Are you sure the budget is decreasing in money numbers? I've heard conflicting reports, but the one I believe most is that the government just isn't giving more money each year, instead its staying the same. Which you can call a smaller budget because of inflation, the allocated money isn't going up with inflation.

It's true that the current shuttles are old, a new prototype is in development and should be comming out in the next 5 to 10 years.

Disaster is necessary for the development of safer space craft, either real or computer generated. This should persuade the government to increase the budget for NASA and improve the safety of Space Travel.