But No Money For Hubble Rescue

The good news: If President Bush's budget is approved by Congress, NASA gets a whopping $16.5 billion dollars, an increase of more than two percent over the current fiscal year.

The bad news: Researchers aren't terribly thrilled at the money being spent on science projects and there's no money in that budget to save the failing Hubble Space Telescope.

"Taken together, the inadequate FY06 investments in research proposed by the administration would erode the research and innovative capacity of our nation," said Nils Hasselmo, president of the Association of American Universities, a group of 62 public and private research universities. He was quoted in the Washington Post.

But the president's science advisor disagrees with assertions that Mr. Bush doesn't give a hoot about the projects people like Hasselmo think are most important. The president "really believes that science is important," John H. Marburger III, the president's science adviser and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, told the Post. Even though the president's spending proposal is "austere," he told the paper, "we are not going backward. We are not going down."

Well, not unless we're aboard the Hubble.

Although it was no surprise for researchers, the budget proposal contains no money for a mission -- manned or robotic -- to save the Hubble Space Telescope, viewed by most astronomers as simply the neatest gadget since the Swiss Army knife.

Maryland Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski indicated Hubble (literally) won't go down without a fight.

"Hubble's best days are ahead of it, not behind it," she said in a statement posted on her web site. "That's why I am so disappointed that President Bush has failed to include funding in this year's budget for a servicing mission that would extend the life of the Hubble. I led the charge last year to add $300 million to NASA's budget for a Hubble servicing mission, and I plan to do it again. I will fight in the United States Senate this year to fund a servicing mission to Hubble by 2008, a mission that would potentially increase Hubble's power and efficiency by a factor of 10 and allow us to look back almost to the beginning of the universe."

Oh, the Hubble does get a piece of the pie -- $93 million for a 2006 mission to adapt the telescope for a safe splashdown in the ocean. But there are no plans to repair or enhance the space telescope.

"The Bush administration has wanted to kill Hubble for two years," Mikulski told the Post in a telephone interview. "Everyone in the scientific world says this is the greatest invention in astronomy since Galileo's telescope."

There are some aerospace winners in the president's budget, if it makes it through Congress. For instance, it gives NASA $753 million to develop the Crew Exploration Vehicle. That's the ship the space agency hopes will serve the Moon and Mars directive announced by Mr. Bush last year.

FMI: www.nasa.gov