President Bush wants Americans back to the moon “no later than 2020” and to Mars a decade later, and he’s going to request an increase of $1 billion (or 5 percent) to the NASA budget to make it so. Here’s the official release from the White House.
The total in funding will be $12 billion over five years, with only $1 billion in new funding. In addition, the Space Shuttle fleet will be retired by 2010 and US participation in the International Space Station will be “scaled back.”
No other details on how this change in federal R&D priorities will impact computing research at NASA or any other agency. The Administration has already indicated that NIH, which has received large increases in recent years (doubling its budget over the last five years), will likely receive a 3 percent increase or less in the FY 2005 budget, so perhaps that shift in priority will allow for an increase at NASA while remaining within the Administration’s spending goals.
We should know all after the Feb 1st FY 2005 budget rollout.