NASA budget ------ Russia going to moon-----USA can't put man in EO

 
Cutting NASA’s budget would be a bad move
 
Gary Oleson - Washington Post (Commentary)
 
(Oleson, who worked on NASA’s International Space Station program earlier in his career, is an engineer at the Chantilly-based federal contracting firm Tasc)
 
When released next week, President Obama’s 2013 budget will undoubtedly kick off another round of discussions over how much to spend on the nation’s space program and which space projects should be funded. In this era of austerity, a likely issue will be NASA’s support of commercial space enterprises, which some view as low priority. In 2010, Obama proposed a fundamental change in how NASA operates, shifting development of taxis to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station from the government to the private sector. Congress agreed, but last year gave the president less than half what he’d requested for these ventures — $406 million instead of $850 million, barely 2 percent of NASA’s $17.8 billion budget.
 
Russians to take a giant leap for the space program
 
Lindsay France - Russia Today
 
http://rt.com/news/moon-flights-russia-cosmonauts-361/
 
Russia is planning to put a man on the Moon, and anyone can apply to join the crew. The Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, may have suffered some humiliating setbacks in recent months, but it’s hitting back by aiming even higher. “Man should return to the Moon. And not just like in 1969, to leave a mark. We can do important work there – such as building astrology labs and observing the Sun,” Vladimir Popovkin, head of Roscosmos, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station. Popovkin’s plans are nothing if not ambitious with the first landing scheduled for 2020. regular flights planned within five years of that, culminating in a fully-functioning scientific base complete with giant telescopes by 2030.
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