Charles Gibson

Last evening on ABC's World News Tonight, Charles Gibson, who is in Houston at the moment, ran the first of a two part report on the future of America's space program. It was not a strong effort. First, the focus of the report seems to be the manned spaceflight program, which ignores the extraordinarily successful unmanned program. Let's give Charlie a break on that one. Unfortunately, the report had several such loose statements.

Gibson began the report by asserting that most Americans don't know much about their space program. Assuming that's correct, why would it be? Could it be because the mainstream media, including ABC News, doesn't systemically cover the space program?

Gibson went on to note that NASA's headquarters is in Houston. Wrong. NASA HQ is in Washington. Johnson Space Center is in Houston. JSC could loosely be called the headquarters of the manned spaceflight program, but it still takes orders from NASA in Washington, D. C.

Gibson went on to discuss "NASA's plan" to return astronauts to the Moon and to go on to Mars. In fact, NASA doesn't make its own plans, any more than any other Federal agency is free to pursue its own plan. The plan Gibson referenced is U. S. policy. It was developed by the Bush administration in the wake of the space shuttle Columbia tragedy, adopted and funded, so far, by Congress, and maintained, so far, by the Obama administration. NASA is clearly excited by the prospect of sending astronauts beyond low Earth orbit again, but referring to the effort as "NASA's plan" is a touch misleading, and may border on the dismissive.

Hopefully, the next part of the report will be stronger.