Failure to launch

Space | Will proposed cuts in space programs leave the United States vulnerable? | Emily Belz

Associated Press/Photo by Paul Kizzle

An F-22 pilot delivers a missile to a target within a margin of inches. Images show heightened activity at a North Korean nuclear site. Astronauts send emails and videos from space. All of these things depend on orbiting U.S. satellites.

With cuts in the Department of Defense budget and the NASA shuttle program, the Obama administration may be rethinking the relationship between national security and technological domination of the outer atmosphere. A White House—commissioned blue ribbon panel is in the process of reviewing funding for the agency's space flight programs, but the space agency's overall budget will face a projected $3 billion in cuts through 2013.

NASA's shuttle program has funding for eight more launches that should be completed by 2010, though there's no firm end date. The agency's new space vehicle, Ares, won't be ready until 2014, meaning the United States will be buying tickets to space from Russia in the gap, at a hefty $51 million per astronaut. Facing little competition, the Russians raised the price from the $21 million they charged U.S. astronauts in 2006.