Some comments from Voodoo Science author Bob Park on what the Approps Bill has in store for space science:
The $16.5B NASA spending bill Congress sent to the President, with an extra $50M for Hubble repairs, is actually a little more than the President asked for. Michael Griffin has the final say on a Hubble repair mission, but he won’t decide until after the shuttle flight set for May. Meanwhile, preparing for an unlikely Moon-Mars mission is costly. NASA says it will save $344M by halting life- sciences research on the ISS. That was about the only scientific research left. So what’s this turkey for? A NASA spokesman told the Orlando Sentinel that lengthy visits to the station are the key to preparing astronauts for a return to the Moon. It seems more likely that research on the ISS was of little value anyway. This is one more sign that human spaceflight is headed for extinction.