As Duncan Young points out in comments, the House Appropriation Committee has chosen today to announce that it's not funding the new Vision for Space Exploration next year. Casualties: the new exploration architecture studies and CEV, and the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. Zero funding. Meanwhile, the Shuttle program, which is facing overruns on its return to flight activities, gets over four billion dollars, though it's not flying.

Perhaps we'll now see how important the new policy is to the administration.

[Update at 5:45 PM PDT]

Jeff Foust has further thoughts.

"Perhaps we'll now see how important the new policy is to the administration."

Haven't we already seen how important the new policy is to the administration? Bush unveiled the policy six months ago and has not spoke about it ONCE. That probably sent a very strong message to Congress that he did not care about this policy.

The Curmudgeon notes that the Hammer is pissed. But Rep. DeLay might not be in a position to do much.

Bush doesn't send messages to Congress by making public speeches. He does it by having meetings with the leadership.

Duncan - As House Majority Leader, Delay can do a great deal. I doubt that this bill will even reach the floor, not to mention pass in it's current form.

Just pointing out that DeLay has some distractions at the moment.

Duncan, the whole fund raising investigation is silliness that's being used by the Dems for revenge for Delay's role in the Texas redistricting effort of last year. It will come to naught and will not slow Delay down.

Moon-Mars Blitz was fun.

Heck, I would go again to meet 75 to 100 space advocates and show up personally at the office of every member of the conference committee. Maybe we can get 150 to 200 to show up this time.

Okay, so it will have little real effect. I would still enjoy doing it and we might again rally a bi-partisan space advocacy group.

It would be fun no matter what.

Walsh versus DeLay. Anyone care to wager who's going to win that? A question. Why is Walsh so down on Bush's proposal for space exploration?

I'm not sure that Walsh is down on it so much as he's not up on it, and he has to live within his overall budget allocation. There are a lot of other more politically-pressing issues. As I said, there will have to be some arm twisting by the President if he wants to see his vision funded in '05.

free poker Have a nice day! :)