CBO Weighs In

The Congressional Budget Office has released a study that says NASA would need billions more dollars to meet all its objectives-- retiring the shuttle next year, bringing Constellation online by 2015, returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020, and flying all planned science missions.

With due respect to the CBO, most people who've been paying attention to NASA budgets already knew that.

Of course, billions aren't what they were even last year. Well, they are, but not exactly. Fully funding NASA to CBO levels could mesh with objectives of the Obama administration. That money would go to support hundreds of thousands of middle class jobs. It would support American high tech. It would support world class science. It would secure U. S. leadership in space well into this century.

Apollo accomplished its goal on time and largely on budget partly because the budget was generous enough to allow engineers and scientists to do their jobs as they thought they should. Maybe that's something to keep in mind, too.