Dear Federal Government,
Once again, you are cutting funding for one of NASA’s most exciting and promising projects. This time, it’s ExoMars, a project done in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA). The ExoMars Mission was to determine if life exists or ever did exist on Mars.
Although I am disappointed, I do understand, and I certainly can’t say NASA is being treated unfairly. The budgets of almost every government agency, at both the state and federal level, are being slashed, and with the national debt as high as it is the US must try to reduce spending. As important as ExoMars is, I know other important programs are suffering too.
However, tens of millions of dollars were already spent on ExoMars, according to Dr. G. Scott Hubbard, a planetary scientist for NASA and a professor at Stanford University, in addition to a reported 200 million euros spent by ESA. An estimated $10 billion was already spent on the Constellation program, NASA’s effort to return to the Moon, before that was cut last year.
So, Federal Government, whatever program you decide to let NASA work on next, give them a chance to finish it. It is a far greater waste of money to cancel one program after another than to allow one of them run to completion.
Signed,
James S. Pailly
Science Enthusiast and Concerned Citizen.
