even with the most enthusiastic spin doctoring. This budget shuts down two good missions & delays a third simply so that NASA hq can show the space science community who's boss; while the White House wants to keep labs porking on scientifically irrelevant technology research with unstated military agendas. This combination will only cripple deep space science; & Dr Huntress's defense of the budget is laughable in its surreal optimism.

I mean does he really believe rubbish like:

> Development of nuclear power and propulsion will enable nothing short of a revolution in the way in which we explore the Solar System, moving us out of the Conestoga wagon era and into the railroad era of exploration to quote Ed Weiler.
or
> They have taken away our bus tickets to Pluto and Europa and given us a book of airline tickets to anywhere in the Solar System we want to go.

or just he just hope that this kind of pious platituding will assauge the anger of the people who's programs are being gutted to pay for this military vaporware? I just hope he has the guts to resign from his post when this nonsense is fully repudiated by the DPS scientists themselves - but no doubt he'll work out some plausible excuse for back flipping on the policy while still drawing his honorarium. Bureaucrats always do.

Robert