Nano2Sol by Marc Boucher

The White House announced the Fiscal Year 2007 budget request for the government today including a $16.8 billion request for NASA. This is only a 1% increase over its FY 2006 budget and signigicatly lower than what NASA had wanted meaning NASA will have to be creative so as to keep the President’s Vision for Space Exploration initiative on track. Keith Cowing, my business partner, has an excellent overview, NASA’s New Budget: Treading Water, of the budget request.

Meanwhile in Canada Stephen Harper was sworn in as Canada’s 22nd prime minister. Harper’s Conservatives will introduce their budget either in late March or early April. Since Space is such a low priority for the government the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) likely does not know at this point if their budget will be cut.

New finance minister Jim Flaherty, a former Ontario finance minister, stated once again today the Conservatives intend to bring in a balanced budget and lower the GST while increasing spending. It’s unlikely however that the CSA will get a budget increase. In fact there was speculation that one reason former CSA president and astronaut Marc Garneau ran for political office for the Liberals was so that he could attempt to raise the CSA budget while in goverment, something he had no success at as president of the agency. Unfortutanely for the CSA Mr. Garneau was defeated on election night by a seperatist from the Bloc Quebecois.

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