"Clearly, the president and Tom DeLay were pivotal in getting NASA funded where it needed to be," Weldon said.

Weldon said the budget is of particular symbolic importance because it can be seen as an endorsement of Bush's plan to send astronauts back to the moon and, ultimately, to Mars.

Rep. Tom Feeney agreed. "This record increase to NASA funding will equate to enormous opportunity for the space community to move forward with returning the Shuttle to flight and then extending human exploration beyond low Earth orbit," the Oviedo Republican said. "This is a good day for the NASA family and for space enthusiasts across our nation."

Earlier proposals from both the Senate and the House included full funding for the shuttle but made cuts to some of the long-term programs in order to do so, a position that the White House considered unacceptable.

"You now have a president's vision endorsed by full funding from Congress," Weldon said. "It's going to make it much easier when we go back next year to fund some of these programs, because it's not going to be doing damage control from all that cost-cutting."

So much for those here who claimed vociferously that Bush had no intention of pushing for his program. Thankfully for space fans we have a president who supports space exploration.