Nasa budget slashes Martian funds (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Paul Rincon
Science editor, BBC News website

President Barack Obama's 2013 budget request for Nasa would slash spending on Mars exploration and shift funds to human spaceflight and space technology.

As reported by BBC News last week, this means the US will pull the plug on its joint missions to Mars with Europe.

If approved by Congress, the budget request would reduce funds available for planetary science by about 21%.

But spending on human exploration and space technology would rise by 6% and 22% respectively.
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Overall, Nasa would receive about $17.7bn for next year, with a flat budget envisaged over the next few years.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17020830




Bloody Hell. More human drama, less science.

[Newest Reality]

1. Weapons, destruction

and the means to implement and deploy them are much higher on the MIC list of values.

Slash the war machine funding, (and get stabbed in the back by the lucrative defense contracting business) and the space program could literally take off.

On the other hand, here on planet Earth, we denizens on the ground are dealing with matters so close to survival that our teary eyes make it hard to even see the stars and Moon clearly at night.

Our national and other priorities do not suggest that our species has fully reached the stage of actual human being as far as our compassion and emotional "maturity" are concerned in the collective sense, so space exploration is a nice luxury at this time, even though the scientific aspects of it are alluring and could yield useful knowledge.