Science, dead on arrival.

Source NY Times

It looks like hard-line, anti-science Republicans have suceeded at some level in killing many of the most notable future missions planned by NASA.

Kill the budget, kill NASA, kill science, kill progress.

Oh, I see the master plan now.

Some of the most notable missions on NASA's scientific agenda would be postponed indefinitely or canceled under the agency's new budget, despite its administrator's vow to Congress six months ago that not "one thin dime" would be taken from space science to pay for President Bush's plan to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars.

The cuts come to $3 billion over the next five years, even as NASA's overall spending grows by 3.2 percent this year, to $16.8 billion. They come against a backdrop of criticism over efforts by White House appointees to mute public statements by NASA's climate scientists.

Among the casualties of the budget cuts are attempts to look for habitable planets and perhaps life elsewhere in the galaxy, an investigation of the dark energy that seems to be ripping the universe apart, bringing a sample of Mars back home to Earth, and exploring for life under the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa — as well as numerous smaller programs and individual research projects that astronomers say are the wellsprings of new science and new scientists.

This is great. Three steps foward, ten gigantic steps back.

This will help the U.S. in its failures to stay in the front of the pack in the world science community. I guess with the spread of the bird flu, the aging of many "baby boomers" and need for "nuclear onset of global warming," who needs science?