It began with the cancelation of several ISS parts essential for conducting science: X38, US Living module, Centrifuge module. 2004 they canceled HST SM4 for "safety reasons" (LOL). The next Discovery mission selection has been delayed and there will be only one flight opportunity (Dawn and Kepler have been selected several yaers ago). New Frontiers 2 opportunity is in limbo and JIMO, the flagship with nuclear propulsion and 1000 kg+ science payload is dead.

And now, to save even more money (a tiny fraction of the monthly cost of the Iraq afterwar), is it considered to shut down Voyager 1 and 2 and several other "old" spacecraft.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/voyager1-05a.html

All this to finance a "vision" that is still hopelessly underfunded. This administration is the worst for space science since the 1980's, when the US didn't launched any interplanetray probe for more than 10 (in words: ten) years (Pioneer Venus 1978, Magellan 1989).

Sorry for being political, but the next step will be shutting down two fully functional Mars rovers.

Analyst

You know something - I always thought "well - they're running Voyager till they're totally dead - they'd NEVER turn off working rovers"

Now there's just a hint of doubt in my mind. I still cant imagine them doing it - but it DOES set a dangerous precident.

Doug

I see the source for this is Nature magazine, a UK publication, curious considering all the far better connected US space news journalists. Let's see if this is true or just another over hyped story.

ps. FY2006 budget markup has just begun

It would be Criminal to kill the only two spacecraft that will be able to reach the heliopause.
And what about Ulysses? Doesn't ESA have a say in the decision process? It's their probe! Or are they just talking about cutting the US involvement?

Sorry for getting OT here, but I just Have to agree with Analyst concerning the manned space flight decisions.

1. The ISS is now nothing more than a 'floating tin can' desperately in need of repair almost all the time. And why the large 10+ module configuration, when it does the same job as the one module Salyut-6?

2. The Hubble 'safety' decision is insane. It basicly means that once the ISS is gone, there can never be another manned launch because there is no shelter. But if the shuttle has a decent repair kit, which the CAIB recommended, there is no need for such a shelter!
The proposed robotic repair mission was even more insane, as launching a new Hubble would have been cheaper.

3. The Shuttle and now the 'Crew Exploration Vehicle' ( what idiot dreamt up this name anyway ) just eat up the money for the real meat of space exploration, the planetary probes.

This is of course only MHO, but the ISS should be dumped ASAP. After the final Hubble servicing mission the shuttle should go the same way. Limit the CEV flights to some sort of man-tended platform and if the shuttle can be converted to an unmanned Heavy Launch Vehicle ( without an orbiter ), maybe to the moon as well.

There you have it. Enough talk for now. But this kind of news just makes me go....

The US involvement including - as it does - DSN support so we can talk to the bloody thing

I'm not going to get anti-manned flight on everyone - and I do think there's value in the ISS if for nothing more than the very experience of working in space and working internationally - but there's a LOT that's wrong with it and a lot that should be done differently.

The proposals for the follow on are just a farce - so complex and un-un-necessary. So many diferent modules and launch vehicles - it's a joke.

Doug

What follow on are you referring to? I didn't know there were plans for another space station?

I think ISS, while not very "sexy" as far as manned space flight is concerned, has been and continues to be a necessary "school" in long-duration manned flight. While the Russians already had considerable experience in long-duration flight, American experience in same had been limited to three Skylab flights, which all occurred more than 30 years ago.

The fact that the Russians had a lot of experience is not, in the final analysis, all that helpful to American planetary flight planning, because, face it -- the Russians haven't been forthcoming at sharing their findings, and the Americans had been reluctant to believe that the continuing repair efforts needed to keep earlier Salyuts and Mir operational were inevitable... I think NASA had always felt that the engineering issues with the Salyuts and Mir were typical of Russian bingling and not something *they* would ever have to face.

Now NASA knows better, and has a real basis of actual experience upon which to plan manned planetary missions. Experience that they perhaps would not have believed had they not earned it themselves.

If that is *all* ISS ever does for us, I'd say it was worth it.

-the other Doug

Damn typos -- obviously, I meant "bungling."

-the other Doug

The problem is that we don't really know if it will be worth it because we don't know how much "it" (the expense) will end up being.

I agree that there is value in a long-duration manned facility. But at any cost? Nope. It seems to me that the ISS has been set up so that it will be very difficult politically to pull the plug. And yet the science and exploration goals have all been post hoc, and offered pretty meager returns on investment.

Couldn't we get the same long-duration space flight experience with a Skylab repeat, and at much less cost?