Nasa budget cuts

[Diana]

The Bush administration's focus on big, expensive space missions is starving budgets for some of NASA's most productive small-scale science programs, astronomers told the U.S. Congress on Thursday.

The Bush budget request for fiscal 2007 gives NASA an overall increase of 3.2 percent to $16.8 billion, but much of that is meant to fund the space shuttle, to finish building the international space station and to get a successor to the shuttle aloft.
By contrast, science programs in NASA would increase 1.5 percent to about $5.3 billion. This latest budget request, which must be approved or amended by Congress, means that NASA's science programs would get $3.1 billion less than previously projected for the years from 2006 through 2010.

More Here

Diana

[The Mangler]

I'm not surprised...
I just saw this (Real ID act) the other day. At least my Representive (one of them anyway) voted against it.
I'm not very religious, but this is exactly what the 'mark of the beast' is. Regardless of that, I just don't like the gov't knowing that much about me.

I'm beginning to get pissed at this administration. And I voted for him... Twice.

[Dragon Star]

Now Now...you are judging what has yet no happened...

Which would you rather have:

1) A few extremely productive and well spent projects?

2) A billion small projects that do relatively nothing compared to the larger projects, yet you spend more money?

Don't let the fact that people hate Bush make you Bias on you decision.

[Diana]

At a minimum: name, birth date, ***, ID number, a digital photograph, address, and a "common machine-readable technology" that Homeland Security will decide on. The card must also sport "physical security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes."
Homeland Security is permitted to add additional requirements--such as a fingerprint or retinal scan--on top of those. We won't know for a while what these additional requirements will be.

I wonder what those additional requirements will be??

I also wonder what they will invent next....

[The Mangler]

Originally Posted by Diana

I wonder what those additional requirements will be??

I also wonder what they will invent next....

I don't think it will be very long 'till we have retinal scanners all over the place. My last job had a hand scanner for a timeclock. I thought they were joking when they told me that at orientation. The technology is there, it just isn't cheap enough for most people to use it yet.