It shows the astronomy satellites in space -- the satellites that have brought us such a wealth of new information about our universe in the past few years. The dotted line just before 2011 is where we are now. Notice something? Most of these programs reach end of life in the next year or two and there are precious few new programs coming on line to replace them. Hubble (at the bottom of the chart) will be replaced (hopefully) by the new James Webb telescope (at the top of the chart), and there are a couple of new follow-on satellites in the works, but nothing like the array we have in space right now.
That is too bad. I suppose in a cash-strapped economy, where we MUST cut government spending, NASA will take a big hit. But I can think of a lot of other government activities that are far less important than pure science, and far less likely to spark the sort of science-driven innovation that could recover American jobs..
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