On Saturday, December 14, 2013 8:56:46 PM UTC-5, jacob navia wrote:
"Next year's NASA budget is poised to force premature cancellation of

either Curiosity or Cassini -- the agency's flagship missions. Funding

decisions get made behind closed doors, but projected figures reduce

Cassini's budget in 2014 by almost half, and half again in 2015, making

it impossible to fly. Even funding for analyzing data will be

"restructured," according to NASA."



http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/14/op...ion/index.html

The decision to go off the gold standard, avoid the development of high temperature nuclear reactors, ending project NERVA and ROVER, and turning the far reaching New Frontier into a meaningless moon program combined with the decision to side track the development of coal conversion technology to make synthetic fuels at $8 per barrel, and outsource our industry and raw materials to thers, was when the decision was made to shut down America. We're just seeing the logical end point.