It Takes Money

Budgets don't make for fun reading, but the FY2009 estimated budget for NASA contains some reasonably good news. The president's request for NASA is $17.6 billion, a 1.8% increase over FY2008, and it represents about 0.6% of the federal budget. It looks like space science and support for commercial space developments (COTS, etc.) are in pretty good shape, though it appears that funding for education has taken a hit if I'm reading it right (though they also split out some facilities and logistical aspects of the budget in a different way this year, so that may account for some differences). The science portion includes funding for two new Earth-monitoring satellites as well as expanded lunar and outer planets exploration. I've really only looked over the summary and read the brief introductory remarks of NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale, both found here (along with the full document, 5.9 MB PDF). You can find more discussion at the Planetary Society and I'm sure many other sites around the web.