Guys, welcome to planetary radio.

Casey, let me start out with you.

Is this just issued NASA budget something to celebrate?

Yeah, I mean, we really think it is.

I mean, for no other reason that the numbers are going in the right direction in terms of the

top line budget for NASA.

So the president is requesting 18.5 billion dollars, 18.529 if you want to be really detailed.

In terms of the request, last year they requested about a billion dollars less than this.

Looking at the change from 2015's request to the 2016 request, it's very much a step in the right direction.

Congress did a great thing last year.

They added half a billion dollars to the President's request, pushing NASA up to 18 billion.

So this is an improvement onto that.

And I think fundamentally what this means is that the administration and Congress are starting

to respond to this real consensus among us in the space policy

world that as a nation we ask NASA to do a whole lot of things from

commercial crew to SLS to of course all the science and planetary science and aeronautics.

And there's always the saying they have 20 pounds of mission in a 10 pound bag.

And this is getting us up to maybe like a 10 and a half pound bag but it's a step in the right direction and that's really important and I think that even though some people are complaining that it's not as big of a boost as what other science programs are getting.

It's still a boost, and I think we should really appreciate that,

and it's definitely given commendation

for stepping the right direction.

Break this down for us.

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