Nasty budget cut would spell doom for NASA's space plans, so said the Space Frontier Foundation a few days ago. In another round of money saving attempts, NASA managers are considering suspending US science research aboard the International Space Station (ISS) next year. Dropping the  science research is one of the several options to make up for the $100 million funding shortfall plaguing NASA.

NASA is currently preparing to launch shuttle Atlantis toward the ISS to complete the construction of the half-built space station by September 2010. The future of the space station science remains bleak after NASA was forced to divert funds from its science and exploration coffers to complete the ISS and retire the shuttle program.

Kirk Shireman, deputy director of NASA’s ISS program at Johnson Space Center (JSC) said, “The ISS has severe budgetary limitations next year. We’re working very hard not only within the program, but with headquarters as well to balance it out...I’m confident that we’ll come out with options and a plan to go forward that will be satisfactory for the ISS program and for NASA and the taxpayers as a whole."

We already assumed that there would be major setbacks to the scientific community with the (nasty) budget cut NASA received, but we never really though the impact would be as bad as the Space Frontier Foundation says it would be.

This space advocacy group has just submitted its assessment regarding NASA's space exploration plans - and what they're saying is far from good. Titled "Unaffordable and Unsustainable - NASA's failing Earth-to-Orbit Transportation Strategy," this, for one, calls for the immediate elimination of work on Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) block 1 and for the delay of Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) program.

The CEV Block 1 has been designed for ISS missions, which according to the group should be handed to private space firms.

According to Space Frontiers Foundation, NASA should also be considering taking more private partners if they intend to continue with space exploration. The agency should buy a service from US companies, as NASA doesn't have the capability to build, develop and operate crew or cargo missions anymore.

Space Frontier Foundation is also calling for the government to transfer $2B to $3B to the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program which currently has a budget of just $500M until 2010. This will result to additional COTS competition, promoting six to eight more contracts.

Their major concern, according to Space Frontier Foundation's co-founder Rick Tumlinson, is that science might also suffer if NASA's incapability (budget, engineering, space access systems) starts to affect space exploration.

There's been a huge interest in commercial space travel in the past few years with the spaceport in New Mexico that's nearing completion. Along with this excitement there has been great interest in a program to get both public and private school teachers into space, known as the “Teachers in Space Program”. Currently there are 3 free tickets from different companies, ranging from $100,000 to $200,000 US, that've been set aside for this purpose.

"The eventual goal of the program is to get at least 100 teachers a year into suborbital spaceflight, with a mix of private and public funding," Rick Tumlinson of the Space Frontier Foundation, explained. "However, we realize that it's premature to begin any legislative action to get that funding... So what we're starting with is going after private contributions from either companies or individuals."

The purpose would be to allow teachers to get first-hand experience and knowledge of what they are teaching and to inspire their students to work harder.