"Hagar" wrote in message
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In article
Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:

January 8, 2004

wrote:

UPI Exclusive: Bush OKs new moon missions
By Frank Sietzen Jr. and Keith L. Cowing
United Press International

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- American astronauts will return
to ...

congress.

Wow, more footprints. Real Cool.

Note the fine print:

retiring the shuttle fleet

NASA would end substantial involvement in the space station

Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing
programs that do not support the new effort.

No more Galileos or Cassinis or Pluto probes or Space Telescopes?

That will certainly get the scientific community in a frenzy. OTOH, the cost
of these missions is likely to be such that there isn't any other way to do
it, unless the U.S. wants to spend 5% of GDP on space exploration. My guess
is that NASA will have to do all this with the current budget, adjusted for
inflation on a year-by-year basis, which may lead to cutting corners. But
OTOH there's a lot of knowledge built up from the Apollo program on how to
do this stuff, so it should be possible for a lot less money.