This is obvious for those of us in astronomy, but for non-astro folks, it might have gone unnoticed. NASA's having some major problems now. Basically, the president decided NASA should shift towards preparing to send humans to the moon and Mars. While an Apollo-style charge might be cool, that only works if you have Apollo-style funding to go with it.
Also entering the picture is completeing the long overdue and long overbudget international space station. Evidently, the US made "international committments" that the higher ups feel that they must honor, even though the science plans for the space station have been so drastically reduced that the whole thing will basically be abandoned shortly after completing it. In order to complete it, we have to return the space shuttle to flight (yes, there was another flight, but it had foam problems again, so they're still working on getting it back to back to flight). Again, the irony is that the shuttle is now scheduled to be decommissioned not long after completeing the space station. The hope is that some new better launch vehicle (with the intent to be part of the Moon and Mars thing) will be avaliable shortly after retiring the shuttle. IMHO, the reality is that there will probably be a big gap when there's no US launch vehicle to send people to the space station. (Remember SkyLab, our first space station? It crashed back into Earth while we were developing the space shuttle.)
Of course, returning the space shuttle to flight, building the space station, building a new human launch vehicle, and sending people to the Moon and Mars takes big bucks. However, the president/Congress haven't provided those extra bucks. Once there was supposedly a "wall" separating the budgets for space missions and science, but apparently that idea has been abandoned. So NASA is trying to cover those costs (as well as things like a mission to service/deorbit Hubble and build the James Webb Space Telescope "on budget" (but using a revised budgetting standard that makes things seem like they cost more)) by cutting back on many things, including large space missions but also including small missions, the analysis of data from current/previous missions, and the funding to theoretical interpretation of the observations. Basically, NASA is trying to cover these expenses by cutting back on the astrophysicists who actually do the science that makes those missions worthwhile. Obviously, you have to cut _a lot_ of postdoc/graduate student stipends to cover the cost of building a new space ship to send to the Moon. But that's a big part of the strategy that NASA administrators are planning on!
As a result of this many astronomers are facing extremely severe budgets. Advisors who started graduate students on thesis projects are learning that already approved funding is being cut. The graduate students who have begun the long and complex training and begun their thesis projects are wondering how they'll get paid in the next year or two and if they should abandon their previous work and/or change career paths. Postdocs who have already been trained are seriously considering leaving the country and/or the field. To give you some idea of the scale "Already, 240 grants affecting 500 postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students have been terminated." (from the CNN link below), and from what we understand this is only the beginning. Other missions that were well along the way (some within a year of being launched) are being delayed by multiple years. In many cases, these delays will actually increase the mission costs, since you have to retain the key engineers the whole time and then rehire and retrain people to do the jobs of the people that you let go. And many missions are being descoped and delayed, or in some cases put in an holding pattern (wihtout funding) of unknown duration (seems a lot like "canceled" to the people working on those missions).
As a result of all this, astronomers are starting to complain loudly, even contacting politicans directly to complain about the decisions being made at NASA. Now the National Research Council has issued a report that will hopefully help scientists better argue for restore some sanity to the NASA budget.
Politicans: If you are going to give NASA specific goals (e.g., send humans to the Moon and Mars), then you must give NASA the funding to acheive those goals realistically without dramatically cutting the projects that the agency has already started and invested in. If you are going to give NASA a fixed budget, then let scientists tell NASA how best to spend that money to advance science. Scientists have estalished programs like the
decadal reviews that communicate to policy makers the major projects that scientists think should be funded.
Study Finds Money Gap at NASA - New York Times Report: NASA lacks science funds - CNNNASA Watch (source of general NASA gossip)
