The recently released NASA budget has researchers shaking their heads and Centauri Dreams readers writing to check on the status of some of the programs we’ve highlighted here. The news is indeed bleak — at least temporarily so — and what is particularly grating is the decision to cut numerous worthwhile projects in NASA’s strongest areas while funding a whopping 17 additional Shuttle flights. That these moves are counterproductive should be obvious to anyone who has just lived through the years of Cassini, Huygens, Stardust, Spirit, Opportunity, Deep Impact… The list could go on.

The success of the robotic exploration of the Solar System (now pushing into the interstellar regions beyond) has been outstanding, but in terms of public relations it seems dwarfed by a manned program that is now directed at entirely questionable goals. The fact that the egregiously out-of-date Space Shuttle continues to leach funds from proven robotic technologies makes the disparity all the more confounding. And leaving aside the Shuttle’s discouraging safety record, the lack of a well defined mission for both it and the International Space Station means we have no clear roadmap for development from the agency charged with producing one.

As to the missions Centauri Dreams has highlighted in the past two years, the news is grim. The Space Interferometry Mission, which would have extended our search for extraterrestrial worlds, has been delayed. The even more significant Terrestrial Planet Finder mission, charged with locating Earth-like worlds in the habitable zones of their stars, has been deferred indefinitely. These two items make the sharpest impact on exoplanetary studies, but the apparent loss of a mission to Europa is equally hard to take. And the lack of serious funding for propulsion alternatives like solar sails continues to dismay this observer.

Centauri Dreams again notes the lack of long-term perspective that fuels these budgetary decisions. Even in times of severe financial constraint, we need a direct vision of what the human future in space can be, one articulated in terms of practical programs that build on each other’s successes. The quixotic nature of government and politics suggests that we will get Terrestrial Planet Finder (or a mission like it) into space one day, but the question is, how long are we willing to defer it, and for what purposes? The other big question is, what are the best ways to boost private-sector research into deep space technologies in order to make an end-run around the bureaucracies that produce budgets like these?

A related note just in: NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, a virtual center based at Ames with collaborators at 16 institutions across the country, faces a 40 percent cut, said Ames acting director Chris Christensen.