ISS leaking air

On Jan 5, 2004, at 7:38 PM, Rick Fischer wrote:

> Am I being paranoid in thinking that because of budgetary cuts over
> the last
> 30 years in NASA's budget,

NASA's budget has grown a great deal in the last 30 years. In the 25
years I have worked at NAS Ames, NASA's budget has almost always
increased. Perhaps we would like it to go up more, but the notion
that NASA's budget is shrinking is simply false (although is was true
for a couple of years in the 90's).

So how can the budget be going up when things are constantly being cut?
Because if anyone *proposes* any expenditure, which is later reduced
or eliminated, they say that their 'budget was cut." Since most
programs ask for more than they expect to get, everyone's budget is
'cut.' Nonetheless, each year they get more money, because all that
was cut was an expectation created in one or a few minds.

The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect
and deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.