Dear readers - would you be in favor of sending $10 billion extra dollars to NASA from 2010 to 2013?

How about if you find out that the money is to keep the space shuttle program going and fly as many as 6 or 7 additional missions during that time frame?

Let me explain for a second here, for those that haven't followed the news in the NASA area (which is a vast majority of U.S. citizens if I'm guessing right), NASA is currently slated to end the shuttle program in 2010.  At that point the money that currently goes to the shuttle program would start going to the programs that are supposed to take us back to the Moon and on to Mars over the next decade.  Given the costs involved in those programs NASA doesn't have the money in the budget for continuing the shuttle program and flying those missions too, so the budget priorities have been set based on the priorities that currently exist and the shuttle will be retired after the remaining missions that have already been scheduled have been flown.

Those current missions including one Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission that was added in (thanks to overwhelming demand from the science community and congressional support for that program), but DO NOT INCLUDE a flight to launch the A.M.S. labratory that is supposed to be part of the International Space Station.  (See news on that here: NASA refuses $1.5B space experiment, riles Sen. Nelson, others)  That labratory is continuing to be built, even without plans to launch it, because of commitments that NASA made to our partners in the ISS.

So, if you weren't ready to give NASA $10 billion extra before, does the idea of launching this $1.5 billion lab change your mind a little?

Does the idea of keeping the shuttle flying so that we aren't beholden to the Russians to launch crews to the ISS help change your mind?

Does the idea that the NASA budget is such a miniscule portion of the national budget change your mind at all?  (Look up the current budget and you see that it's just a fraction of the federal budget, and a miniscule amount compared to the GDP in this country.)

Giving NASA this boost to their budget could keep a lot of scientific experiments going and could keep NASA directly in the manned space flight business over a period that we would otherwise be strictly designing and testing the next generation of launch vehicles and space craft.  It would also include continuing to fly equipment that is definitely showing it's age and is known to be laden with risk.

So what would your choice be if you were in charge of the budget or if you were called upon to vote yay or nay on the proposal discussed in the news here: Lawmaker wants space shuttle extension Weldon proposes $10 billion to keep ships flying past 2010