Science or Tourism

First NASA science research gets censored by the Bush regime then they do this;

Science will play a diminishing role at NASA as the space agency emphasizes lunar exploration in the next five years, according to a new governmental budget.

Budget would squeeze NASA spending
Bush, who two years ago called on NASA to recapture its former glory by mounting an ambitious program to return astronauts to the moon, is asking Congress to give the space agency a minimal raise. (Related items: White House version of NASA budget | Full NASA budget document (both PDF)

And how do they plan to fund their next moon mission, well through P3's.

NASA makes hard cuts in research to preserve shoot for the moon
Yet the budget also breaks ground for NASA, which proposes to invest $500 million over five years to nurture a fledgling commercial-rocket industry outside the usual cast of major aerospace characters. Start-ups such as SpaceX in Redondo Beach, Calif., are designing and building rockets aimed at driving down launch costs far below the shuttle's pricey $10,000 a pound. Space entrepreneurs have long complained that NASA has steeply tilted the playing field toward behemoths such as Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, even as it professed a sometimes grudging willingness to expand commercial development of space.

"Using money intended for science programs to find continued operation of the shuttle is a serious setback to the US space program," according to Wesley Huntress Jr., former associate administrator for space science at NASA who heads the geophysics department at the Carnegie Institution in Washington.

He argued the agency is using money from "a popular and highly productive program" to pay for a program slated for cancellation.

Which means expect less of this; NASA's Spitzer Uncovers Hints of Mega Solar Systems and this:Hot Halo Find Confirms Theory

And more of this:Tourism and Travel Commercial space flights may be on horizon
In Business Las Vegas, NV - 3 Feb 2006
... The FAA says a recent space tourism study that included a poll of affluent Americans indicates that space tourism could generate more than $1 billion in ...

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