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" NASA&amp;#039;s relationship with its scientists has hit a new low, according to an editorial in today&amp;#039;s issue of the journal Nature. Though last autumn NASA administrator Mike Griffin assured he would not shift money from scientific research to the shuttle program, the agency budget announced at a news conference last week would do just that, redistributing $2 billion over a five-year period.  If the budget passes, grants that fund the basic science underlying space missions would be cut 15 to 25 percent, and by even more in areas such as astrobiology, a field appealing to young scientists, the journal reports. Projects to be &amp;quot;deferred indefinitely&amp;quot; include the Terrestrial Planet Finder and the Mars Sample Return. Also disturbing to some researchers was the way in which they found out\u2014through the same press conference as the rest of the public.  While NASA&amp;#039;s overall budget is to remain essentially flat, the budget request that President Bush recently sent to Congress includes increased funding for agencies that support physics research. This comes at the expense of other programs, however, such as one to clean up former nuclear-weapons plants.  In the February 9 issue, Naturereporters compared the science and technology budgets of 19 nations and found the United States still dominates global spending. This year, the nation will spend $134 billion on research and development\u2014about 60 percent of which is dedicated to defense. But the U.S. science budget has remained stagnant in recent years, whereas those of Asian countries such as India and China continue to race upward.  Keep an eye out for PM&amp;#039;s April issue, in which writer Noah Shachtman analyzes another big piece of the budgetary puzzle: the Pentagon&amp;#039;s wishlist for the next four years.\u2014J. Bogo  NASA Administrator Michael Griffin outlines the President&amp;#039;s budget for Fiscal Year 2007. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a504/2322761/>