(Aviation Week) NASA says it will continue to support its Centennial Challenges prize program, despite the fact that Congress may be on the brink of denying funding to the effort for the second year in a row.
Senate appropriators have voted to deny the program's $10 million fiscal 2007 budget request, although the Senate and House have yet to agree on a final FY '07 NASA budget (DAILY, Nov. 29).
Centennial Challenges is still planning to offer purses for seven prizes totaling $10.9 million, using funds originally appropriated for FY '05, according to NASA spokesman Dave Steitz. "We have spread out the money into the 'out years' to allow for multiple challenges and purses," he told The DAILY.
Although this is a classic example as to why the public can not rely upon government initiatives to bring us to the stars, (as politics can be short sighted at times) this move by NASA to continue financial support shows that their is some hope for the space agency.
If NASA began to actually apply more of this "solar backbone" when it comes to politicians and bureaucrats, the US could seriously implement Buzz Aldrin's road map to Mars within our lifetime.
Want more space geek news? Then subscribe below via email, RSS or twitter for free updates! Prefer another service? How about via RSS or follow Colony Worlds on Twitter!
No comments:
Post a Comment
You can either visit the stars or watch them from afar.
But if you choose the former, you'll definitely get a better view.
~Darnell Clayton, 2007
Note: You do not need a Blogger account in order to comment, but you do need to solve the universal puzzle below.