NASA's 2015 budget plea: Jobs, pork, small business – OK, science

Our stepping stone approach to sending humans to Mars

Bolden also pitched deep-space exploration funding, specifically for the massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion crew vehicle as part of what he termed "Our stepping stone approach to sending humans to Mars," and the much argued-about mission to capture an asteroid. Space exploration would get just under $4bn if Bolden's fiscal 2015 dreams come true.

In the presentation [PDF] accompanying the budget request, NASA notes that it plans to get back in the business of launching humans into space by 2017, with a goal "to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s."

That presentation also touches on the private-sector meme, saying that the budget as designed "enables partnerships with American industry to develop new ways to reach space, creating jobs and enabling NASA to focus on new technologies that benefit all of our missions." It also "creates new jobs right here on Earth" – which, after all, is where most voters live.

Crew-based missions, of course, aren't the only items on NASA's wish list. In fact, it has scads of missions under development through 2020, most being robotic:

To decode NASA's acronymic worldview, check out their handy glossary (click chart to enlarge)

If Congress plays along, Earth science would receive $1.77bn in fiscal 2015; planetary science, $1.28bn; heliophysics, $669m; astrophysics, $607m; and aeronautics, $551m. Among other initiatives, the James Webb Space Telescope would receive $645m to keep it on track for its planned 2018 launch.

NASA says that its funding currently supports "over 10,000 US scientists" and provides "over 3,000" research awards through open competition to universities, industry, and government labs.

To those legislators who'd rather not associate themselves with NASA beneficiaries who their electorate might consider to be egghead elitists in universities, crony capitalists in industry, or wasteful shovel-leaners in government labs, NASA also promises help to the most sacred members of the American economic canon, small business owners, with $191m "to support research and development performed by small businesses through competitively awarded contracts."

It's all about persuasion during budget battles, with science taking a back seat – and in his argument for the requested funding, Bolden pulled out the most powerful incantation in today's politics: the "j-word".

"All of the investments we make at NASA help drive technology and innovation, spur economic activity and create jobs," he said. ®