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Debating the Future of Space Plans

For three months, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) have struggled to find a way to make up a budget shortfall of between $3 billion and $5 billion and perhaps more, in the troubled space shuttle program - and to do so without inflating overall space spending well beyond the $16.5 billion that NASA has this year. President Bush has made it known it is his vision to send Americans back to the moon and beyond in the relatively near future.

Congress last month unanimously passed a bipartisan bill, which Bush signed, endorsing the vision for the first time and urging the president to fund NASA for $17.9 billion in 2007 and $18.7 billion in 2008. New NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin is seen as a blunt-spoken space scientist and engineer, and this is the reason for the endorsement of Congress. Were Griffin to ask for more funding, many say they would be behind it.

"He is very, very competent and knows how these things work," said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican of Texas. "If he comes back to us and says there`s a need for more money, I think he can get it." Shortchanging NASA should not be an option, for "This is a period of transformation," Rep. Ken Calvert, chairman of the House Science subcommittee on space and aeronautics from California, says. "We are at the dawn of a new space age, and we have to do it right."