Obama’s Space Shuttle spending plan
President Barack Obama plans to send American astronauts to the asteroids placed near the Earth and eventually to Mars with the purpose of extending the life of the spaceship program for a year.
The Senate approved a spending plan for NASA that is going to last for three years and represent a compromise between the Bush policy of returning astronaut to the moon and the concerns towards the possibility of the president undermining NASA‘s space exploration program that would lead to job losses. The goal of the whole plan is to preserve United States leadership in space exploration and keep people working in the rocket industry employed. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, the bitterest critic of the commercialization of the space program, is satisfied with the proposal and says that the project is a balanced version of the need for investment in new technology and the evolution of the commercial market.
The measure, which will be incorporated in the annual spending bills, came as a compromise after several versions of the space program. The program will last for at least another year and will authorize an additional mission to the International Space Station that will be extended to at least 2020. The total funding for NASA in 2011 will be maintained for 19 billion dollars, that means an average of 1 billion dollars per year in the next six years for the commercial space development.
