Jeff Foust rounds up more stories on the House cuts to the NASA budget request. A quote from Congressman Weldon:

This bill takes care of most of our needs at Kennedy Space Center, so I'm hard pressed not to support my chairman when he's taking care of Florida.

Yup.

I've got mine. What did posterity ever do for me?

I also always wonder if they understand the impact of "delaying" a program for a year. A contractor has a team put together, and they can't just put them in cold storage until Congress decides to finally fund the program. They get reassigned to other projects, and it's hard to reassemble them later, resulting in putting together a new team, with associated learning curve. This is one of the reasons that government space programs are so inefficient and costly.

It's even bad politics. What is Weldon going to say in 2010 when the shuttle goes away and there is nothing else to take it's place?

Why is everyone so sure the orbiter must go away?

Just because GWB said so at a press conference? GWB won't be President in 2010.

Senators Nelson (D) and Hutchison (R) recently wrote an editorial suggesting the orbiter can and should continue on after 2010.

The orbiter is like a vampire sucking the blood from America's space program. The sooner we kill it the better and stop messing around with "return to flight" so we can kill it later.

It is obvious flexibility is needed to get from the present to the future. I don't think we will be able to say for sure that Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour will not be flying after 2010 just because George W. Bush says so now. Plans are subject to revision, and it may not be possible to finish ISS by 2010 at the flight rate NASA may be able to sustain without another accident. They have painted themselves into a corner, and must wait till the paint dries to walk away from the previous commitment trap they're in now.

Likewise plans for Project Constellation may be revised as well, and we should be prepared for this eventuality as well. And if the history of NASA, and space programs in general is any guide, things will turn out different that we think they will now. Change is the only constant in the Universe, so get used to it.

To continue flying orbiter is the trap that denies us flexibility.

The only thing bad I see is everything they did fund, especially the shuttle.

Posterity is not served by any NASA program or any other socialist R&D program.

So much for NASA. At this rate the first new American manned space vehicle will be some Gemini analog made by SpaceX launched atop a Falcon V booster!