via NASAwatch we have the promised March 15 statement
on how the new budget request impact NASA actuals
Highlights: 15% cut in Research and Analysis continues
GLAST and Kepler launches slipped
SIM demoted to tech development for foreseeable future
Astrobio 50% cut continued
Explorer opportunities deferred
Earth Science also gets hammered.
This is not the final word - Congress may do something, although NASA is not likely to be a high priority, and the new Science Mission director should have some discretion to shuffle priorities, but it is a very painful budget.
Why is the White House is submitting budgets way smaller than the 2005 plan required.
The cumulative deficit in the NASA budget request compared to what was planned on is huge, and is on all fronts - there is not enough funding to run the Shuttle, or finish the Space Station, or develop new launchers, nor to do the Science planned.
This is planning to fail.
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You have any thoughts on why the NASA budget is getting carved up every which way?
I can follow the logic of breaking Medicare or Social Security to aid efforts in privatizing the programs. But where does killing NASA get us?
I don't think there is a grand plan - at the basic level everything is being squeezed except for a very small number of small budgets being supported (like NSF, for now), and NASA is just not a priority for political capital to be spent by the White House to support their initiatives. They're happy to let Congress make the push, if Congress feels like it.
Secondly, there is probably a group in the budget office that feels the squeeze is intrinsically good, in the belief that it shakes out stuff that needs to be cut (it doesn't, it leads to turf protection, artificially escalating costs due to stretching, political bickering between centers and bad choices).
Finally, there is definitely a group of "California Libertarian" space cadets in the executive at mid-staff levels, and maybe a little bit higher, who really think that squeezing NASA into oblivion would be a good thing - take the pain for a decade to open the sector to pure market driven initiatives. I think they are wrong and they would destroy space science and knock the US space presence back a decade or two (not further, because the Air Force will push to keep a serious presence).
Oh, and there is definitely pressure to get rid of or hold down some scientifically inconvenient fields, either because of economic politics or personal politics - easier to cut those in an environment of across the board cuts and frequent internal shuffling of budgets.
Sort of a "oops! did that also get cut? bummer"
It doesn't look good for Heliophysics or Planetary Science either:
From what I've heard, Mike Griffin and Harrison Schmidt are still pushing the lunar initiative the President advocated a few years back, even if the White House is no longer actively backing it. (Remember the Science Advisory Board purge of last August?) I haven't read the whole thing, but I would guess that a significant pile of money is ending up here: