Obama Wants $2.1 Billion For NASA's Florida Spaceport

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama's proposed 2013 budget for NASA boosts spending at the Kennedy Space Center, which bore the brunt of job layoffs at the end of the space shuttle program last year, the center director said on Tuesday.

The president's $17.7 billion budget request for NASA for the year beginning October 1 includes $2.1 billion for the Florida spaceport, an increase of $323 million over this year's budget.

"During these austere times when other centers went down, for us to go up I think says a lot about the importance of what we're doing and where we're going," Kennedy Space Center director and former astronaut Bob Cabana told a National Space Club Florida Committee meeting in Cape Canaveral on Tuesday.

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