I linked to the Shuttle installment below, but I went back this afternoon and read the other articles and I think it’s worth a separate post:
In search of a mission: After latest shuttle calamity, NASA must rethink its reason for being
Shuttle promise unfulfilled: Checkered past, cost drawbacks inspire little hope as craft for the future
Space station had political ties in tow
Failures leave NASA lacking new way to fly
NASA’s unheralded explorers: In astronauts’ shadow, robots make bulk of discoveries
There is one more article coming tomorrow, “Moving Beyond Columbia”. Despite their brevity, the articles are eye-opening and well worth a read. As noted in the earlier post, I see a need for a thorough “coming clean” on the NASA fiascos of the past forty years (more on which later). Granted, NASA is not entirely to blame for the failure of the manned space program (Congress and USAF should share some of it), but many of the bad decisions over the years have been due to NASA’s own internal myopia, and those forced on it by budget limitations, etc., could have been mitigated had the agency had a focus and even a kernel of executive competence.