New Budget Delays or Cancels Much-Promoted NASA Missions - New York Times

New Budget Delays or Cancels Much-Promoted NASA Missions - New York Times:

Some of the most highly promoted missions on NASA's scientific agenda would be postponed indefinitely or perhaps even canceled under the agency's new budget, despite its administrator's vow to Congress six months ago that not "one thin dime" would be taken from space science to pay for President Bush's plan to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars.

[...]

The cuts have alarmed and outraged many scientists, who have long feared that NASA will have to cannibalize its science program to carry out the president's vision of human spaceflight.

The new cuts, they say, will drive young people from the field, ending American domination of space science and perhaps ceding future discoveries to Europe.

'The bottom line: science at NASA is disappearing — fast,' said Donald Lamb, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and chairman of a committee on space science for the Association of American Universities.

But the chief space cowboy wants to go to Mars, dammit! Maybe he thinks there's oil there?