Commentary: Cutting NASA’s budget would be a bad move

By Gary Oleson, Sunday, February 5, 3:08 PM

When released next week, President Obama’s 2013 budget will undoubtedly kick off another round of discussions over how much to spend on the nation’s space program and which space projects should be funded. In this era of austerity, a likely issue will be NASA’s support of commercial space enterprises, which some view as low priority.
In 2010, Obama proposed a fundamental change in how NASA operates, shifting development of taxis to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station from the government to the private sector. Congress agreed, but last year gave the president less than half what he’d requested for these ventures — $406 million instead of $850 million, barely 2 percent of NASA’s $17.8 billion budget.

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gaw

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