NASA - Griffin Speaks, Astronomers Listen

For obscure reasons I could not be at Griffin's talk to the AAS today..., I had a higher calling, and was in a small room with assorted colleagues and NASA HQ bods.

"...In short, we who run NASA today are doing our very best to preserve a robust science program in the face of, frankly, some daunting fiscal realities that affect all domestic discretionary spending. These realities dictate that we set priorities; NASA simply cannot accomplish everything that was on our plate when I took office last April. In space-based astronomy, and in other areas, we will have to make tough trade-offs between maintaining current missions, of which there are 14 ongoing, and developing new capabilities. The astronomy community has faced this same issue with respect to ground based telescopes as well."

Real Soon Now they're going to have to actually cut stuff, then let the screaming begin...

It will hurt.