NASA's next giant leap (AP/CNN) {CEV/manned spaceflight/Bush budget}

[eppur_se_muova]

NASA prepares for sea change in manned space program
Monday, April 10, 2006; Posted: 10:28 a.m. EDT (14:28 GMT)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida(AP) -- As NASA celebrates the 25th anniversary of its first shuttle flight this week, the agency also steels itself for the biggest upheaval since the moon shot days of Apollo in the early 1970s.

In just four years the three aging, behemoth space shuttles will be shelved -- likely headed to museums. And by 2014, a brand new spacecraft will be flying -- one designed to get astronauts to the moon by 2018 and eventually Mars.

This wrenching transition will be only the fourth such makeover for the manned space program in the agency's nearly 50-year history. Critics already are grumbling about the lack of money to accomplish the shift to the new crew exploration vehicle (CEV). More than a fifth of NASA's proposed $16.8 billion budget for next year will be spent on developing the new vehicle system.

"The new crew exploration vehicle will come in late, over cost and underspent and it will stress the agency to get it to function according to plan," said Duke historian Alex Roland, a persistent NASA critic who worked for the space agency in the 1970s.

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more: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/04/10/nasa.in.transition.ap/index.html

[Botany]

1. Back to the future ....

.... that looks like an Applo capsule on top. Now bush wants to screw up NASA.

[oscar111]

2. natl Debt seven Trillion, a million homeless in the streets, Iraq costs

and some want to throw money away on mars.

great to go to mars, just not affordable right now. Later maybe, fellow space fans.

I like space travel, just put the homeless higher up on priorities.