{"id":25746,"date":"2010-07-14T13:03:46","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T13:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2010\/07\/14\/do-you-support-big-space-scien\/"},"modified":"2010-07-14T13:03:46","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T13:03:46","slug":"do-you-support-big-space-scien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/14\/do-you-support-big-space-scien\/","title":{"rendered":"Do you support Big Space Science?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you do, now is when you should do something about it.  The Planetary Society is asking for Americans to contact their Senators, <strong>RIGHT NOW.<\/strong><br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It&#8217;s time to make phone calls to support space exploration. We&#8217;re sending the following letter to all our members today, and urge everyone reading this to pick up the phone and take action. I&#8217;ve already made my phone calls.<\/p>\n<p>The NASA budget is coming to a critical vote tomorrow, July 15, by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. This is the Committee that authorizes the NASA program. The planned authorization bill has some good features: fully funding the President&#8217;s request for an increased budget for NASA, strong space and Earth science programs, and redirecting human space flight towards exploration into the solar system. It also increases support for the deep-space rocket and spacecraft necessary to take astronauts there.<\/p>\n<p>But it has two big drawbacks:<\/p>\n<p>   1. It stops the rapid development of commercial rockets for Earth orbit crew transportation, while authorizing no new government program to replace the shuttle.<br \/>\n   2. It cuts out most of the technology development (90%!) and robotic precursor missions related to the future of exploration, two of the brightest lights in the new exploration strategy.<\/p>\n<p>Two amendments are being introduced tomorrow to correct these problems: one by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and the other by Senator Barbara Boxer of California. Together they will restore much of the technology program (increasing it by $356 million) and permit commercial launch vehicles to be developed to allow astronaut flights to the International Space Station sooner.<\/p>\n<p>We urge you to call your Senators today and ask them to support the Warner and Boxer NASA Authorization Amendments, especially if one of your Senators is on the Senate Committee. A phone call is necessary; there&#8217;s no time for a written letter (these amendments just were announced late yesterday). These are the Committee members:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.planetary.org\/blog\/article\/00002584\/\"><br \/>\nClick here for the list and further instructions. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you do, now is when you should do something about it. The Planetary Society is asking for Americans to contact their Senators, RIGHT NOW.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[191],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-6Hg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25746"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}