Oct 7 1981
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(New page: The Washington Post said that NASA was faced with cutting so much money from its budgets for the next three years that it was considering abandoning the Voyager, now on its way from Saturn...)
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The Washington Post said that NASA was faced with cutting so much money from its budgets for the next three years that it was considering abandoning the Voyager, now on its way from Saturn to a flyby of Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989.
Turning off Voyager's radios would save $222 million (the amount needed to keep NASA scientists and engineers on the job and to operate the Deep Space Network antennas in California, Australia, and Spain) over the next eight years. OMB had ordered NASA to cut $367 million from its FY82 budget and $l billion each from FY83 and FY84. As NASA could not take money from the Space Shuttle, it would have to save money in other ways.
It had already bowed out of an international mission to Halley’s Comet and now must choose from among three other programs: the Galileo mission to Jupiter in 1987, the large Space Telescope to be orbited in 1985, or the Voyager trips to Uranus and Neptune. Killing both Voyager and Galileo would save about $520 million. The only other way for NASA to save a large amount of money would be an indefinite delay in building a fourth shuttle, the Discovery, estimated to cost $1.2 billion and due for delivery in 1985. (W Post, Oct 7/81, A-4)
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