| NASA Langley wants
Mars money
Virginia Business
March 2004
Excitement
at NASA’s Langley Space Center in Hampton
over President Bush’s proposal to send manned
missions to the moon and eventually Mars is tempered
by the fact that nobody really knows what that means
for Langley.
Bush wants to add $12 billion to NASA’s budget
over the next five years, and presumably some of that
money will come to Langley and its 3,800 government
and private-sector employees. Details of the plan, which
still has to get through Congress, won’t be known
for several months. “Langley is poised to support
the president and the agency,” Center Director
Roy D. Bridges Jr. said after Bush’s announcement.
Langley’s advantage: more than half its research
involves aeronautics, and Bush’s proposal would
continue funding of that type of research. Langley has
links to past missions to the moon and Mars. One of
10 NASA centers, it’s where the Viking missions
to Mars were managed, and astronauts from the Mercury,
Gemini and Apollo missions trained there.
Virginia
Business - March 2004
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