New NASA chief to scrap Hubble despite ranking it with Einstein.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050412/ap...

"The United States needs to look in new directions and look beyond where we have been in the last several decades," Griffin said, stressing that the current space shuttle function of servicing the International Space Station did not qualify as a good risk for human space flight.

Bush's long-range plan has not received a warm reception on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers concerned that the costs of returning to the moon and beyond would necessitate sacrifices in other popular programs.

Several senators urged Griffin to take steps to resuscitate the Hubble Space Telescope, which is wearing down and will die unless costly and risky action is taken to save it.

Griffin said the knowledge of the universe gained from the Hubble compares to Einstein's theory of relativity, but, citing the costs of an unmanned fix, said he would "like to take the robotic mission off the table." He said he would reassess the possibility of a manned mission to the telescope after the shuttle flights are resumed.

Griffin also agreed with senators that there was an unacceptable gap between the planned retirement, no later than 2010, of the space shuttle, and the launch some five years later of the next-generation manned vehicle, called the Crew Exploration Vehicle.

So we have a NASA chief nominee who...

1. Wants to stop everything scientific NASA does for a useless, but cool-sounding Mars shot.

2. Acknowledges that the Hubble is the most popular thing NASA's done since Apollo, and the most scientifically impressive thing since its first satellite, but yet still wants to scrap it.

3. In his belief that the five-year manned-mission gap will threaten security, implies that he is in favor of militarizing space.

4. Wishes to withdraw from the ISS.

Good. Good. Nice to know that Bush has his sights on fucking up EVERY agency, regardless of how relevant it is to his agenda. Though I am surprised that he managed to find in the ISS one last international project the US is involved in that he could pull out of and/or screw over. I wouldn't have thought to look there! He certainly is efficient at unilateralism, I'll grant him that.

Up next? The Smithsonian is demolished for oil 'exploration,' and the National Archives replaced with The Patriotic Republican Archives!