February 2006 Archives

I think it's about time for me to promote SpaceRef as we've added several news sites, updated our mobile site and added new RSS feeds.

Today I added RSS feeds for Moon Today, Jupiter Today and SpaceRef Europe. That means that we now have 13 RSS feeds for the SpaceRef Network. Personally I think we provide the most extensive RSS feed collection of space news available.

Recent new sites or major update to sites include:

• Pluto Today (New site)
• Venus Today (New site)
• SpaceRef Mobile (Updated and relaunched)
• SpaceRef Search (Updated and relaunched)

As you can see we've been busy and we're not done yet. We have at least 2 new additional sites to launch this year and updates to our other sites in the works.

Also in today's budget request from the White House was $105.9 billion for the military spending including $9.8 billion for space programs. Combine that with NASA's budget and you get $26.6 billion allocated to space programs.

Now let's take a look at Canada's space budget. For fiscal year 2005 $300 million was allocated to the Canadian Space Agency. The military budget for 2005 was approximately $13 billion of which a very small percentage was allocated to space. So basically Canada's space spending is 1.5% of the combined US civilian and military budgets. Personally I would like to see the civilian side of the Canadian Space Agency budget increased so that Canada can compete in an ever growing space sector. I fear at this rate we will be left behind.

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.

I've now added the ability for visitors to post comments. However to control the inevitable spambots I'll be moderating the comments. So make your comments relevant.