ACEIZE Tracking the current state of Science and Technology

A budget cut for NASA will delay the Orion shuttle launch. Congress has appropriated $545 million dollars less to the NASA budget than President Bush requested for the agency. NASA administrators claim that this will delay the Orion shuttle launches for an additional 4 to 6 months. The Orion shuttle is scheduled to replace the current Discovery shuttle, which will be retired in 2010. The original schedule called for Orion to start flights in 2014.

Here's what MSNBC reported from NASA administrator Michael Griffin:

Griffin said the gap between the shuttle's retirement and Orion's debut raises practical and strategic concerns.

"When you don't fly for four or more years, people become stale ... facilities degrade. It's not a good thing," he said. "Our human spaceflight expertise will be depleted to a certain extent."

Griffin also pointed out that other countries would continue to fly humans and cargo into space while Americans were grounded. "For the United States not to be among them is tragic," he said. "The U.S. will be in a position of purchasing crew and cargo services from other countries."

NASA is already talking about a planned lack of manned flights for 4 years. I don't believe that they should get too worked up about an additional 6 month delay. How much of that cut in spending was for military type research and development that has been pushed so hard by the Bush administration?