five year lifetime schedule which NASA works on, in practise some of Chandra/XMM/Spitzer/Swift will still have some operations beyond then, but that means finding MODA funding for them in the out years from somewhere.

JWST is now planned for 2014, just after HST ops end.

SIM gets formulation funding only through 2013 - they will not even start development!

SOFIA and WISE are in - good to be mid-IR astronomer I guess.

One of the Beyond Einstein probes will presumably get ramp up by 2010 as promised.
Your guess is as good as mine as to which will make it. I expect, barring Congressional intervention, that whoever the NRC picks will be it.

There is no Astrobiology - at all up through 2005 I believe Astrobiology used to be a line item in the request - still was in the final Congressional budget, but is now dropped from the Presidential request. Indeed barely mentioned at all.

There is nothing at all for the Navigator missions - just minimal funding for lab tests and power point presentations - so no Terrestrial Planet Finder or anything comparable until maybe 2025!

This sucks.

The wisdom of the Exploration stuff can be debated in endless circles, but if they are going to propose to do stuff like develop new launchers and spaceships in parallel with the continued operations of the old stuff, then they need to ask for enough funding to actually do what they propose.

Darnit.

UPDATE: so the short version is that normally when the HST and JWST peak funding is passed the funding associated with that would be expected to stay in what is now called "Astrophysics", but it doesn't - so no new "funding wedge" opens up for any new missions - so there aren't any and missions already planned are just pushed further out (which of course increases their total cost as they burn tens of millions of dollars per year in "formulation" phases).
The wedge is going to Exploration which eats all development funding through 2010 and then expects to get all the Shuttle funding thereafter, until it becomes 50% of the total budget.
Note also how Exploration Systems (the new launcher and spacecraft development) is lumped with Science and Aeronautics, while Exploration Capabilities (Shuttle ops and running the Space Station) is a distinct budget category.
This is why development of Exploration eats Science money: if they have cost overruns, you think, then the situation for Science will be worse.

Of course Congress has not yet said their bit, which may lead to a somewhat differently structured and balanced budget.
We'll see.

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