Mixed Messages From A Less Than Perfect Rollout

NASA Plan Faces Turbulence in House, WS Journal
“NASA’s proposed budget “essentially decimates America’s human space-flight capacity,” said Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards of Maryland Rep, Ralph Hall of Texas, the ranking Republican on the full Science and Technology Committee, said “it is naive to assume that a do-over will somehow deliver a safer, cheaper system faster than the current path we are on.” The reaction portends an uphill fight for the Obama Administration, partly due to sentiment on Capitol Hill that it failed to consult members before unveiling such a dramatic shift in direction In an interview Tuesday, NASA’s Administrator, Charles Bolden, accepted part of the blame. “I could have done a better job of communicating” with Congress, he said. “I will take the hit for that.”
Proposed NASA budget plots entrepreneur-friendly course, LA Times
“The potentially seismic shift for the aerospace industry was announced Monday, the seventh anniversary of the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, and came as defense companies were bracing for a pullback in the Pentagon’s spending on weapons.”
Obama Gets Space Funding Right, Steven Weinberg, WS Journal
“Giving up on manned space flight doesn’t mean we have to give up on the exploration of the solar system. The president’s budget calls for spending $19 billion on NASA, and for much less than the cost of sending a few astronauts once to a single location on Mars we could send hundreds of robots like Spirit and Opportunity to sites all over the planet.”