US aerospace industry.

The leaders of almost two dozen US aerospace industry contractors (including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grummand and Raytheon) have co-signed a letter to Congress pleading for a top-line increase for NASA's FY 2008 budget. Without this increase, they say, the US faces the very real risk of losing its uniquely critical industrial base and human space access capability. The letter notes the rise of strong national space programmes in China, India, and Japan, and a resurgence in Russia; it warns that the US faces major challenges to its space leadership and national security. The letter recalls that in 2010, as the Shuttle is retired and the transition to the next generation of human spaceflight systems begins, the US will become temporarily reliant on foreign human space transportation capabilities, if domestic commercial orbital space transportation does not emerge. The authors declare: "In order to minimise this potential gap of independent American access to space, it is critical that we maintain funding and programme stability for Orion and Ares I, sufficient to ensure a rapid and safe transition for American human space exploration. Future US leadership in space is at stake. The authors say they are deeply concerned about the growing disparity between the programmes that NASA has been asked to accomplish and the resources the agency has been provided.