NASA Is In Denial About Its FY 2018 Budget

Acting NASA Administrator Lightfoot’s Message on Fiscal Year 2018 Budget
“While this budget no longer supports the formal Office of Education, NASA will continue to inspire the next generation through its missions and the many ways that our work excites and encourages discovery by learners and educators. Let me tell you, we are as committed to inspiring the next generation as ever. We’re going to engage the public in the compelling story of exploration by the successful and safe execution of our missions, which is where our focus has to be. At the same time, we’re going to take this opportunity for NASA to revisit the public engagement and outreach activities that take place on the ground at centers every day to ensure that we are leveraging the synergies between education and outreach to facilitate meaningful connections.”
Keith’s note: In other words the White House thinks that NASA no longer needs an education office – after half a century of having one — and that reducing funding for education and outreach will somehow cause more education and public outreach to be accomplished.
“While we are not proposing to move forward with Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3), Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE), Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory Pathfinder (CLARREO PF), and the Radiation Budget Instrument (RBI), this budget still includes significant Earth Science efforts, including 18 Earth observing missions in space as well as airborne missions.”
Saying that you are still doing some earth science while multiple cutting climate science missions is akin to saying “be thankful that we did not cut all of it.”
“We have a budget that also provides the necessary resources in the coming year to support our plans to send humans to Mars orbit in the 2030s. The European service module will be delivered to the Kennedy Space Center for integration with Orion in 2018. Prototype ground testing of habitat modules under our broad area announcement activity will happen in 2018.”
NASA still has nowhere near the funding or anything close to the required strategic planning needed to send human to Mars in the 2030’s and the Trump Administration is willing to continue the charade initiated by the Obama Administration while further undercutting the agency’s ability to actually attempt to do these tasks.
And of course, Congress will reverse all of the things proposed in this budget – again.