The latest US budget has been announced by President Obama and the news has been shocking for Nasa.

The new budget abandons plans for a manned moon landing, cancels the Areas One rocket program but crucially commits Nasa to buying in its orbital flights from commercial companies.

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have been leading the way in orbital technology and so the announcement was good news here in California.

For example, the Blue Origin rocket programme started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is to get $3.7m in the budget, despite it being aimed at sub-orbital flights only.

The SpaceX programme is also getting money, despite some fairly high profile failures. If the latest rocket works with the additional funding then the company could be poised to reap billions in government revenues.

By moving away from manned exploration to computer controlled investigations the budget will also be a boost to electronics companies in the Bay Area. We're already hearing about a host of new ideas, including remote greenhouses in space, new satellite drives and remote control exploration.

At a discussion of technologists last week it was noted that the only significant benefit from the Apollo launch was much better computing power and design. Maybe this budget will do the same for other areas. Silicon Valley is certainly hoping so.

02 Feb 2010