YOU CAN hardly blame George W. for giving Americans a large tax cut: after
all that鈥檚 why many people voted for him. But science might pay heavily. NASA
has just found out its next budget rise will not match inflation. In other
words, it鈥檚 been cut
(see p 4).
Now, a hard pruning can be a good thing.
Carefully done, it can give an old plant new life. But you need to know what to
cut and what to leave behind. It鈥檚 not yet clear if Bush has grasped these
subtleties. The word from the Bush seems to be 鈥渇ind the cash to cover the tax
cuts now and we鈥檒l worry about the details later鈥�.
One of the White House鈥檚 proposals is to make the space station smaller than
originally intended. This plan would leave room for only three astronauts to
keep the station ticking over. But the whole point of having a space station is
to do space science. We could end up with the absurdity of a fully functioning
lab with nobody free to run it.
To be fair, NASA hasn鈥檛 helped itself. It鈥檚 gone way over budget on several
projects, including the space station, and has hung onto dead-end projects like
the X-33 reusable launch vehicle. All the more reason then for a sensible
strategy and careful pruning. But on strategy there鈥檚 a deafening silence.
Nobody seems to know what Bush wants from space or science, perhaps he doesn鈥檛
either. A new NASA boss would be a good start鈥攂etter still would be a
Presidential science adviser.
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